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1: INTRODUCTION
former Iron Curtain. During my time in Slovenia, Anja brought me to the
Solkan Bridge from where the border as well as the Slovenian road corridor
through Italy can be seen, the group interview conducted in Sofije, Slovenia,
included a visit to the former Morgan line (the Italian-Yugoslavian border
between 1945–1954), and Maria and Antonio drove me to the border near
Trieste, Italy, to show me an old sign that had survived in the landscape.
During these visits the importance of the material as a mnemonic became
obvious but these visits also helped to provide ample time for conversation
to flow a bit more freely than during a more formal interview situation.
There are several different methods and techniques for how to conduct
interviews (see for example: Ehn and Löfgren 1996, O’Reilly 2005, Kaijser
and Öhlander 2011). My interviews were carried out in what can be referred
to as unstructured interviews (O’Reilly 2005:116, Fägerborg 2011:99) in
which I used a general plan of the topics that I wanted to cover with a few
specific questions but generally the conversations were allowed to flow
freely in order not to be tied down. The aim of the interviews was not necessarily
to gain answers to particular questions but rather to understand the
ways different people viewed the border and the Iron Curtain and this was
best reached through allowing the interviewees to speak freely about what
they considered to be of importance. The interviews varied in how many
people were present, usually just one or two, but there was also one group
interview in which seven people participated. How interviews were conducted
also varied somewhat depending on the people being interviewed. It
was clear that an approach that worked with some people, such as those
living near the border in Slovenia and Italy who talked rather freely about
life in the area was not necessarily successful when interviewing others such
as the former military officer of the Czechoslovakian border who preferred
more specific questions. What was most important during interviews was
therefore being flexible and reflexive in the way to proceed. As sociologist
Karen O’Reilly writes “…qualitative research is as often art as science, it is
not easy to set out what should be done and how in a given set of circumstances”
(O’Reilly 2005:4) but she also points out that in order to be
confident in making those choices the researcher has to be aware of the
options available and be able to adjust according to the situation.
In this thesis I do not use the word informant which is often the chosen
term within ethnographical studies. This is mostly due to the thesis’ Cold
War context where the word informant often brings to mind the word
informer and as such has connotations and meanings connected with
spying (Gerber 2011:28). Instead I use the word interviewee to try and steer
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