ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the postcolonial interplay between whiteness, nationality and gender with the construction of work identities. Ethnographic and biographical methods open a window onto the 'mundane routines' and 'banal' habits of everyday life, and create an opportunity to see afresh the formation of nationality and raced identities. Biographical methods have been found to be particularly useful for studying both migration and race, and are thus valuable for exploring expatriate lives. The aim of the Shell Ladies project was to give voice to the wives of Shell expatriates and gain public acknowledgement of their role in the life of the corporation. Psycho-social methodologies of interpretation hold that the interviewer's talk and responses are of equal interest to those of the interviewee. Poststructuralism recognizes experience as mediated by the continual negotiation of personal, interactional and social dynamics. Photography has a valuable supplementary role to play in ethnographic research therefore, to reveal what words alone do not say.
