Collecting qualitative data during the Covid-19 pandemic: Reflections from the field

Ndiweteko Jennifer Nghishitende

PhD student

Living with the Consequences of Slavery Cluster

Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull.

N.J.Nghishitende-2020@hull.ac.uk

My research aims to understand women’s journeys after experiencing ‘modern slavery’ in the UK. Though ‘modern slavery’ is understood as an umbrella term encompassing various forms of exploitation, including human trafficking, slavery, servitude, and forced or compulsory labour, the term is highly contested, and so in my writing, I have decided to place inverted commas around it.

In October 2021, I began collecting data through semi-structured interviews with women affected by ‘modern slavery’ and practitioners working in the field across the UK. Because there were still high levels of Covid-19 infection, I offered the women I interviewed the choice to talk online or in person. In this blog, I will share some reflections on my experiences of conducting interviews online, and their benefits and drawbacks. The names of the women involved have been changed.

Out of the nineteen women I interviewed, only five decided to be interviewed in person, while fourteen chose Zoom. As soon as I realised that online interviews were the preferred method, I began asking the women why they had chosen to meet on Zoom rather than in person.

Zoom has a reputation as a ‘subtly dehumanising technology’ with the potential to undermine the trust that is necessary to building rapport. However, in general I did not find it difficult to warm to the women, especially when they learned that I am a mother – a good number of my interviewees were mothers.

When asked why they had chosen Zoom, the first prominent reason the women gave for preferring it was the ability to express themselves freely. Ginger said:

It was more convenient, and I could be free to speak my mind, in my own space where I know that no one can hear me. I felt free to speak with you and also be vulnerable in my telling you of everything that happened.

Naomi highlighted a potentially overlooked aspect – the problem of anxiety.

I prefer zoom. No travelling and it depends on the area anyway where I’m going. I’m a very very quiet person on a normal day so when I’m around people that I don’t know or I’m not used to I’m very very uncomfortable. I have anxiety so I’m always conscious when I’m outside.

When participants in such intimate research feel safe to speak, the interview process becomes much easier for both parties and better for collecting quality data. Remote interviews may then be the solution for those who have access to them and consent to use them.

Some women also informed me that the screen provided an essential emotional shield. Selma, for instance, said she would not say she particularly preferred either online or face-to-face interviews. However, in hindsight, she said, ‘it was better seeing me upset over the cam than physically.’

Other women also saw online discussions as less embarrassing and raised other issues related to the screen image. Paula had this to say:

online is fine but the travel … is only because my leg is bad, I think for me and that the things probably we discussed I will find it harder to discuss face-to-face because you wouldn’t want to break down and online kind of like allows me to speak. That’s my own personal opinion. To speak quite bluntly about a lot of things let’s say if we were sitting face-to-face I would start watching your body language and say maybe I’m making her uncomfortable maybe I’m not you know those kinds of things.

Most women indicated that because they could not see most of my body, they could not see my body language. This was important because sometimes body language can act as a disincentive. Similar to Paula, Ruby said:

No hassle of travelling and to be frank, I would not be as open to speaking with you as I am now. I would have been looking at your body language to see if I am making you uncomfortable and then decide based on that whether or not I should reveal more.

As the researcher, I also found distance in the screen as I fought back tears at several points during the interview. But at the same time, I felt powerless. Though I appreciate that when some women become emotional, they want to be on their own to deal with this, in person, I could have offered a tissue or a drink of water.

At the same time, the distance provided by the screen can be a problem. Travelling away from an interview’s location can help the interviewer deal with the emotions they accumulated from the interview by putting a physical distance between themselves and its location. However, this was not possible with Zoom. You can press a button or close your laptop once you say goodbye, but the interview stays with you. It lingers.

In addition, I was at a disadvantage in not seeing much body language. Although I could note facial expressions, long pauses, laughter, tears, and sighs, I could not see what the women were doing with their hands and found it hard to notice when they shifted in their seats. Without these important non-verbal cues, I found it difficult to assess their level of discomfort and deliver my duty of care towards them.

In one case, all body language, including facial expressions, was eliminated. I had given all the women the option to keep their camera off during the interview, but fortunately, only one woman decided to do this. Nonetheless, her ability to see me while I could not see her was an interesting experience. Out of curiosity, I asked her at the end why she did not feel comfortable having her camera on; she said, ‘I don’t know you’, which was fair enough.

For those who chose Zoom, the convenience of an online interview was a key factor, and this has been confirmed by other studies. Tiwa indicated that ‘it’s only because of my busy schedule. I can only afford to do Zoom at the moment, which made the interview faster rather than waiting for a day that I’ll be free’. Others pointed out that they were glad that they did not have to travel to meet me, and spending less was also cited, even though I had informed them that I would be responsible for any costs they would incur. I believe this revealed some empathy for my research costs. I have to say here that I also appreciated the convenience that came with online interviews for me, which saved me time and money. Most importantly, I could complete my research diary immediately after the interview while the conversation was still fresh in my mind.

It was interesting that safety, including contracting Covid-19, was the least cited reason. Only one woman glossed over the issue. One other mentioned safety and said: ‘You stay in Hull, will it be easy for you and besides, I haven’t met you before so for safety reasons as well.’

It is, however, also important to note that not everyone prefers Zoom, as Naita’s response reveals:

I’m not sure… I would have liked to meet face-to-face, but it was convenient that I could fit the zoom meeting into my schedule also. So, I normally like to meet face-to-face, but it all depends how busy I am.

Despite slight connectivity problems with one or two interviews, my experience of Zoom interviewing overall has been positive. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that there are some drawbacks and while online interviews seem promising and will probably gain more prominence moving forward, we should keep in mind the inequalities that Covid-19 has laid bare across the world, at individual and government levels. Communities with little or no access to computer technology will, in this online world, be excluded from research. This should remind us that when able to do so, the physical field is still the best place to be, even if it means spending more hours travelling and spending more money to hold interviews to ensure that no one is left out.

As researchers, whenever possible, may we always choose inclusion over convenience. Let us hike deserts, if we must, to reach the rarely researched, technologically out of reach communities. Photo by author.

Ethical considerations in child migration and exploitation research

Jasmine Holding Brown

‘Falling Through the Net’ PhD Research Cluster

Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull

j.holding-brown-2019@hull.ac.uk

Saphia Fleury

‘Falling Through the Net’ PhD Research Cluster

Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull

s.fleury-2019@hull.ac.uk

James Baker

‘Falling Through the Net’ PhD Research Cluster

Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull

j.baker-2019@hull.ac.uk

As we begin our second year, and prepare to dive into the primary sources for our research, we take a step back together to consider the ethical issues raised by our research on child migration and exploitation.

Saphia

My research involves interviewing adults who were evacuated to England following volcanic eruptions on Montserrat in the 1990s. These former child evacuees may have faced deeply traumatic experiences, including the destruction of their homes and communities and the deaths of people close to them. Moreover, relocation itself can be a traumatic process, so the semi-structured interviews that I plan to undertake may raise very sensitive issues, which can lead to re-traumatisation.

With this in mind, I wanted to equip myself with the tools to support my participants in case the interview process raised difficult memories. I did this in two ways.

Firstly, I undertook training from ECPAT UK on interviewing child migrants. Although my participants are no longer children, the training focused on conducting interviews with refugees and asylum-seekers and covering traumatic subject-matter, so contained useful pointers on how to prepare the interview space, address power imbalances between the interviewer and participant, and generally make the interviewee feel at ease. It introduced the Cognitive Interview Method, which allows the interviewee to hold images in their mind for long enough to recount a full and accurate history to the interviewer, while avoiding re-traumatisation. The training is available for free online.

My second strategy for supporting my participants was to produce a list of mental health support services, most of which are free to access. The NHS website contains a list of all the helplines and support services available. I chose the ones likely to be of most relevance to my participants and attached it to my Informed Consent Form.

Of course, interviewees have the right to withdraw from the study at any time and their experiences will be pseudonymised to avoid them being identified from my research. While I cannot exclude all possibility that my participants may find the interview process difficult, these methods should lessen that risk to an acceptable level.

Jasmine

My research involves accessing archive materials relating to the welfare of children sent from Britain to live in Canada on Vancouver Island, and Indigenous children forced to attend residential schools on the same island between 1920 and 1960.

Using child welfare records as ‘historical’ sources, particularly when they relate to living persons, raises significant data protection concerns. As a result there are legal restrictions under which such records are held, and, access granted. In addition, the use of pseudonyms and removal of all identifying details will ensure that these individuals remain anonymous and their formative experiences confidential.

Historically, research concerning Indigenous peoples has often hurt more than it has helped Indigenous communities. Consequently, it is important to reflect upon the positioning of the research and the researcher. As a non-Indigenous person, who did not grow up in Canada, it is crucial that I consider this ‘outsider’ perspective. The Canadian Tri-Council Policy on ‘Research Involving the First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples’ is an important guide. In addition, there are numerous useful resources created by Indigenous groups, scholars and activists that can help inform more ethically sound practices. This ‘Indigenous Perspectives Guide’, produced for educational purposes is a good starting point for those unfamiliar with Indigenous history.

Western academics, and perhaps anthropologists in particular, continue to reckon with the racist, colonial elements of their heritage: the violence committed in the name of research; the enduring relevance of racism; and the ‘scientific racism’ that was extremely prominent in the context of this study. Records of one of Vancouver Island’s residential schools suggest that children were underfed, given illegal and untested food supplements and denied dental treatment as the subjects of government malnutrition experiments. It is critical then, that this research engages with the origins and legacies of these practices and the philosophies that informed them, research that was not just unethical but inhumane.

James

My research topic concerns the forced emigration of British children to Australia during the mid-twentieth century. I am currently investigating how the education, heritage and museum sectors have preserved the memory of the child migrant experience, while focusing on how child migrants themselves have defined this narrative and the extent to which these migrations are viewed as being a part of British history.

Many British children who were raised on farm schools were subject to abuse and exploitation throughout their childhoods. They grew up in unfamiliar surroundings thousands of miles from home, and it wasn’t until the 1980s and 1990s that the British public became aware of the suffering that was inflicted upon former child migrants. While it is my duty as a researcher to offer these former child migrants a voice and to galvanise the reconciliation process, any research must be undertaken with caution.

During my research, I intend to offer former child migrants and those who have championed the child migrant cause the chance to be interviewed about their experiences. It is not my intention to rigorously investigate the experience of growing up in Australian farm schools, but instead to look at whether the voices of former child migrants have been fully listened to in the years that have followed and the challenges that lie ahead in ongoing justice campaigns. While I do not seek to create emotional discomfort, this subject matter can prove traumatic for interviewees.

Research protocols for interviews must be strictly adhered to. Interviewees must be provided with consent documentation which includes the right to withdraw participation, to have interviews paused or terminated altogether, and to understand how any data will be used. As the principal investigator, I need to complete a full risk assessment and obtain ethical approval before conducting interviews, as well as to carefully consider the questions I intend to ask. This will not necessarily guarantee the emotional wellbeing of research participants, but it will ensure that the emotional wellbeing of my participants is the top priority of my primary research.

As we move into the next stages of our research, we must continually reflect on the practical application of our ethical values, ensuring that the wellbeing of our subjects, whether our research addresses them directly or indirectly, always takes precedence.

Image source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/anonymous-person-with-binoculars-looking-through-stacked-books-3769697/

Summary of author’s recent publications

Dr Alicia Kidd

Postdoctoral Researcher

Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull

alicia.kidd@hull.ac.uk

Today Alicia Kidd, postdoctoral researcher at the Wilberforce Institute, provides a summary of two of her recent chapters on human trafficking.

Both can be found in Julia Muraszkiewicz, Toby Fenton and Hayley Watson, eds, Human Trafficking in Conflict: Context, Causes and the Military (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), at https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9783030408374

‘Unavoidable Exploitation? Conflict, Agency and Human Trafficking’

In this first chapter, I look at those who find themselves caught up in human trafficking and conflict. Both are topics that have received significant attention within the Social Sciences. However, there is little literature that looks explicitly at the intersections between the two, or that considers if – and how – conflict might impact a person’s risk of being trafficked. What does exist focuses predominantly on child soldiers and post-conflict zones.

As a result I begin with a summary of the literature surrounding child soldiers. It concentrates on how child soldiers fit the definition of being victims of human trafficking, the ways that child soldiers are recruited, their experiences whilst attached to an armed force or group, and how their experiences continue to affect them long after they leave, or after the conflict ends.

My focus then turns to post-conflict zones and how the long-lasting effects of conflict can continue to put people at risk of trafficking even after the conflict has ended. The existing literature highlights a range of issues leading to human trafficking in post-conflict situations including economic and political restructuring, corruption and poverty, as well as the vulnerabilities faced by refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and children; these topics are all discussed.

Whilst this chapter summarises current knowledge of the links between conflict and human trafficking, I build upon this knowledge by introducing the findings gathered from in-depth face-to-face interviews with individuals who have fled conflict to the UK. These findings provide personal insights into experiences of how conflict can increase a person’s vulnerability to becoming a victim of human trafficking.

Understandings of human trafficking often revert to an assumption that all agency must have been removed from the victim. While some victims of trafficking have no agency in the lead up to their trafficking experience, others have some level of choice in the decisions that lead towards their exploitation. Collating the existing literature and the findings from the interviews, I argue in this chapter that conflict impacts a person’s agency to the extent that it increases a person’s risk of being trafficked. Conflict restricts the choices available to a person, leaving them to choose between limited options which are commonly all imbued with risk. But while their choices may all be undesirable, people do exercise agency within the narrow range of options available to them, and some of these choices will lead to exploitation. As such, I argue that victimhood and agency should not be understood as a binary, but on a spectrum.

‘How Definitions of ‘Child Soldiers’ Exclude Girls from Demobilisation Efforts’ (with Dr Ally Dunhill)

The definition ‘child soldier’ is commonly understood to refer to any person under 18 used in any capacity by armed forces or groups; this includes armed combatants, but also those in ancillary roles such as cooks, ‘wives’ and guards. Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes exist to encourage soldiers to give up their weapons, to take them out of service, and to resettle them into civilian society. Such programmes aim to create stability, re-establish security and create the conditions needed for peace. However, while DDR programmes claim to be aimed at everyone involved in armed forces or armed groups, regardless of their role, in practice, they often use much narrower definitions for child soldiers, focusing predominantly on those who carry a weapon; this serves to exclude many roles typically undertaken by girls.

In this chapter, co-written with Ally Dunhill, we examine the remit and outcomes of DDR programmes to understand why they differentiate between the gendered experiences of child soldiers. Using examples of these programmes, we analyse how children are identified and recruited into such initiatives. We contemplate whether children’s experiences as being part of armed forces (belonging to a state) and armed groups (not under the clear control of a state authority) are adequately considered, and whether the gendered treatment in these programmes is conducive to long term recovery and reintegration into civilian communities. We explore how girls are often overlooked in definitions of child soldiers and highlight the harmful consequences of this. We then assess how the outcomes of the programmes impact the futures of those both included and excluded in the remit of the programmes.

We find that in failing to recognise girls as victims in these situations, DDR programmes are leaving them in precarious situations whereby they have left a trafficking situation only to find themselves in a vulnerable position, facing a lack of support and a high risk of re-exploitation. Building on existing literature on female child soldiers, this chapter highlights the need for further research and concludes with recommendations for generating more effective and inclusive efforts to support female children associated with armed forces or armed groups.