Thursday, April 20, 2023 1The impact of migrant workers on labour marketsESRC Seminar,

Sheffield Hallam University February 2011

The Benefits and Limitations of Community Based Research With Migrant Workers

Dr Geraldine Lee-Treweek

Interdisciplinary Studies

Manchester Metropolitan University (Cheshire)

g.leetreweek@mmu.ac.uk

0161 2472000

Key Features of Community Based Research Approaches• encourage active participation of communities• Varying grades of research involvement• Serving a community’s interests, ‘whose side are you

on?’ (Becker 1978)• engagement and impact - key drivers for growth in

interest in CBR, PAR approaches.• Access to funding – more diverse funders, based on

partnership working

Thursday, April 20, 2023 The Impact of migrant workers on labour marketsESRC Seminar

Sheffield Hallam University

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Key Features of Community Based Research Approaches (Continued)

• Community capacity building, research, networks, understandings, reflexivity but also solutions

• Social change and social activism

• Qualitative and quantitative

Framing Factors in HE research

• “Stakeholder University”

• Drive for research funding

• ImpactThursday, April 20, 2023 The Impact of migrant workers on labour markets

ESRC SeminarSheffield Hallam University, Feb 2011

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Thursday, April 20, 2023 The impact of migrant workers on labour markets,ESRC seminar, Sheffield Hallam University

February 2011

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Community Based Research in Crewe• Fertile place for study of migration

• Hefce funding to examine social regeneration

• Background and skills of Uni researchers

• Local competencies, co-researchers

• Research agenda – shifted to being provided by community themselves

• Racism at work, problems within and between migrant groups, gender and work.

Benefits:• Being able to access the so-called ‘hard to reach’• Ownership = engagement• Getting inside the traditional accounts, • Use of co-researchers benefits participants• Frees data collection from usual time/uni constraints.• Similar strengths to ethnographic inquiry

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Interconnections

• Work and community life

• The ‘community’ is key to choices about work, knowledge of local labour market and to aspirations

• Likewise, employers have understandings of communities

• Some aspects of work can be rooted in community differentiation/s

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Benefits, Continued• Facilitates trust relationships where trust has often

broken down, there is social exclusion and generally liminal status of the study group

• E.g. Examining forms of forced labour, secretive behaviour (anabolic steroid and illegal drug use), health and safety breaches at work, racism and sexism at work

• Working with a mandate (of some form).

• Sustainable research - Networking and Collaborative potential

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Limitations:

• Mandate – can be a double-edged sword

• Who are ‘the community’, inclusion and exclusions

• Getting tangled up in red tape: obstacles to working with communities due to stakeholders

• Logistics – living the work and risk assessment/negotiation

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Limitations, continued

• Burn-out of staff – translators, researchers who are ‘of’ the community

• “Atlas Effect” (DiPaolo and Lee-Treweek 2004 – paper available from the authors

• Risk to full time researchers –

• Community approaches as non-work/activism

• red listing

• Expectations and delivery of outcomes

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Final Points• Community based research - Is it worth it?

• Changing status

• Growing importance of impact, voice, engagement

• Personal satisfaction

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