Migration Processes in Central and Eastern Europe - Multiple Choices

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Normative and Methodological Discussion of Migration and Integration
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78
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Foreigners in the
Light of Research:
Analysing
Selected Studies
about Foreigners
in the Czech
Republic 1
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Petra Klvačová
Aresearcher can do many things in regards to
foreigners: make their voice louder, present their
way of life, explore and explain similarities and
differences, compare their culture and lives with
that of the host society and reproduce their experiences
and opinions. This is especially important when the “voice
of foreigners” is disregarded within mainstream society.
This has been proven to be the case by, for example, the
conclusions of analyses focused on the media coverage of
foreigners (Klvačová and Bitrich, 2003). In this paper, I will
try to show that lucidity is extremely important in the efforts
of researchers who study foreigners. It must be made clear
how they reach their conclusions and which sources of
information and analytical methods they use to back their
assertions. I will also try to illustrate the possible causes of
the problem of the “invisible researcher”. This short paper
wishes to gain insight into the state of qualitative research
on migrants in the Czech Republic, however, it does not
intend to give a complete picture rather it focuses on
deficiencies in selected texts.
STUDIES SUBJECTED TO ANALYSIS
For this paper, I analysed ten studies dealing with
foreigners. All of the studies are at least partially based on
ethnographic research – the study of a selected community
utilising non-standardised interviews and participant observation.
The analysed texts appeared in Integration of
Foreigners, an extensive anthology commissioned by the
Czech government 2 (Uherek, 2003c). When analysing the
texts, I focused on a number of features. I was interested
in the methodological approaches applied by researchers to
answer the chosen research questions. In addition, I was
interested in the ways in which the authors presented
their findings and in the degree to which the voice of the
subjects of the research (i.e. foreigners) could be 'heard'
in the findings. I also evaluated the persuasiveness and/or
credibility of the authors' conclusions.
METHODOLOGY
All of the analysed texts are based on field
research, which means that the respective authors met with
members of the selected groups, observed and interviewed
them. However, the texts do not clarify the nature of the
interaction between the researcher and the respondents. The
way(s) that the interviews were conducted and recorded, and
how the respondents reacted to questions are not made
clear. Readers are not made aware of what the researcher's
relationship is to the examined environment, how the
researcher penetrated the environment, or how he or she
gained trust, etc. Above all, readers have no idea about the
methods used by the authors to analyse and interpret the
data. The texts simply lack description of and reflection on
the methodological approach that was implemented. The
individual texts differ from one another in this respect, some
offer limited insight but others are completely devoid of a
section explaining the methodology or at least the data collection
and analysis techniques that were implemented
(Otčenášek, 2003a, b and c). In these cases, we may only
infer that they are based on field research because the word
“respondent” appears in the text several times or because
the appendix contains a table with statistical data about the
respondents. The text dealing with migrants from Bosnia
and Herzegovina (Uherek, 2003a) employs a mere footnote
at the end to let us know that the author collected empirical
data on research trips between 1996 and 2001. Other studies
contain only the briefest description of methodology. The following
is an explanation of methodology in a study about the
integration of Arabs in selected Czech cities:
The research has been conducted using unstructured
interviews, mostly in Prague but also in Plzeň and
Liberec. The respondents were chiefly males aged
twenty-seven to forty, with twenty percent of the
respondents being aged between fifty and sixty.
The majority came from Iraq and Syria, while the
minority were from Palestine, Yemen, Libya and
Egypt. Just two people (a married couple) had
a secondary school degree, while the rest were
university graduates or students. The interviews were
conducted in Czech, it being the case that all of the
respondents speak it very well
(Hošková, 2003, author's translation).
Migration Processes in Central and Eastern Europe: Unpacking the Diversity