"on Top of Everything, You're Argentinian". Methodological Notes on the Challenges of Studying Elites in Catalonia

Studying elites is widely recognized for presenting several challenges. Firstly, elites are a small yet highly powerful group, well-educated, with vast resources, and often elusive and difficult to access. Additionally, they may hold more symbolic and cultural capital than the researchers, placing the latter in a subordinate and sometimes uncomfortable position (Cousin et al., 2018). These challenges vary depending on the country and the specific type of elite being studied (e.g., economic, educational, or cultural), and are further influenced by the researcher’s own class background and network of contacts. In the case of Catalonia, the Catalan elite, commonly referred to as the Catalan bourgeoisie, is particularly closed and cautious, with very few studies managing to gain access to this world. Moreover, most of these studies are more focused on social and family profiles than on research related to social stratification (see Pérez Arias 2022, Cullel & Farràs 2001).

This presentation will explore the challenges of conducting qualitative research on elites in the city of Barcelona. Specifically, this research not only involves interviews but also utilizes a methodology for studying the geographies of intersectionality: Relief Maps (Rodó-Zárate, 2013). This self-administered digital tool captures individuals' experiences in various spaces of everyday life based on different social identities, such as gender, race, age, and more. The particularities of this methodology, combined with the affiliation to a well-established research group (Intermaps-UPF), introduce challenges for fieldwork that yield ambivalent results, facilitating certain aspects of access while complicating others. This presentation will address the access barriers arising from the characteristics of the population and the researcher’s own positionality, while also highlighting the adaptive strategies employed during fieldwork to navigate these complexities effectively.