A critical reflection on the use of focus groups as a research method: lessons from trying to hear the voices of NGO beneficiaries in Ghana

The focus group method has been used extensively in social science research in order to gain a deep understanding of participant perceptions of specific topics of interest. However, the method has rarely been used in the social accounting and accountability literature. This paper reviews and critically reflects on the key characteristics of the method drawing on a research project examining NGO (non-governmental organisation) beneficiary perspectives on the accountability processes employed by NGOs in Ghana. It offers insights and future research suggestions that might encourage greater use of the method by social accounting and accountability researchers

Producing ideal Bangladeshi migrants for precarious construction work in Qatar

The paper analyses the mediation of Bangladeshi construction worker migration to the Gulf and how multiple and unpredictable risks and opportunities are co-created by brokers, employers and the state. It examines how migrants navigate these to achieve imagined futures and their own role in co-creating precarity. The authors employ a relational lens to examine why aspiring migrants choose informal brokers over formal migration managers. The everyday practices of brokers in producing ideal Bangladeshi workers for the Qatari labour market and how this precarises migrant labour are unpacked. Migrant and broker interviews provide insights into the degrees of precarity experienced at different stages of the migration process. Entangled with these processes of precarisation are the strategies employed by migrant workers to resist precarity and transform their social and economic positions in the long term. The rich accounts presented in the paper provide evidence on the dialectical relationship between migrants and migration intermediaries which contrasts with popular discourses about brokers as exploiters and migrants as victims without agency

Professional development in teaching and learning for early career academic geographers: Contexts, practices and tensions

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Geography in Higher Education on 16th May 2011, available online: doi: 10.1080/03098265.2011.563380This paper provides a review of the practices and tensions informing approaches to professional development for early career academic geographers who are teaching in higher education. We offer examples from Britain, Canada, Nigeria and the USA. The tensions include: institutional and departmental cultures; models that offer generic and discipline-specific approaches; the credibility of alternative settings for professional development in teaching and learning; the valuing of professional development and of teaching in academic systems of reward and recognition; and the challenges of balancing professional and personal life. We summarize concepts of good practice and suggest opportunities for future research

[Introduction] The making and unmaking of precarious, ideal subjects – migration brokerage in the Global South

The migration literature is often underpinned by the idea that migrants are either completely ‘free’ agents, individually choosing how best to achieve returns on their human capital and resources (Sjaastad 1962) or ‘agents of development’ for their home countries and regions (Turner and Kleist 2013). Conversely they are viewed as exploited slaves, being pushed into low-paid occupations and controlled by middlemen and employers. Unsurprisingly, in many close-knit societies a process as expensive and life-defining as migration is rarely undertaken as an individual act and is shaped by complex social interactions within kinship networks and beyond (Lindquist 2012). Brokerage is ever-present in migrant labour markets around the world, variously interpreted as occupying the ‘middle space’ between migrants and the state, helping migrants navigate complex immigration regimes (Lindquist, Xiang, and Yeoh 2012; McKeown 2012; Schapendonk 2017), acting as an extension of the state seeking to outsource border controls (Goh, Wee, and Yeoh 2017) and colluding with employers to cheapen and commoditise migrant labour (Guérin 2013; McCollum and Findlay 2018). It is increasingly recognised that an understanding of contemporary migration is not complete without an understanding of the mediating practices that facilitate and constrain it (Coe and Jordhus-Lier 2011; Cranston, Schapendonk, and Spaan 2018). This special issue investigates the role that migration brokers play in the subjectivation and precarisation of migrant men and women from marginalised classes and ethnicities in the Global South. It shows how these processes are critical for them to become a part of contemporary economic and political systems of international and internal labour circulation. It responds to the call of labour geographers for a deeper understanding of the ways in which diverse economic and social contexts result in complex forms of precarity (McDowell 2015) and adds to the evidence on the role of actors beyond the workplace in co-creating precarity (Buckley, McPhee, and Rogaly 2017)

Women and change in Ghana The impact of environmental change and economic crisis on rural women's time use

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DX180553 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo