Tag: Brazil

Our session on “What works for migrants: reflections on intervention dissemination, outputs and outcomes” at MIDEQ Symposium

Hari Harindranath, Maria Rosa Lorini and Tim Unwin from the ICT4D Collective (and Work Package 9 of MIDEQ), together with Guilia Casentini from SOAS (and Work Packages 1 and 3 of MIDEQ), convened a working session at the MIDEQ Symposium held in Rio de Janeiro on 21st September on “What works for migrants”. This focused especially on the ways through which members of the UKRI GCRF funded MIDEQ Hub have worked with (rather than “on” or “for”) migrants in the 12 countries where we have been working since 2019. It also addressed how we have sought to understand what migrants themselves have thought about our research-practice, and the monitoring and evaluation mechanisms we have used.

The workshop addressed four main themes:

  • How do we really know what migrants think about our work? (led by Maria Rosa Lorini)
  • What have we found to be effective ways of gathering empirical evidence about outcomes experienced by migrants? (led by Hari Harindranath)
  • What have we found to be effective ways of disseminating our outputs so that migrants benefit from them? (led by Giulia Casentini)
  • What are good forms of “output”/intervention to improve migrant lives? (led by Tim Unwin)

The enthusiastic group of researchers shown above from many different countries contributed to a very lively discussion that generated the mind map below (click on image for larger .pdf file).

We hope that this may become a useful tool for others wishing to undertake research-practice that aims positively to enhance the lives of migrants.

Our latest Working Paper: Uses of digital technologies by migrants from Haiti and to Brazil

Members of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D are leading Work Package 9 of the MIDEQ hub (funded by UKRI GCRF and Royal Holloway, University of London) and are exploring how digital tech can be used to reduce the inequalities associated with migration, especially in four corridors: Nepal-Malaysia, Ethiopia-South Africa, China-Ghana, and Haiti-Brazil. The fourth of our working papers presenting data on the Uses of digital technologies by migrants from Haiti and to Brazil has just been published within the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D’s publication series. Key findings and abstract are as follows.

Key findings

1. Context matters: groups of migrants from different countries and backgrounds use digital tech in varying ways and for different purposes.  There is no such thing as one size fits all.2. Many migrants aspire to use digfital tech for educational and employment purpose – yet these are things that digital tech could already be readily used for if they knew how.  3. Most migrants focused on the use of digital tech for increasing economic well-being – none specifically addressed their potential for reducing inequalities.

Abstract

This working paper is the fourth in the series produced as part of the output of Work Package 9 on technology, inequality and migration within the MIDEQ Hub, a multi-disciplinary research project in 12 countries of Latin America, Africa and Asia, including the Haiti-Brazil migration corridor.  It presents the results of three iterations of an online survey totalling 372 respondents most currently living in Brazil, and mainly from Haiti; 92.7% of those who reported their status identified themselves as migrants, with the remainder being family members of migrants (5.5%) or returned migrants (1.8%).   Following a summary of the methodology, which explains the impact of COVID-19 on our research practice and why an online survey was used to replace our originally planned interviews and focus groups, the paper provides an overview of the most important results and an exploratory data analysis, focusing on the potential influence of age, gender, countries of origin, migration status, and occupational status on the ways in which respondents use digital technologies and for what purposes.  Three important conclusions for the subsequent stages of our research on the inequalities associated with migration and how digital tech may be used to reduce these are: first, the migrants responding to this survey are from very different backgrounds, and these differences have a strong influence on their use of digital tech; second, many migrants aspire to use digital tech for purposes that they could readily do if they knew how; and third, none of the migrants specifically identified inequality or equity as issues that they would like to use digital tech to address.

To read this paper in full (v.4 .pdf) please use this link.

Other UNESCO Chair in ICT4D Publications are available here.