The Somali community in the UK: What we know and how we ... - ICAR

there may be the concern that personal details
will filter out into the community. A ‘stranger’ is
sometimes safer.
Both Somali and other researchers also have
to face resistance on another front. While it is
reiterated that more research is needed as so
little is known about the community, Somalis,
especially in London, themselves feel preyed upon
and overresearched. When the investigation is
academic, it is seen as bringing little advantage to
the community. When policy-based, Somalis are
still wary. Too often they have spent time divulging
information said to assist them, but have seen no
practical outcome at all. They have lost patience
with the explanation that funders need preliminary
research - RCOs, often approached in investigation,
want service provision, not more summaries of
what they already know. A Somali interviewer
may ameliorate this problem but not necessarily
(according to reports) solve it.
Receptivity to a Somali researcher may also be
influenced by the same variables that affect the
voice of the researched. While reports record
that women have been selected to interview
women, other differences such as clan, class, and
generation are more difficult to control, and
can impede understanding of the informant by
the researcher - and vice versa. Being ‘a Somali’
is not necessarily a guarantee of total accuracy.
Indigenous interviewers, however, will have a more
informed sense of the significance of questions.
Queries that might seem innocuous to an outsider
- about an address, or the number of household
members - may either be seen as impolite or carry
implications that may not be apparent to a non-
Somali.
All recent reports on Somalis involve members
of the community in some capacity, even if only
as interviewees. But in many, Somalis have a more
prominent role. Of the 139 items in the ICAR
bibliography on Somalis in the UK, over a third are
authored or co-authored by Somalis. Given the
proportion of professionally qualified and skilled
Somalis in the diaspora, there is no shortage of
candidates for projects. Most commonly this is
not only as interpreters, but also as interviewers.
Already fluent in the language and familiar with the
culture, members of the community are trained
in research methods and often help in analysing
the results. Where Somalis have been employed as
interviewers, their role may extend into helping
to frame the investigation in the light of their
knowledge - they therefore become informants as
well as researchers. Their voice may be there, even
if not as direct speech.
Increasingly, Somali professionals are undertaking
lead roles in research into their own community.
Two current examples are in the fields of
mental health and refugees. Nasir Warfa and
Salaad Mohamud are part of a team conducting
investigation into Somali mobility and mental health
(the SOMMER project) based at King’s College and
Queen Mary, University of London. Their results
will shed light on issues of health and social status,
service use and geographic mobility across primary
care group boundaries in east and south London.
In Manchester, Zeinab Mohamed, a midwife, is
collaborating with others on research into the
determinants of ill health and the obstacles to
mental and physical wellbeing. In a previous study,
some of the health workers who initiated and
carried out investigation into Somali mental health
in Liverpool (Bullivant et al, 1995) were themselves
part of the community - the short report includes
illustrative quotation and the Somali translation of
terminology for mental states.
Methodological problems
There are other research problems that afflict
Somalis and non-Somalis alike. One of the chief
difficulties for research on Somalis is the wide
variety of estimates as to the size of the Somali
population in the UK. As made clear by the
confusion over figures considered below, it is
difficult to establish a solid base on which to
construct a sampling frame from which conclusions
can be extrapolated to a wider population.
Repeatedly, there is an expectation by researchers
that they will start off from an existing statistical
baseline of the Somali population in their chosen
area, only to find that they must adapt their
methodology to its absence and jettison any hope
16 The Somali community in the UK