Researching the Refugee and Asylum Communities
February 2004
The Ethnic Researchers Network held their quarterly meeting in February 2004 at the offices of the COI. The presentation was delivered
by Kirsteen Tait from ICAR (Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees
in the UK). Based at Kings College London, ICAR aim to be an authoritative
source of information about asylum and refugee communities.
Kirsteen shared her knowledge and experience and summarised some of
the main academic thinking on this topic in recent years, highlighting
methodological and content-related challenges for researchers, respondents,
clients and, of course, the media. Some of the outcomes of these include:
re-assessing our perceptions of who asylum seekers and refugees are;
forging better relationships with journalists; working with the Home
Office in helping to create greater understanding and publish information
more readily.
Questions and answers from the meeting
 What can
ICAR do to stop people reinventing the wheel in terms of researching
asylum seekers and refugee communities? Can you share information on
what you know more widely?
 When people approach
ICAR for such information, we scope the landscape to provide them with
an idea of what research and data gathering has already been done. ICAR
currently responds to such queries informally and it does take a few
days - so the organisation will have to start thinking about charging
in order to continue this labour-intensive form of information sharing.
Having said that, ICAR's website (www.icar.org.uk)
allows some very extensive searching of its databases and there will
soon be launched a new service on the website called "Ask
ICAR" which will be aimed at answering questions about
asylum seekers and refugee communities. The new service will be aimed
very much at the public and the media, as ICAR is well known in the
sector (eg refugee agencies).
An observation
really. A great number of asylum seekers I have worked with are young
intelligent men who do not conform to the stereotype people have of
them.
We need to deliver
information to local people about asylum seekers and refugee communities
which is fair and accurate. Similarly, we need to convey to some members
of asylum seekers and refugee communities that they cannot continue
to behave in the way they did in their country of origin. For example,
it is not acceptable to go up to children and squeeze their cheeks hard,
even though that may be intended as friendly.
Does being
so rigorous about methodology not cause some people, like journalists,
to get validation of facts and data from other sources because you may
say it might not be good enough?
We are trying to
forge a better relationship with journalists by responding as fully
as we can in their timescales. It is difficult because they are tempted
to go to other organisations such as Migration Watch for an answer if
we say we don't have anything robust enough to give them. We try hard
to give people the best available data.
An observation.
There must be a lot of research and data out there which is not public
or published because it is commercial in confidence or because it simply
takes to long for it to come out.
We put a lot of
pressure on the Home Office, which is a major commissioner of research
into asylum seekers and refugee communities, to publish information.
We are constantly campaigning for them to publish earlier. We try to
put all the research we know about on a research resources database
and share that with everyone. If there is anything we can add, let us
know.
What can
we do to equip researchers to be more responsible in conducting interviews
with people who may have been through fairly traumatic experiences?
Surely we have a responsibility to deal with the fact we may be asking
them to talk about sensitive issues.
One thing is to
use trusted intermediaries to advise, train and be on hand when setting
up and conducting the research. Another thing is to use refugees and
asylum seekers as the interviewers as they understand the issues better.
One needs to give sufficient thought and care about how you interview
someone, where and in what context. Be sensitive, plan around the event
and pre-empt situations that may come up. Commissioners need to take
some responsibility for the research and take into account what the
respondents may need afterwards. Interviewers often feel they want to
give back, say in the form of advice or information on services etc.
Does ICAR
focus solely on researching asylum seekers and refugee communities or
do they often form part of a wider sample?
ICAR is mainly concerned
with asylum seekers and refugee communities in the UK. We rarely conduct
large comparative studies. Sometimes studies make comparison with the
situation of certain groups outside the UK and sometimes studies may
involve examining the views of established black and minority ethnic
groups as a comparator. We recently did this for the GLA.
LSCs have gathered information on the skills and training needs of
asylum seekers and refugee communities and they usually do this as part
of a skills audit on the wider community.
Are you happy
with using the terms "asylum seekers" and "refugees"?
In the past asylum
seeker was fine as it described someone's legal status but it has some
very negative connotations now because it has been mixed up with terms
like "illegal immigrant" and "bogus asylum seeker".
The term is not neutral any more and probably should be changed to something
else.
Similarly, "refugee" used to be a noble word that had associations
with freedom fighting or heroism. But you ask refugees themselves and
they tend not to use the term except when they come into contact with
housing offices because refugee status confers certain rights. Now the
term "refugee" is confused with "illegal immigrant".
How do you
feel about doing quantitative research among these communities? Is it
too expensive, too risky, too inexact?
I am aware that
there was a quantitative study conducted by a research agency and the
methodology as they described it at a conference did not sound very
robust. The Home Office is thinking of commissioning a longitudinal
quantitative study of asylum seekers and refugee communities as they
want some baseline data and track it. I don't know much else about where
that is at the moment.
The CAB approach is quite good. They log issues as they arise so that
they have an idea of the number of times they occur and who they are
raised by. That's a very effective way of collecting social policy data.
Further information
ICAR website: www.icar.org.uk:
access the refugee research database called "refdata"; coming
soon "Ask ICAR" - an interactive Q&A facility.
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