Focus-Group Discussions (FGDs)

Towards the end of the second fieldwork, four focus-group discussions, lasting between two and three hours, were also conducted with members of three main communities, namely Montserratian, Guyanese and Jamaican communities. FGDs can be in-depth semi-structured or unsemi-structured interviews conducted as a group (Bryman, 2004). They are commonly used in order to comprehend complex behaviours and processes (Carey & Smith, 1994). Two FGDs were conducted with Montserratians, the second one having been organized on the request of the participants themselves. One was organized with a group of Jamaicans, and one with a group of Guyanese. One was planned with the Dominicans (DR) as well but it could not be organized for practical purposes. Indeed it was too difficult to gather enough people at the same time as they were often very busy with family and working life.

Organizing FGDs with each major community, separated from each other, has various objectives: (i) to compare the expectations for the future of Montserrat depending on the characteristics of each group, (ii) to assess the level of unity or cohesion in each community, (iii) to point out the major difficulties or factors of vulnerability in each community and to understand their causes according to the concerned people. Separating the groups depending on the country of origin of the participants was necessary to allow the comparison, but also to prevent discomfort and shyness due to the existing racism within society. FGDs are a quick way to reach a group of people from the same community, between 5 and 12 people depending on the groups and to complete the individual interviews. In some contexts, the group dynamics enable the raising of new ideas and stimulate the discussion by decreasing inhibition caused by a one-to-one interview, especially when it concerns sensitive issues such as integration, discriminations and expectations for the future (Bryman, 2004; Carey & Smith, 1994;

Kitzinger, 1994; Munday, 2006). Through the discussions, participants could validate, complete and extend the experiences, memories and one another’s ideas. It allowed me to have a better understanding of the data collected during previous interviews and to validate or question them. The group discussion also facilitates a kind of cascading effect (Tracy, 2013) where topics and thoughts can flow from one to another. Moreover, the FGD allows the observation of the form of interactions between participants and therefore plays the role of a mini-interactions laboratory (Tracy, 2013). It was particularly useful to understand the level of integration and cohesion of the immigrant communities in Montserrat, as well as the type of community-feeling within each group. Indeed, while the interviews and the previous observation highlighted the strong cohesion within the Dominican (DR) community, the situation was less clear for the Jamaican and Guyanese communities. FGDs therefore highlight how these two groups felt separated from the Montserratians and felt like outsiders even after one or two decades of residency on the Island.

The organization of the FGDs raised the issue of confidentiality and anonymity at various degrees depending on the communities. It was not presented as an issue by the Montserratians, who accepted meeting in public and opened places, that is a bar-restaurant easily accessible to all. They then did not show any difficulty about talking loudly in public, even when they were addressing sensitive matters. The non-nationals, however, asked for the

Page | 69 meeting to be organised in a private and closed place where nobody could hear them and hence know what they were talking about. They asked me several times to confirm that it was safe for them to talk and that nobody would know about what they said. I therefore decided to take only notes during the discussions and to not record anything. For the same reason, only the group of Montserratians was photographied during the meeting (Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.2: FGD with the Montserratian group (on the left) (David Bates, 2016) and note-taking by a participant during the activity (on the right)

For all groups, it was also necessary to invite the participants through an intermediary, a person of trust and influence in the community. While for the Montserratians it was mainly to convince the participants of the interest of the activity, for the non-nationals it was more a matter of trust, anonymity and safety. Unfortunately, I did not find such a gate keeper for the Guyanese community, as those who could have done it refused, arguing it was not a good idea to organize such an activity. Therefore I had to make contact with the Guyanese that I met previously either during one-to-one interviews or informally in the street to convince them to come. A first attempt failed when only two people showed up out of ten that had confirmed they would come. The second attempt, one week later, was more successful, with four adults, including one male and a teenager, present. Considering the difficulty in organization, it was not possible to be selective in terms of gender, time of residence in Montserrat or socio-economic background. The organization of the FGD with the Jamaicans was easier as an

influential person helped me and contacted several people, paying attention to have a mixed group. Six people attended, including two women and people from different socio-economic backgrounds. Similarly, the Montserratian participants were contacted by an influential person, which allowed me to have a very diverse group of twelve people during the first meeting, and seven came back the second time.

The four FGDs were conducted quite differently each time, especially depending on the way they were organized. The downside of having an intermediary person to organize the FGD with the Jamaicans especially was that it made the discussion too formal and prevented the participants from being as disinhibited as they were in the other groups. The discussion actually started to become freer and more engaged after the official end when four of the participants and I were heading back home in the car of one of the participants. The more informal and relaxed atmosphere in the car encouraged people to pursue the discussion more freely. For all the FGDs, large A3 sheets of papers were offered to the participants so they could take notes of the major key points. The objective was to help the participants to keep focus, to go further on each point and provide a tangible outcome to the discussion. I let the participants decide who would write down the ideas. This process worked very well with the group of Montserratians as they were more familiar with this way of doing things. A teacher spontaneously took the initiative to note the ideas and it seemed helpful to encourage the participants to clarify and discuss each point as much as possible. In the Jamaican group, noting the ideas was a useful way to focus the discussion as well and to tackle different subjects. As the participants naturally tended to discuss the negative aspects of their experience in Montserrat and the problem encountered, they could visualize on paper that they were not looking at any of the positive. Once they became aware of this, by themselves, they started to discuss the positive aspects, their own assets or what had helped them in their lives on the island. The use of paper, however, seemed less natural for them and the notes were much briefer, irregular, than with the Montserratian group. Finally, the group of Guyanese did not use the paper at all. As with the two previous groups, as a facilitator, I did not force the participants to use it but just quickly suggested it. Unlike the two other groups who positively responded to the suggestion, the group of Guyanese hardly paid attention to it. Regarding the fact that the discussion was very emotional, the paper would have certainly been too constraining for them. It required me to ask regular questions to avoid the discussion going too

Page | 71 off topic, things that I almost did not have to do with the two other groups.

The four FGDs, especially the two with the Montserratians and the one with the Guyanese group, seemed to have a kind of therapeutic effect. At the end of the first FGD with the Montserratians, the participants asked of their own accord to organize a similar activity every week. They explained that they generally did not take the time to talk about the societal issues of Montserrat although they felt very concerned and felt they had to discuss them to improve the social situation of the country. The Guyanese participants expressed gratitude to me for having organized this opportunity to discuss. Among this last group, the therapeutic effect was particularly visible through the evolution of the activity. Although the participants tended to be shy at the beginning, rapidly when they became more confident, the discussion became much more active and frank. Their attitude and way of speaking made their actual feelings and emotions gradually more and more explicit. I had to end the discussion myself after more than two hours because it was starting to get very late and one of the participants had to go to work. The participants eventually thanked me for the organization of the FGD.

Among the Jamaican groups, such therapeutic effect was not really visible. That may be due to the participants themselves, perhaps being less in need to express themselves or less confident speaking freely; or due to the more formal format of the FGD itself. The therapeutic effect is important to enable deeper discussion, in a more ethical way as the research benefits the participants themselves (Kitzinger, 1994; Munday, 2006).

While only brief notes were taken during the meetings, I had to spend several hours after each meeting to transcribe the main elements of the discussion, with as many details as possible. However, due to this late process and some unavoidable biases in the reinterpretation, some information may have been forgotten or slightly modified. Unless I mentioned it in the notes taken during the FGDs, it was difficult to remember who said what. Therefore the notes transcribe mainly the major ideas and the atmosphere of the discussion, the interactions between people and the evolution of the process as the discussion went on.

A major bias of the FGDs concerns the important group effect, especially when the discussion addresses sensitive topics. This may lead to potential exaggerations and lack of objectivity from the participants. The interaction as a group can lead to psychosocial factors affecting the eventual quality of the data (Carey & Smith, 1994). It has been found that those who have a different perception tend to repress and conform to the rest of the group (Asch,

1951 in Carey & Smith, 1994). Such effect perhaps happened during the FGDs conducted with the Montserratian group as there was a larger number of participants. In the other groups, the participants did not seem to hesitate to intervene and mark their disagreement.