Criticise Your Working Conditions! —Focus Group Interviews on Sensitive Topics

The aim of this article is, through two case studies, to demonstrate that focus group interviews constitute a particularly useful method with which to examine topics which may seem sensitive to the informants. The central point of the article is that focus group interviews can help to establish a safe setting for the informants in which, they can create shared meanings, interpretations and understandings in relation to the topic on which the researchers wish to collect a group’s accumulated statements, opinions and experiences. It is argued that this process possesses a politically democratic potential, as the framework for the focus group interview creates an arena in which critical statements may be made about the sphere of possibilities of working life. The focus group interview thereby becomes a free zone, which not only enables the sensitive issue to be subjected to the group’s reciprocal interpretation process, but also generates emancipatory processes.