The use of Immigration Removal Centers in the United Kingdom holds around thirty-two thousand foreign nationals every year. As such, one crucial characteristic of these detention centers is the fact that they have an open-ended nature with no upper limits on detention time. The consequence is a tide of uncertainty which bears a substantial impact on staff and employees. Also, there is no explicit support or justification for this open-ended policy (Bosworth 2014, p.3). The study done by Mary Bosworth aims to come up with an analysis and explanation of how this uncertainty impacts on the methodological approach of the study. The study concluded that power relations between institutions, researchers and staff impacts on methodology approach with ethnography as the choice. The thesis statement of this paper is that the ethnography methodological approach is the best technique for researching Immigration Removal Centers.
Methodology/ Research Design
For the study done by Bosworth, the best approach that sufficed as satisfactory due to the complexities surrounding the mode of data collection was an ethnography study. The methodology refers to the rationale for choosing a range of methods for collecting the data. As such, an ethnography is the study of the social interaction between people and groups of culture. The groups can either take the form of a community, society or organization (Reeves et al., 2013, p.3). The primary aim of conducting an ethnography is to provide impactful, all-inclusive understandings into people’s world perceptions and activities, as well as the characteristics of the place they consider as their residence.
The nature of ethnographers is not to hypothesize about the research or to give a test of some hypothesis. However, ethnography has an exploratory characteristic where the researcher has the responsibility of going out into the field to explore a cultural group or seek insight into particular social interactions. At the start of the study, the research questions are not necessarily laid out, but instead, this method employs the use of an inductive and iterative methodology. Also, as this procedure of studying the social phenomenon takes place, it results in the formulation of research questions.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The primary advantage accrued to the use of ethnography is the fact that it helps the researcher to record the behavior of the target audience as it happens. For Bosworth, the complexity of the study and low trust environment meant ethnography was the best. One disadvantage is that it can be a complicated process of choosing a representative sample. For this study, the shifting of the population, cultural and religious barriers made data collection challenges. To add on, the uncertainty of the detainees also had an emotional impact on the researchers.
Methods
The methods section refers to the techniques used in the process of data collection. For this study, the researcher used a variety of methods to collect data due to the complexity they encountered in the Immigration Removal Centers. The methods used for collecting data included the use of questionnaires, structured and unstructured interviews, focus groups and life histories.
Questionnaires are a set of questions that a participant completes on their own and is an effective way of gathering data and getting an overview of a phenomenon and prove cost-effective but also can give false data. Structured interviews involve an interviewer asking interviewee questions and is a method that allows for a researcher to come prepared and look professional but one needs interviewing skills also.
The researchers also employed the use of focus groups in the study which refers to a style of interviewing which involves several participants. Here, the questioning heavily relies on a narrowly defined topic with the researcher giving free rein on the conversation with the aim of constructing ordinary meaning (Giddens and Sutton 2010 p.51). One primary advantage of using this method is that it fosters an environment where participants comfortably articulate their views easily with each other than alone with a researcher. As such, it is a useful tool in low trust environments like an IRC. A disadvantage is a difficulty of handling the discussion as opposed to an individualized interview. The biographical assemblage of materials about a particular people refers to technique called life histories. An advantage is that they can provide insight other research methods cannot but they can become unreliable too.
Data Analysis
Data analysis for this study involved a variety of techniques which were not explicitly stated by the researcher. One of the identified ones is the use of documentation. As such, this process entails the saving and listing of all the collected data from field notes, interviews, and various contacts. It is a method that allows for the development and outlining of the analytic process and encourages the conceptualization and strategizing of the text (Schutt 2011, p.326).
The other method for data analysis involves the use of reflexivity. The premise here is that for one to have confidence in the conclusions inferred from the field research, then an account that details the honest and insightful interactions for the researcher with the participants as well as the problems encountered becomes paramount. For this study, Bosworth clearly explains the challenges she faced with the level of high distrust amongst detainees, the cultural and language barriers, the heterogeneity of the group and the emotional impact it had on their methodological approach. An advantage of this approach is that it enables others to analyses the results and reflect the philosophy of interpretivism that acts as a guide for most qualitative research.
Also, the researcher encountered some ethical issues when conducting the research. One involved the fact that as much as the principal reason for them doing the study was to safeguard the well-being of the detainees, it proved an ethical concern. Also, the uncertainty of the detainees meant that a crucial balance existed between them giving beneficial information while also checking this information does not impact negatively on them.
Conclusion
On the whole, the researcher used ethnography as the primary methodological approach for this study due to the aspect of the complexity surrounding the research. Of note were the low levels of distrust amongst the detainees and how it impacted on their research. Also, the fieldwork affected their work since no they did not have any ethical guidelines to turn to and guide them on when to pause the study or how their emotions would interfere with safe decisions in the fieldwork. The other one is the aspect of signing consent forms which proved a dilemma since some of the detainees became distrustful and some even did not want to provide names. Some of the method used include life histories, focus groups, questionnaires, and structured and unstructured interviews. A recommendation for this study is for the researcher to articulate the usefulness of this research clearly by clearly stating the purpose, detailing the design process and linking the interpretations to the research process.
References
Bosworth, M., 2014. Inside immigration detention centres: Uncoupling detention from a criminal justice imagination. British Politics and Policy at LSE.
Giddens, A. and Sutton, P.W. eds., 2010. Sociology: introductory readings. Polity.
Reeves, S., Peller, J., Goldman, J. and Kitto, S., 2013. Ethnography in qualitative educational research: AMEE Guide No. 80. Medical teacher, 35(8), pp.e1365-e1379.
Schutt, R.K., 2011. Investigating the social world: The process and practice of research. Pine Forge Press.
