Interviewing New Zealand former refugees about employment : data gathering challenges and successes when working with a marginalized and traumatized minority /
From this case study, the readers will learn about our experiences of interviewing former refugees, a traumatized and marginalized minority in New Zealand. We focused on former refugees' employment experiences and outline our practices of recruiting them for focus groups and interviews and the...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
London :
SAGE Publications Ltd,
2025.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | From this case study, the readers will learn about our experiences of interviewing former refugees, a traumatized and marginalized minority in New Zealand. We focused on former refugees' employment experiences and outline our practices of recruiting them for focus groups and interviews and the ways we negotiated and managed the flow of discussion via the use of interpreters. Our learnings show that direct phone calls did not gain trust or consent or provide safety and security for the respondents. By contrast, face-to-face focus group meetings and a mutual purpose created a positive supportive environment for the respondents. We also encouraged storytelling and facilitated separate discussions by having males and females for both youth and adult respondents. Our experience emphasised that cultural and ethnic differences need to be incorporated into the research design. Yet language presented a major challenge at all stages of the data-gathering process, including translation and transcribing. When building the respondents' confidence to share their stories, introducing priming sparingly can enhance the data-gathering. We found that empathy increased when using multilingual former refugees and migrants as facilitators and interpreters. However, as we used only audio recording, it was difficult to distinguish the stories of the respondents from those of the interpreter. Our learnings reflect that training is needed for all those working with the respondents, particularly on the mutual purpose of the project, how to adapt to the needs and understandings of the respondents, and when it is appropriate to use priming. Aligning with the classic grounded theory, our learnings also reaffirm that researchers need to carefully select respondents to gain diverse perspectives. Further, researchers need to be aware of the environment in which they are working and to be flexible to manage the circumstances they face. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource : illustrations |
| ISBN: | 9781036214296 103621429X |