lecture: discovering migration aspirations of tunisian sahelian youth

Pause

How strong are the migration factors of youth in the Sahel?

For reasons to leave Tunisia, I am sorry to say that education abroad was ranked as number 3, after career, money, but it was ahead of adventure,

/ LECTURE 10:2014 UNIV SOUSSE MIGRATION6 / 1

political or religious stability.

What factors push and pull youth to leave, or to not leave?

(Pause)

In the next 15 minutes I will share what recent research reveals, hoping to encourage you to be social scientists that document our world.

I thank The Centre for Maghreb Studies in Tunis, Dean Abdeljelil, Hassan Boubakri, Toufiq Bourguiba, Aymen Briki, and Rania Rannoucha for their support.My name is Jon Gresham and there is information on me in your conference guide on page: ___

(Pause)

I was on the road P14 west of Sfax. A petrol salesman, Maher, told me, "I just want out... of Tunisia!" He had a university degree. He had regular income. He had friends. He said that no one was pushing him out, and nothing specific was pulling him out.

Meeting him made me excited to learn from many Tunisians their opinions on geographic migration. Everyone I meet has a different opinion, a different family culture, and a different view of life. These differences create "variance" in society and it is very interesting to study.

"The one thing I think you most need to know about this research project is that science can be fun. I want you to feel that you can explore your world, finding interesting facts to enrich your own academic and personal life and make a contribution to the body of scientific knowledge.

"Please consider this flow of research.(Slide of: 1. Curiosity > Questions

2. Plan

3. Data > Meanings

4. Interpret


5. Test > Evaluate

6. Act

Please write your questions down now for the discussion time later, but please focus on the questions that may be of interest to all of us. I will be happy to have coffee with you at any time to discuss anything. I live here in Sousse.

II. Need:

What, then, are the forces that push or pull migration for youth in the Sahel?

Why did 24,000 Tunisians risk the burning sea during the first six months of 2011?

Was it only for money?

Which forces of pushing or pulling do you think are strongest? Which are weaker?

How do those forces match with studies of push-pull factors in other times and places?


(Pause)

Theoretically, my background in migration quantitative research which led me into this "Grounded Theory" approach. In Grounded Theory, you begin with a theoretical framework, then you collect and analyze data, and extract from the data a new perspective to test against the previous construct. In this session, I will address only the data collection and analysis phases.

I assumed that the primary motivators for those who would migrate would be the pull factor of money in Europe and the push factor of having no money and having no work.

(Graphic of those push-pull factors)

If there are thousands of unhappy people, who take such big risks, what can you learn from them?

Why are some towns and families more entrepreneurial than others?


How is M'Saken different from Sousse?Inside of M'Saken, why are some families creating new businesses and new jobs, while other families are not?

Are you at all curious?

=============Some results from this work will be available later on my Facebook:

Facebook.com/TunisMigration

I assume that some of you will be on your phones and tablets now, so you can visit my page while you are listening.

First, how does science work?

Science attempts to proceed from observable facts to testable explanations for those facts.

Simple, yes?

What was our research process?(Slide of steps) 1. Curious > Questions 2. How to find answers (Plan) 3. Data > Meanings 4. Interpret 5. Test > Evaluate


6. Act ============

In 2011, I was very Curious about the careers and future plans of those I met in Sousse. I met some who were planning to leave for Europe, and others who returned from Europe. I was curious about why exactly they wanted to leave so soon after making a revolution.

Their stories caused Questions to come to my mind:

What is different between those who wanted to leave and those who did not? Emotions? Logic?

My previous research in Europe gave me some assumptions, some questions, and some answers.

To learn as much as possible from those who had done similar research in Tunisia, I first looked in the literature.

(Slide of Ibn Khaldun postage stamp)

One of the earliest was that Ibn Khaldoun (1300sAD) and his 'ilm al-'umran, the science of culture. He said that laws of a society can be discovered by observation and reason.

Other scientists, maybe not yet as famous, included:

Hassan Boubakri


Toufiq Bourghiba

Emmanuel Mung

Larry Michelak, Labor migration of Tunisians

Kathleen Newland, Circular Migration includes both source and destination

countries, and the migrants themselves, all of whom can gain from migration

There are many unanswered questions about how people change. I invite you also to help ask questions and find answers.---------------------------------

Since, the Population of youth in the metropolitan area of Sousse was about 200,000, only a Sample of those could be reached. So, the first step was to interview at least 200 people between the ages of 16 and 30.

Before doing any interviews, we needed a temporary research framework with the essential thing to answer. Then, a list of all the possible questions that would be interesting to answer. Then we started to look for young people who would help me to meet and interview others. Our first set of questions was tested on 50 people. Some questions were deleted and others were added. And then we could begin the real project.

=============Collecting Data

Our short surveys were easily completed in a cafe or in a classroom or by telephone or in a Facebook chat.


Until now, 850 youth in the Sousse and Kairouan governorates completed surveys. All questions fit onto two sides of a single sheet of paper, and we offered questions in English, French and Arabic. Eventually, the English and French versions were omitted to allow room for more questions.

We also tested online internet-based surveys in all three languages.

With initial random encounters and then friend-of-friend respondents,

people we met would introduce us to others to interview, or would help us

to collect surveys from friends. I was amazed to see how happy our

contacts were to give their opinions and stories and introduce us to other

friends.

In addition to the quantitative-based surveys, we also collected stories on

migration. These were very helpful as we developed the follow-on surveys

to compare migrant and non-migrant families.

Maybe you have made the journey yourself and you know about leaving Tunisia for a better life somewhere else. In that case, I would like to hear your own story.

Maybe neither you nor any of your friends would even think of ever leaving Tunisia or even the Sahel. Your opinions would also be interesting to me.

IV. Visualization:

Data and Analysis


(853) surveys were collected until now, mostly in Central Tunisia and the Sahel.

There were 35 items on earlier surveys. Online and later versions of surveys had many more, including items on media use.

To find out what mysteries were hidden in the answers, here is the path of analysis that I used.

How do we get from Data to Meanings from the Data?

1. Clean the Data.

Does it look right? Were there different spellings of the same town?

2. Sort the Data. Who were the respondents? Describe them. What are their differences?

Birthplace, age, gender, education, language skills?

How significant were the push-pull factors?

Can I summarize and generalize on the basis of main characteristics?

Average (Mean)? Most Common (Median)?


The assumption was that certain demographic factors would be strongly

correlated to migration opinions.

Do some background items give different patterns of responses to the

other questions?

My conjecture, based on stories told but not in hard data analyzed, is that the young people who took this survey expressed less commitment to group factors (family, religion, politics) than they did to their own personal ambitions (career, money, education, adventure). Emotion in these elements may more important than logic in making significant decisions. This is worth a look.

See, we can divide this elements into individual and group: career and jobs and education and adventure seem to fit into individual self-advancement or autonomous decision-making while politics, religion and family can go into group decision-making systems.

If some of you have interest or skill in the psycho-sociological aspects of decision-making, please contact me about another survey I have running looking at differences between clans that have considerable experience in circular migration and with those clans that do not.

In any case, research can give us very interesting perspectives on how patterns of answers reveal more than individual answers.

Here are a few other findings from the research that you may be curious about.

Age: 35% were 20-24; 50% were 24-30

Sex 53% Male, 44% Female, 3% not recorded.

Years Education: 19% were 13 years; 62% were >13 years

I will let you look at slides of a few interesting summaries.


After we summarize individual responses into averages, we

Compare Answers to ask:

Are there some questions that seem to be totally unimportant and without research merit at this time?

Actually, yes. Birthplace of the mother did not seem to be related consistently to any other item on the survey.

By dropping some questions, we could make more room for questions about media use and posting habits on social media.

Now, the most-exciting part of the research--Comparing Groups with each other.

Do Males express different opinions than do Females?

Does Birthplace make a difference?

Does Education?


The answer in this case is that sometimes there is a group difference and sometimes not. For example, Years of Education does not seem to have a large correlation with the use of Facebook!

4. Extract. You have talked to a lot of people, you have collected a lot of surveys, you have cleaned the data and you have looked for meaning. Now what?

You compare what you found with what you wanted to learn, and with scientific literature.

5. Report. You share what you found to stimulate readers to learn from you and then go on to change the world!

Thank you very much, colleagues and panel and audience.

Please! Be curious, ask questions, help document this fast-changing environment in Tunisia.

Maybe we have time for one question?

Contact me via Facebook if I can help you with your own research.

Facebook.com/TunisMigration

http://Facebook.com/TunisMigration


Check out the hilarious presentation about research at www.gapminder.com

http://www.gapminder.com

lecture: discovering migration aspirations of tunisian sahelian youth

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