The Hustle: How Struggling to Access Elites for Qualitative Interviews Alters Research and the Researcher

When conducting qualitative research on elites, researchers often face issues regarding time-constraints, power asymmetries, and rapport building. In this article, I outline the methodological concept of “the hustle” so that we might better understand how these issues intersect and how the difficulty to access elites for interviews alters research and researcher. The hustle is defined as the pushing or jostling of the qualitative researcher in the face of resistance to access research settings or participants. Inspired by my own hustle when researching elites who design AI recruitment technology (AI-rec-tech), I argue that the hustle has four major effects: first, it requires the researcher to act as networker; second, it influences how much data can be collected; third, it dictates research design; and fourth, it alters interview dynamics. The hustle is an important conceptual umbrella which draws together themes which have arisen in qualitative research on elites for decades.