Research methods and materials - Through in-depth interviews of third country nationals, using ethnographic methods, we will explore how mobile workers s conceive IC rights, exploit them, demand them when they are denied, and what effect this has on their national and European identities. The population of interviewees will be mobile workers in Greece, Germany, Switzerland, Albania and Kosovo.
Qualitative methods - This research will be based on a biographical approach, which implies the collection and analysis of detailed narratives of life histories of the population under study, usually by in-depth, repeated interviews. The biographical interview is particularly suited to transnational migration research, offering a way of empirically capturing and reconstructing the diverse, complex, and transformational character of the migration experience. We reinforce our biographical accounts with semi-structured interviews and reference to personal documents; field notes and expert interviews will provide context to the biographical interview texts The aim of our biographical interviews is to understand how mobility has affected the IC practices of labour migrants. In order to contextualize these IC practices, it is necessary to understand their whole migration history, both as individuals and as members of families and communities, all of whom will be regarded as involved in the migration process and therefore part of their IC context. Through detailed biographical narratives we will construct the migration history of each member of a household (or individual, as the case may be). We will link IC with other social and economic dimensions that accompany the migration process. For example, the gender dimension can be linked with the family household-centered economic strategies of migrants. Our accounts will allow us to build detailed family histories of migration (i.e. reunion; return migration), and relate them to economic strategies for welfare and security. We will gain an understanding of the social, economic and cultural integration on both ends of the migration experience, and its relationship to IC.
Research material - Research participants will be recruited with the assistance of relevant civil society organizations and through using the researchers’ own contact networks as a starting point. We will also sometimes do systematic searches at the points where foreign workers are concentrated. We will use snowballing techniques, where we ask participants to other people they know to take part in the study, and offer incentive gifts. Interviews will be conducted in quiet locations where the interviewee feels comfortable, and will be recorded.
How it will be used stored and protected: The audio files will be transcribed by subcontractors and coded by the interviewer in a MAXqda database. Portions of it will be selected to be translated into English by the interviewers or by external contractors. Coding will be undertaken by Caro, Dushi and Xhaho. The coded transcripts will be analyzed to produce the academic articles and other outputs. Names and identifying information will be kept in another file from the transcripts. The project’s data storage and other ethical policies will be in compliance with the JyU ethical committee approved policy for the TWES project, to ensure uniform policies across the research group and a high level of protection for informants. Project data will be available to the research group member. To maintain the confidence of participants, we will not be able to allow access by persons who have not signed the confidentiality policy.
Ethical issues: IC for many migrants is a sensitive subject. Employers regularly fire workers who talk about labour law violations. To induce the workers to talk openly we must guarantee anonymity. Therefore, informed consent procedures are entirely oral; we will not keep a record of real names with the rest of the project data but instead will use codes; as far as contact data is concerned, we will keep first names only. Participants will be informed at the start of participation about the project goals and data protection procedures, orally and by being given a document in their native language. They will be told that it is voluntary; they can terminate the interview at any time, and can refuse to answer any question they do not wish to. We will provide them with any project final outputs they wish to see. The project will be conducted in compliance with TWES project policies, and applicable Finnish and JyU policies and Albanian and UNYT policies.
