‘Thank you for taking us seriously’: Disseminating Research Findings with Displaced People in Colombia
By Dr Luis Eduardo Pérez Murcia, photos by Diego Sainea
Dr Luis Eduardo Pérez Murcia completed his PhD in 2016 on the experiences of losing and remaking home for those people in Colombia who had been internally displaced as a result of violence. On February 24 2017 Luis Eduardo presented the findings of his research to the research participants and on February 28 to scholars, policymakers, and national and international bodies which assist displaced people in Colombia. This blog shares some of his reflections on the process of dissemination of results with research participants.
While doing my PhD at the Global Development Institute I gained invaluable skills. The opportunity to discuss and present my research to my supervisors, examiners and a wide range of specialists in the fields of migration and home, provided me with the confidence to communicate my ideas to different audiences.
The most challenging presentations, however, were feeding back the findings of the research to the research participants themselves. I realized that talking about the interplay between conflict, displacement, and home with those whose life stories informed my research, was one of the most challenging experiences. I found myself in an odd situation explaining to those who know first-hand the impacts of conflict and displacement and how these result in the loss of a sense of home; what and where home is for those who flee following conflict; the negative experiences of living without a place called home; and the myriad difficulties displaced people deal with in their everyday lives to remake the feeling of being at home. read more…
Production networks, value chains and shifting end markets: implications for sustainability
Sustainability is everywhere – but what does it mean in the context of globalised production relations? A panel at the Development Studies Association (DSA) Conference, 6-8 September 2017, will aim to explore this very sustainability-value chain nexus. With a session titled “Production networks, value chains and shifting end markets: implications for sustainability”, we aim to discuss how sustainability and the globalised production context interlink. Abstracts for the panel organised by The University of Manchester researchers Aarti Krishnan, Judith Krauss, Stephanie Barrientos and Khalid Nadvi are due by 26th April, to be submitted through the DSA website.
Hundreds of years ago, the concept of sustainability emerged in the context of using and protecting forest resources. While the term has become increasingly popular, its meaning has also become ever more contested. For instance, while an oil company may use it to justify its extraction of fossil fuel from tar sands as meeting human needs for affordable energy, environmental activists may use the same term, though not the same notion, to contest the practice. read more…
What the poor spend on health care
By Stuart Rutherford, Honorary Research Fellow at The Global Development Institute
This is the fourth in a series of short articles about the findings of a daily ‘financial diary’ research project in Bangladesh. In this article, we look at the spending on health care of 48 of our ‘diarists’, using daily data for the 15-month period from 1st December 2015 to 28th February 2017.
How much did they spend?
Between them, our 48 diarists spent 491,524 Bangladeshi taka on healthcare in the period. At market exchange rates that’s about US$6,145, but at the more meaningful ‘PPP’ (purchasing power parity) rate, which makes allowances for the fact that things are cheaper in Bangladesh than in America, it is the equivalent of around $12,290, or $256 per diarist. Since the households that the diarists represent hold a total of 206 people, that’s a little under $60 a person, or $3.98 per month per person.
How much of a hole did that make in their finances?
Our first chart compares spending on health care with some other big components of the ordinary household spending of the 48 diarists in the period, by which we mean all outflows except business costs (like buying stock for a shop), financial outflows (savings deposits and loan repayments), large investments in land and buildings, and transfers to other people in the same household. Healthcare takes up 6% of that spending, behind the 26% spent on food and the 22% spent on home maintenance, but ahead, for example, of education, utilities and clothes. read more…
Watch: Prof Uma Kothari on whether universities are part of the populism problem
Professor Uma Kothari recently appeared on a panel discussion at the University of Melbourne. The discussion which asked, ‘Are universities part of the populism problem?’ featured Jeffery Bleich, former US Ambassador to Australia and current Chair of the Fulbright Board; Professor Glyn Davis, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne; and Maxine McKew, former politician and journalist now based at the University of Melbourne. read more…
GDI Lecture Series: Resilience, Development and Global Change with Professor Katrina Brown
On Wednesday, 22 March, Professor Katrina Brown gave a lecture entitled: Resilience, Development and Global Change: Resistance, Rootedness and Resourcefulness. You can watch the live stream below
Note: This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Global Development Institute as a whole.
The suppliant women and the perennial question: who will provide asylum and stand up for moral values?
By Dr Tanja R. Müller Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at the Global Development Institute
A group of women form the shape of a boat – one of those boats we are used to see in media pictures these days, unseaworthy but still trying to cross the Mediterranean from Lybia or other North African countries to Italy, or from Turkey to Greece, and too full of people. Like the boat that was once carrying Aylan Kurdi and the many others who perished like him. The women here are a group of multi-ethnic teenagers and young adults from Greater Manchester, waving poles with a white flag and wrapping black scarves around their bodies – to symbolise both, their hope for peace and asylum and their desperation if those are not granted (the scarves can be made into hoses to hang themselves).
The scene is the stage of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, and the women are part of a modern interpretation of one of the world’s oldest plays, written by Aeschylus in Ancient Greece around 2500 years ago. read more…
Development Implications of Digital Economies Strategic Network
The Development Implications of Digital Economies (DIODE) Strategic Network is a newly funded project which will be led by Professor Richard Heeks. The network received £129,000 as part of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). The below blog, which originally appeared on the DIODE website, provides an outline of the project and what it aims to achieve.
As digital technologies – the internet, web, mobile phones, social networks, 3D printers, etc – spread around the world, both work and business are changing via creation of digital economies.
There has already been impact in developing countries: thousands of digital startups, millions working in the ICT sector, millions more undertaking online work for platforms like Upwork. And the potential is even greater: hundreds of millions could access online work platforms, digital businesses like Uber and Airbnb are spreading rapidly, demand for digital enterprises is high, 3D-printing could level the manufacturing playing field, etc. But problems are also arising: most digital startups and digital careers fail; most citizens are unable to participate in digital economies; the benefits of digital work and trade seem to flow more to big corporations in the global North than to workers, enterprises or governments in the global South. read more…
Kitty Lymperopoulou and Lindsey Garratt on migration and families in Europe
The House of Commons has cleared the way for the Prime Minister to trigger article 50 at the end of March 2017, however, what happens next for EU citizens living in the UK post Brexit? Here, Dr Lindsey Garratt and Dr Kitty Lymperopouloufrom The University of Manchester recount the recent Migrant Families in Europe conference and discuss the associated policy issues and their plans for influencing decision makers throughout the Brexit process.
- EU citizens living in the UK and their families are facing the prospect of increased barriers to live and work in the UK
- Current debates on migration are rarely discussed from the perspective of the family
- To address this the Centre on Dynamics of Diversity hosted a two-day conference focused on broadening the conversation beyond traditional understandings of ‘family migration’
- The conference highlighted the disconnect between policies and practices relating to migrants and the experiences of migrant families in Europe
- As the government enters into Brexit negotiations about the rights of movement of EU citizens and settlement in the UK, it is the interests of families that need to be understood and protected
Two amendments suggested by the House of Lords have been rejected, including the protection for EU citizens’ rights to remain in the UK. EU citizens living in the UK and their families are facing the prospect of increased restrictions and barriers to live and work in the UK. But despite the significance of families in the movement of populations to and within Europe, current debates on migration are rarely discussed from the perspective of the family.
Migration and Families in Europe – Conference
To address this Centre on Dynamics of Diversity hosted a two-day conference entitled ‘Migration and Families in Europe: National and Local Perspectives at a Time of Euroscepticism’. Our aim was to bring together scholars, practitioners and policy makers from the UK and Europe to discuss the complexity of migration and what it means for families in the current political climate.
The theme of this two day conference was ‘migration and families’ to purposively broaden discussion beyond family migration, which has tended to be defined as migration for family unification only.
The first day focused on conceptual and methodological challenges in researching migrant families. These ranged from cross-national surveys, longitudinal and case study methods, to participatory arts and social action research. Our methodological keynote speaker Helga de Valk (NiDI) highlighted the need for comparative studies and a life course approach to provide better insights into the family dynamics of migrant families.
A number of challenges were also raised. These related to existing data limitations, difficulties in defining families and the challenges of using different datasets at country level and for cross-country studies. In this ‘post-truth’ age it is even more important that our methodological approaches are robust and innovative as scepticism surrounding ‘experts’ presents challenges for future migration research.
On the second day the focus shifted to substantive issues at play in terms of policy and practice and the experiences of migrant and refugee families including those of children and elderly parents.
While the conference had a wider remit than family reunification, this was undoubtedly a major theme. The multitude of legal and policy issues related to families and their mobility were highlighted in relation to family reunification policy at both a European and nation state level.
The legal positions of couples, where one person is an irregular migrant was elaborated by Betty de Hart (University of Amsterdam) and Johnathan Darling(University of Manchester) explained how family life is governed in the UK by the asylum dispersal system.
Sue Lukes (MigrationWork CIC) also outlined the ways child migration has been framed in policy and public discussions in relation to housing. Eleonore Kofman(Middlesex University), the conference keynote speaker for day two, discussed the increasing restrictions on family members’ migration and the implications this has for families. These discussions made it clear that legal and policy restrictions have a profound impact on families, particularly those outside of the nuclear definition of the family.
Indeed another major theme of the conference was the narrow definition of ‘family’ in policy terms which often means adult children and elderly parents are left without support. For instance, elderly care and care by the elderly has become a particularly pressing issue.
Eleonore Kofman (Middlesex University) highlighted that bringing over one’s parents to care for them in old age or to be a support for one’s own child care responsibilities is becoming untenable. Moreover as Chris Phillipson (University of Manchester) and James Nazroo (University of Manchester) discussed, migrants who have grown older in the UK are often experiencing social isolation, particularly since they tend to live in deprived areas and experience poorer health than their White British counterparts.
How families have been used as symbols surrounding migration was another main focus of the conference. Saskia Bonjour pointed out that families are often burdened with representations as regressive and in conflict with so called ‘integration’. This is something Daniela Sime (University of Strathclyde) highlighted in her exploration of the racialisation of Roma Children in Glasgow and Nando Sigona (University of Birmingham) examined how narratives around children come into play in the denaturalisation of asylum seekers crossing the Mediterranean Sea.
Louise Ryan (University of Sheffield) picked up on this tension in her discussion of children and social networks. At a time when the term ‘integration’ has become so symbolically damaged, Ryan’s focus on ‘embeddness’ provided a useful lens through which understandings of migrant families within the UK could potentially be reframed.
The conference also highlighted the lived and affective experience of migration which is perhaps most keenly felt when we think of it in relation to the family. Alice Bloch (University of Manchester) took us through how the second generation often experience the stories and silences of their parents refugee experiences and how these past events echo in family histories.
Melanie Griffiths (University of Bristol) mirrored some of these issues by describing the difficulties precarious male migrants experience in the UK. Anya Ahmed(University of Salford) examined affect from the other side of migration, that of elderly migrants from the UK living in Spain who try to negotiate transnational intergenerational family relationships.
Recurring Themes
A recurrent theme throughout the two days was the disconnect between policies and practices relating to migrants and the experiences of migrant families in Europe. The conference highlighted the tendency of public and policy discourses to view migrants as a monolithic mass of simply economic agents rather than as family and household units.
As the government enters into Brexit negotiations about the rights of movement of EU citizens and settlement in the UK, it is the interests of families that need to be understood and protected. Despite the innovative and exciting research outlined at the conference there is still a lot to learn about the experiences of migrant families across Europe. For this reason, we are developing a European Network examining migration as it relates to families.
A network to understand migrant families
Our aim is to be present throughout the Brexit process and beyond to remind decision makers of the families their choices are affecting. The Network will create a platform to share and critique research, practice and policy across Europe.
Upcoming activities include a planned seminar series to increase our understanding of empirical comparative research on family migration and a special issue on methodological issues in researching migration and the family.
Our overarching objective is to highlight how families are shaped and constructed through policy and practice and reframe the often salient ways migrant families have been understood in relation to diversity, cohesion and the rising tide of nationalism across Europe. To find out more join the network.
GDI at the Development Studies Association Conference
Eleven academics from the Global Development Institute are helping to convene seven panels at the annual DSA conference in September. The 2017 Development Studies Association Conference will be held at the University of Bradford from the 6-8th September and will focus on Sustainability interrogated: societies, growth, and social justice and will feature.
Professor David Hulme, Executive Director of the Global Development Institute, will also deliver the President’s Valedictory lecture. read more…
February research round up
Each month we bring you the latest publications from the researchers at the Global Development Institute.
Books
Kunal Sen has published a new book with Sabyasachi Kar: The Political Economy of India’s Growth Episodes
David Lawson, David Hulme and Lawrence Ado-Kofie have published a new edited volume: What Works for Africa’s Poorest read more…