Abstract
This paper advances intersectionality as an interactional methodological lens for qualitative interviewing. Although widely used to analyse overlapping inequalities, its implications for the micro-dynamics of knowledge production remain under-theorised. Drawing on 44 interviews in four small and medium-sized law firms in England and Wales, we examine how responses to the politically charged question “What does diversity mean to you?” vary according to the relational intersectional configuration between interviewer and interviewee. We introduce the concepts of intersectional fusion and intersectional fission to theorise how relational proximity or distance shapes discursive form. Fusion denotes integrated, concrete and elaborated accounts; fission captures abstraction, fragmentation and semantic distancing. We show how professional status, occupational identity and gendered hierarchy structure how diversity is articulated. By conceptualising interviews as relational sites of power, we extend intersectionality from analytic framework to methodological practice.