Description
In recent years, the research on ontological security in IR has been flourishing and a growing body of the literature has moved beyond state-centric approaches. Nonetheless, ontological security has been predominantly studied through various forms of discourse analysis. This paper seeks to make the case for the use of focus groups as a method to study how (inter)national meta narratives, routines and practices translate into the personal ontological security and anxiety management mechanisms of regular citizens. We argue that the analysis of group discussions can improve our understanding of the vernacular aspects of ontological security by observing its mechanisms at an ‘everyday’ interpersonal and interactional level. In other words, this method provides a way to make use of ontological security’s psychological and psychoanalytical origins by exploring how subjects react to everyday conversations that potentially challenge their self-identity narratives, routines, and practices. In this paper, we review how the main concepts of the ontological security literature such as anxiety, identity and fantasy narratives can be studied with the use of focus groups. We demonstrate this operationalization by drawing on evidence from four group discussions with students, young unemployed people, young people without a diploma, and white collars from Florence, Italy.
