La frontera como diáspora

3 5 - 4 4 U n iv e r s ity 8 y e a rs S tu d e n t F lu e n t 2 5 - 3 4 U n iv e r s ity 6 y e a rs S tu d e n t F lu e n t 2 5 - 3 4 U n iv e r s ity 8 y e a rs S tu d e n t F lu e n t 2 5 - 3 4 U n iv e r s ity 8 y e a r s S tu d e n t F lu e n t 2 5 - 3 4 U n iv e r s ity 9 y e a r s S tu d e n t F lu e n t 2 5 - 3 4 U n iv e r s ity 6 y e a rs S tu d e n t F lu e n t 2 5 - 3 4 U n iv e r s ity 3 y e a rs S tu d e n t F lu e n t 3 5 - 4 4 5 y e a rs C o m m u n it y w o r k e r F lu e n t 5 5 + 7 y e a rs C le a n e r F lu e n t 3 5 - 4 4 8 y e a rs P rie s t F lu e n t . 4 4 5 - 5 4 4 y e a rs H o m e d u tie s B e g in n e r 4 5 - 5 4 5 y e a rs H o m e d u tie s B e g in n e r 3 5 - 4 4 6 y e a r s H o m e d u tie s B e g in n e r 2 5 - 3 4 6 y e a r s H o m e d u tie s B e g in n e r 4 5 - 5 4 2 y e a rs H o m e d u tie s B e g in n e r 2 5 - 3 4 8 y e a r s C a r e r F lu e n t 3 5 - 2 y e a rs J o b s e a r c h in g F lu e n t

44 45- 54

7 years Cleaner Beginner

18- 24

1 year Receptionist Fluent

18- 24

University 4 years Student Fluent

45- 54

9 years Retired Fluent

Time in Australia refers to time from arrival until 2010 when most interviews were completed. While most of the participants had completed the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) there were still significant differences in level o f English knowledge among the participants. This was mainly due to previous education in South Sudan or in refugee camp.

As mentioned earlier, I employed snowball sampling in an attempt to reach people who would be interested in participating. One of the criticisms of the snowballing technique is the risk of attracting participants who are too similar due to a dependency on one network, thereby “producing a biased sample” (Jacobsen and Landau, 2003:12). As previously mentioned, after a few interviews I did notice demographic similarities among the participants. The decision to expand my networks and aim for greater diversity among the participants was made in order to increase the representativeness of my sample. Castles et al. (2002:184) echoed the same sentiment on qualitative research and reflected on “the need to make the voices of immigrants and refugees more representative”. They pointed out that it would be “crucial for this type of research not to rely on only one network” and to cover a variety of groups for such research” (Castles et al., 2002:184). 1 diversified my sample through attending church gatherings and women’s groups.

The interview phase of this research was time-consuming and often exhausting. The logistics involved attempts to set times for interviews and making sure the time and place for the interview was made in collaboration with the participants. As noted by Marlowe (2010b:37), “[Collaborative research requires a commitment and sincere engagement with process that may necessitate stepping outside a study’s established timelines and scheduled milestones”. Hence, the timeline for my interview period was prolonged due to unforeseen circumstances and the process of gaining trust with the community and the participants.

Rather than aiming for a specific number of participants, the goal was to have a sample with a broad demographic profile and to include young as well as older men and women, employed and unemployed. In my case, I discovered early on that there were a

certain number of topics that were of concern to all the participants. While they all discussed experiences with employment, or the lack thereof, safety and the important role of citizenship, I continued the interviews until I felt that the experiences expressed were following similar trajectories. Once I had saturated the topic together with broadening the demographics of the participants I could withdraw from data collection and start focusing on an understanding and analysis of the narratives (Groenewald,

2004).

I also soon became aware that I was dealing with two different groups among the participants - a division largely based on gender. The first group consisted mostly of young men currently studying or recently finished at university who demonstrated a generally positive outlook on their life experiences in Australia. This group also included three other men. These men already had employment and shared the educated young men’s relatively positive view on life in Australia. The second group consisted of women without adequate knowledge of English and without employment. These women will be referred to as the ‘women’s group’ whom I interviewed together in focus- groups. The other women spoke English (one of them still fairly basic) and were working, studying or a combination of both. My first impression during these interviews was that they had relatively negative experiences with Australian society through a thoughtful concern with their roles as mothers, and their lack of understanding of the ‘system’ involving schools, social services and housing. However, they also expressed a gratitude for landing in a safe and stable situation in Australia. The women with some English language skills and employment shared the women’s group’s frustrations and concerns on many aspects of Australian society through their role as parents. Some of these frustrations were related to generational conflicts and concerns with the expectations of raining their children in Australia. In some cases, there was a fear of possible intervention by state authorities in their children’s upbringing. This reinforced a more negative experience of Australia among the women.

As the research continued, I distinguished more systematically between these two groups due to their different experiences. While I heard the shared stories of settling in Canberra, at the same time I was struck by their different experiences through structural domains of integration such as education, employment and gender. These structural differences among the participants are highlighted in later chapters.

Qualitative interviews

The interviews began with an explanation of the consent form (Appendix One) and the research information brief (Appendix Two). We discussed possible areas of confusion and the participants had the opportunity to ask any questions that arose. The fact that the participants could withdraw from the interview at any point was also highlighted. I used a tape-recorder during the interviews with the approval of the participants. The interviews lasted between an hour-and-a-half and two hours. The two group interviews both lasted between 4 and 5 hours, coming to an end only due to other commitments among the women. The interviews were in-depth and open-ended as my intention was to let respondents tell their stories of settling and living in Australia as freely as possible. This relates back to the phenomenological framework where the focus is set on experiences of phenomena. These experiences were what helped give meaning to the development of belonging. While the interviews were guided by pre-set questions, I was open to any change of structure or change of focus with the aim of letting the conversation flow. I personally transcribed the interviews word-for-word “in order to allow the voices of research participants/informants to speak” (Groenewald, 2004:48) and added observation notes to each interview in order to complete the narrative. The recordings from the interviews were transferred into Microsoft Word documents and kept in a secure place.

I developed questions relating to Ager and Strang’s domains of integration (see Chapter Two) in an attempt to explore the everyday experiences of the participants. I wanted to understand whether these social relations were necessary for the development of a sense of belonging. While the interview schedule involved contacts both within the South Sudanese community and the wider Australian society, I was also interested in their emotional experiences associated with Ager and Strang’s domains and how their sense of self and their capabilities evolved from these experiences. While I started out with a theoretical background of the development of a sense of belonging, I became more attuned to participants’ experiences in the domains of employment, education, language, housing and safety, and how a sense of belonging related to these domains.

The interview schedule was based on five topics (see Appendix Four). The first focused on demographic background of the participants, beginning with personal information

including ‘ice-breaking’ questions relating to the participants’ age, marital status and number of years in Australia. This set a conversational tone for the interview and helped participants to relax.

The second part of the interview schedule examined the participants’ daily life in Australia. By asking questions about their relationships (in their private lives, at work and at university) together with questions on their social contacts and how they perceived the current political context in Australia, I tried to form a picture of people’s everyday lives. This second section also involved questions relating to participants’ subjective experiences of settlement in Australia, and their emotional response to settlement needs and rights.

The third part of the interview schedule dealt with relations, commitments and contacts that the participants had with family and/or friends back home in South Sudan or in exile elsewhere. The aim of these questions was to analyse whether these contacts influenced their daily life in Australia. Increasingly, research on refugees and migrants is dealing with these transnational links (see for example Horst, 2006) and their impact on people’s integration and their sense of belonging. While I wanted to explore the impact these transnational links had on the forming of relations in Australia, I realized early that these questions were not as fruitful as I had anticipated because most of the participants were not as willing to talk about their family in South Sudan. Furthermore, as a condition in my ethics approval, I was not permitted to ask too many questions about the participants’ background.

The fourth section examined the issue of citizenship, settlement more generally and specifically integration in relation to the political context in Australia. Topics relating to differences between South Sudanese and Australians were canvassed, especially relating to the public and media debates on the South Sudanese community (as discussed in Chapter One) where the community was ‘labelled’ as unsuitable for integration into Australian society. The aim of these questions was to explore the participants’ subjective responses to these debates and to analyse their impact on people’s experiences of integration.

The fifth and final section dealt with settlement procedures, the assistance they received on arrival and how this assistance influenced their initial and ongoing perceptions of Australia. The aim of these questions was to explore people’s sense of control over own lives, both at the initial settlement process and also at later stages where assistance declined. Furthermore, I wanted to discover which links the participants had established with institutions such as social services and the police. These questions were designed to explore issues relating to agency and social structure.

Inspired by the phenomenological tradition, I endeavoured to let the voices of the South Sudanese men and women come through in order “to hear the description of their experiences and the impact of those lived experiences on their daily lives” (Baker, 2007:36). While I had prepared questions for each section in the interview schedule, some questions were omitted while others were added, based on the discussions and the sense of ease with different topics in the interviews. The use of qualitative interviews enhances the chances that the participants’ own experiences are heard. Korac (2001:9) discovered that qualitative interviewing “is an important way of learning from refugees because it permits the fuller expressions of refugee experiences in their own terms”. Qualitative interviews allowed the participants to be active parts in the interviews and in sharing details of their experiences, while reducing the sense of “treating refugees as data generating objects”. It secured “their active involvement in the construction of data about their lives” (Korac, 2001:15). This focus encouraged me in the analysis process to remember that an important aspect of the analysis was to let the voices of the participants test the value of the theories and frameworks of integration and belonging.

As the research developed, I gradually became aware that a sense of belonging was integral to the process of integration, rather than an end point of the process. In this way my analysis emphasized personal experiences through aspects of belonging: subjective self, agency and structural positioning. By listening to the participants’ experiences with Ager and Strang’s various domains of integration I began developing themes from the interviews which are discussed in more detail in the next section. The questions asked in the interviews led to the emergence of these themes related to the participants’ daily life: their experience of feeling settled; what had encouraged this process; networks and trust within the community and towards the wider Australian society; and everyday social interactions.