« Previous | Contents | Next »
Listen
REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS IN SCOTLAND: A SKILLS AND ASPIRATIONS AUDIT
Appendix Two Methodology
2.1 Outline of Fieldwork Process
The questionnaire delivery took place primarily in the SRC offices in Glasgow and respondents were accessed by drawing on those clients who used SRC services such as the One Stop Shop and various weekly advice drop-ins. The research team also travelled to colleges, careers guidance centres and other drop-in services run by churches and community centres around Glasgow. The gender balance in the research team enabled the fieldworkers to access women only resource centres and drop-ins also. A smaller number of questionnaires were delivered to service users in Edinburgh in the offices of the SRC and the Asylum Seeker's Response Unit, Edinburgh City Council (44 of the 523 questionnaires were completed in Edinburgh).
Depending on the context, the language skills and preference of the respondent, the questionnaire was administered via one of the following methods: through one-to-one, (where necessary with the help of an interpreter) or self-completed in groups with the researcher's support. Interpretation in Arabic, Farsi, French, Kurdish, Somali and Swahili was available on 9 of the research days in the SRC office in Glasgow. It took between 20 minutes and one hour to complete each questionnaire.
In colleges, contact was made first with the English Language Teaching units and then with individual class teachers who introduced the researchers to the refugees and asylum seekers in their classes. If all (or almost all) the students in a class were asylum seekers or refugees, teachers sometimes suggested doing the questionnaire in groups as part of the lesson, or making arrangements to regroup students across classes. In other cases small groups were asked if they would come out of the main class to complete the questionnaire. Most students were happy to participate although a few chose not to and a few had completed it already. College teachers were very helpful in giving support and assistance.
In drop-ins, the researchers made arrangements to visit during the weekly sessions. There tended to be more women than men in these settings. Arrangements were also made with other organisations, including the Asylum Seekers Response Unit in Edinburgh and Meridian, Glasgow North and the Gorbals Initiative, who kindly arranged for the researchers to meet their clients, both individually and in small groups. The outside agencies contacted showed considerable interest in the research.
Invitations to participate in the Audit were also mailed to all the National Asylum Support Service (NASS) clients in Edinburgh and to around fifty of those involved in the Framework for Dialogue project with the SRC in Glasgow. Invitation letters were also given out to over a hundred people attending a particular Framework for Dialogue event in Glasgow. The responses from these mailings were low, but the people accessed via this method were more likely to have been in Scotland for longer.
The research team were concerned to target a broad sample of respondents through different access points. However, it has not been possible to make the sample representative due to the lack of knowledge and comprehensive baseline data for refugees and asylum seekers living in Scotland. The sample includes people from a wide range of nationalities, although some nationalities are better represented than others, and has a fairly even gender balance. However, a significantly higher proportion of those responding to the questionnaires were still in the process of claiming asylum than had already been granted leave to remain (refugee status, Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) or Exceptional Leave to Remain (ELR)). The fact that questionnaires were delivered within working hours also limited the possibility of accessing people who were currently in employment. Further, by accessing people who were in colleges or using SRC services, we will have also been unable to access those refugees and asylum seekers who do not attend a college or visit the SRC. All questionnaires were delivered to people who were accessing refugee specific services.
2.2 Mainstreaming Equality - Women Refugees and Asylum seekers
The Scottish Executive's Equality Strategy promotes the concept of mainstreaming equality. This means that any future work undertaken should consider equality issues in design and practice. The Social Justice (Equalities) Research team is currently working on measures to facilitate social researchers at the Scottish Executive to mainstream equality considerations into the design and process of research. With this in mind, we felt it was important that measures to target and pick up the skills and qualifications of women refugees and asylum seekers were written into this project.
As previously referenced, the primary applicants of asylum seeking families who arrived in the country before July 2002 were entitled to apply for permission to work once they had been in the country for 6 months. Under this rule, dependants of the primary applicant were not allowed to work until the family had received a positive decision on its asylum claim. Because the principal applicant for asylum tends to be male, this has further implications for female partners. Women asylum seekers who arrived prior to July 2002 and are still awaiting a decision on their family's application, are not entitled to access work and/or training if they are not primary applicants. This means that whilst they wait for their partner's claim to be determined, their skills and qualifications continue to be unused and their possible training needs unmet. Further, men and women may use services in different ways depending on their individual situations. Had women not been purposefully targeted for inclusion in this Audit, it may have run a risk of missing out their skills, qualifications and aspirations.
The Mayor of London, in association with the Refugee Women's Association (RWA), recognised the specific issues faced by women refugees and asylum seekers in 2002 and commissioned a skills audit that was targeted at women refugees who had teaching, nursing and medical skills. Being mindful of the Scottish Executive's commitment to mainstreaming equality, and having been further alerted by this report to the need to target women for inclusion, it was decided at a very early stage in the project that measures should be taken to ensure that women refugees and asylum seekers were properly represented. By targeting women's drop-in centres and ensuring that women fieldworkers were available when appropriate, the Skills Audit managed to ensure that women constituted almost half of the participants.
2.3 Responses in the Field
The research team found that the delivery of the questionnaire was sometimes challenging as many of the respondents who did not have permission to work, became frustrated and upset when the researchers asked questions about work in the UK and hopes for the future.
In the more formal office settings, there was sometimes a concern that the questionnaire delivery was giving people the impression that they should be working and, as such, respondents indicated that they would like to work even if they had previously indicated otherwise. This tendency for the respondent to tell the researcher what they thought s/he wanted to hear about work will have impacted to some extent on the reliability of the responses. We would hope however, that this tendency would have a minimal impact on the data.
A few people responded angrily to being questioned about work in the UK or what kinds of work they would like to do. Their anger was based in their circumstances and they emphasised that they did not come to this country for work, they came because they were forced to flee their own country.
2.4 Research Team's Evaluation on Fieldwork Process
People responded to the research setting in differing ways. Responses differed according to whether questionnaires were delivered and facilitated by the researchers or whether they were self-completed. Although the questionnaires were usually completed more comprehensively when a researcher was giving guidance, respondent's comments were often freer in the self-completed questionnaires.
Some respondents appreciated the opportunity provided by the research project to share their experiences of work and education and reacted positively to the research. A few refugees and asylum seekers came to the SRC offices especially to complete the questionnaire, including a few who had travelled into Edinburgh from Fife. Others had agreed to make a special trip to the offices of the other organisations that assisted the research team.
Most respondents, however, responded neither positively or negatively to the research. The questionnaire often became part of an English class in the colleges, or part of another session in a Drop-In. Within the SRC offices in Glasgow, the field researchers felt that it was difficult to counter a sense of people feeling obliged to complete the questionnaire. They had usually come in to access other services and were asked whether they were happy to complete the questionnaire either whilst waiting to be seen by a caseworker or afterwards. This highlighted important ethical issues regarding consent in settings where there are external factors that can encourage a sense of obligation. These concerns were particularly prominent in the SRC offices in Glasgow.
It is impossible to get an accurate impression, but the field researchers felt that it was likely that some information was withheld by respondents, particularly with regards to working in the UK. Despite assurances of anonymity, the links to the SRC and the Scottish Executive inevitably gave an "official" face to the project, which did not easily foster trust and openness. In the context of a wider discourse both in political and media arenas concerning "bogus" asylum seekers and the confusions with economic migrants, this is perhaps unsurprising. The role of repeated questioning through the legal process of claiming asylum may also contribute to a general mistrust of questioning.
When conducting interviews through interpreters, there were instances when the interpreter attempted to guide responses from his or her own assumptions. This was particularly apparent in some cases when men were providing an interpretation service for women. In one instance, when the questionnaire had been conducted in English (but a few questions were then clarified by an interpreter), the research team found that the respondent chose to disclose less information through an interpreter.
- For further studies it may be worth exploring ways in which to access those people who have been in the country for longer and who have been given status in order to better understand the factors that have facilitated access to educational and employment opportunities.
- A longitudinal study may be useful in order to more clearly understand the barriers encountered by refugees in terms of getting into work after permission to work has been granted.
« Previous | Contents | Next »