Description
The literature on elite interviews in security research has received growing attention from critical security scholars. This debate has mainly concentrated on the dynamics of power imbalances that emerge during the interview process between the researcher and the researched, especially from the global North. However, little is understood regarding the deliberate utilisation and instrumentalisation of relational positionalities to redefine the researcher's identities in shaping data accessibility and knowledge production in security research. Drawing on ethnographic field experience with counterterrorism security actors in Nigeria, this article explores this gap in a global south context where terrorism and counterterrorism knowledge are securitised. I present two interrelated arguments. On the one hand, I demonstrate how the researcher's constructed positionality by state security actors as a 'political undesirable', a shorthand for outsiderness to mainstream security idiosyncrasy, shaped not only access to interviewees and the practical structure of interviews but also the openness to share. On the other hand, the experiential dynamics emanating from normative dimensions of the post-interview process led to the reconstruction of the researcher's identity as a 'friendly agent', and this emergent relational-positional dynamic transformed the data collection. The article contributes to the discourses on power dynamics in researcher–researched relations and underscores the challenges and tensions of security research in the global south.
