Abstract
My interest in friendship as a methodology was stimulated by my ethnographic research project 'Do the poor pay more?', which examined young girls' (ages 14 to 18) lived experiences of housing instability that mutated to school transience, poor health and nutrition and truncated life chances. This dual-city project served as my PhD fieldwork and was approved by the university's ethics committee, though as it developed the research became more complex than originally thought. I volunteered at local youth centres and as a mentor to young people. Through weekly social gatherings, the girls and I formulated meaningful relationships, and many of the girls later became participants and collaborators in my research. While the girls and I maintained a mutually respectful and reciprocal relationship, this chapter focuses on the unexpected unravelling of ethical, emotional and methodological issues when adopting friendship with young people as a research methodology (Tilmann-Healy, 2003). This chapter's focus is on how rapport is gained, maintained and 'used' when researching with young people and how research participants can use that friendship for their own ends.