Awkwardness, affinity and altering power dynamics: reflexive insights from courtwatching in the Immigration Tribunal

‘This little girl is doing a PhD and I said she should speak to you’. As the judge approached, I internally grimaced at being called a little girl by the Tribunal Clerk, I put out my hand and, in an attempt to assert a sense of maturity, I gave him a firm handshake.’ (First Tier Immigration Tribunal, Glasgow, 2019) Courtwatching involves observation of the day-to-day work of justice systems. The larger project from which this paper draws from examined the workgroup dynamics of the First Tier Immigration Tribunal in Glasgow. In this paper, I reflect that the practice of courtwatching can draw the researcher into the workgroup as an occasional player. I consider from my own experience as a researcher the manner in which factors such as age and gender can: structure access to information and people; provide insights into interpersonal dynamics in the field; and inform a researcher’s interpretation of their experience in the field. This paper therefore serves as a reminder of the need for reflexivity in research and encourages a conversation about navigating questions of researcher identity. The paper also highlights the need for courtwatching to be conducted by a diverse range of researchers who, through acting as occasional players in courtroom workgroups, and in inhabiting different legal settings, may interpret different and important insights into justice systems.