ABSTRACT
The central objective of this chapter is to provide a detailed account of how we conducted our qualitative meta-analysis, which serves as the basis for the empirical chapters containing the synthesis of results. Rather than presenting it in a classic handbook manner, besides explaining how we used and even adapted qualitative meta-analysis as our research method, we critically reflect on how the experience was by underscoring inherent dilemmas and how we dealt them. Also, we elucidate the suitability of qualitative meta-analysis, as a mode of synthesis research, for looking into the central subject of this book: the evolving spatial knowledge of young people. Qualitative meta-analysis, we now know, extends and broadens the borders of singular case studies. Synthesis—by far the most challenging and delicate phase of a qualitative meta-analysis—is what makes it possible to tear down those borders to then link the studies with one another. We realized that, to achieve this, we would have to avoid the predicament of universalization or syncretism, as neither is conducive to the goal of producing (meta-)interpretations, instead resulting in all-encompassing (meta-)narratives. Qualitative meta-analysis is not intended to produce new mainstreams either. Instead, it postulates that sometimes it is far more fruitful and productive to pay closer and more critical attention to what is already (partially) known instead of seeking or forcibly producing ground-breaking knowledge.
