Research design

Research design involves the choice of sample population or populations involved in a study, telescoping from the country or countries involved, through the choice of sample areas, to the choice of respondents. It is usually based upon the analytical framework for research, thus whether the aim is to compare two different places at whatever scale, two different people or sets of people and so on. The choice of the study areas in this research, from the country of Malawi through the chosen districts to the particular refugee settlements, and then the choice of respondents from those study areas, is explained below in terms of an ’iterative’ analytical framework.

4.4.1. Country of study

The 'model o f a repatriation information system’ outlined in Chapter 3 offers a dual opportunity for research in more than one country. First, the model could be tested in two different displacement situations, and comparisons drawn. Second, the model invites cross-border research, such that transmitters of information in the country of origin could be incorporated with receivers in the country of asylum, and with agents who cross the border between the two. It was decided from the outset of this research, however, that the opportunities for such international research were restricted, specifically by time and cost. It was felt that the in-depth research necessary in order to test the model might be compromised by international research such that the repatriation information system might not be properly understood before it was used as a basis of cross-border or

comparative research.

The case of Mozambican refugees was decided upon for some of the reasons given in Chapter 1, namely the characteristics of being a refugee population so large as to deserve far greater research, yet at the same time a refugee population which was attracting increasing academic attention which provided secondary material for my research.

Of the countries in which Mozambicans have been externally displaced, Malawi seemed a good choice for two reasons. First, it hosted (and still hosts) by far the largest number of Mozambicans, with the greatest variety of displacement experiences. Second, at the time of commencement of this research, its was a significantly under-researched refugee population, while at the same time the work particularly of Wilson (e.g. Wilson and Nunes, 1991) and Ager (e.g. Ager et.al, 1991) provided at least a basis of secondary material^.

4.4.2. Study areas

The various sorts of research design usually adopted are: the case-study, which asks the question ’What is happening in place A?; the longitudinal study which asks ’Has there been a change in place A?’; the comparison which asks ’Are A and B different’, and the longitudinal comparison which asks ’Are A and B different with regard to change through time?’. Obviously, the choice of research design therefore determines how many study sites are selected, and whether they are visited more than once.

In arriving at my research design, I chose not to adopt explicitly any of the above designs. As is demonstrated in the later empirical chapters, there is no doubt that the repatriation information system does vary over space and through time, such that either comparative or longitudinal studies, or a combination of the two, would have been valid research designs. However, in testing the model, my research design was designed to describe and elaborate as fully as possible upon the patterns and processes of the

^ It is worth noting that since the commencement o f this thesis, there has been a significant increase in the research base on Mozambican refugees in Malawi, specifically associated with the International Conference on First Country o f Asylum and D evelopm ent Aid, convened by York University (Canada) and the Government o f Malawi in 1992. One also presumes that the more relaxed political environment which is an expected outcome o f the defeat o f the one party system in the Malawi referendum (14 June 1993), may facilitate a better research environment and therefore increased research activity.

repatriation information system. It was felt that a research design specifically developed in accordance with a spatial or temporal analytical framework might subsume non-spatial or non-temporal characteristics of the system. One way in which this can happen is for the researcher to presume that differences observed are due to the research design chosen, in other words are accounted for by space or time, when in fact a host of other variables may be responsible or at least contributory.

Instead, the research design chosen corresponded closest to the case study. However, more than one study area was chosen. Such a research design could be described as iterative. The purpose of testing the model in four different places was not comparison, rather it was to allow for the greatest number of variables to be considered in testing the model. The point is that space was not presumed, nor often proved, to be necessarily important in explaining variations between the study sites.

This notion of an iterative research design, whereby the same model is tested over and over again in as many different contexts as possible, determined the choice of the two districts of Mangochi and Nkhata Bay. For example, the predominant tribe and religion in each differs from that in the other. The two are also geographically discrete: Mangochi shares a border with Mozambique, while Nkhata Bay is on the other side of Lake Malawi from Mozambique. The design also determined the choice of refugee settlements within the two districts. In Mangochi there are a total of three settlements, and in Nkhata Bay four. The choice in each district was of the two determined to be most obviously different. Hence, for example, one settlement in each district was closed to new arrivals and generally hosted refugees who had arrived some four years ago, while the other in each was still open, and generally hosted a newer refugee population. The choice of study areas and settlements therefore reflected an iterative research design, by introducing as many variables as possible, without biasing beforehand those which would be used to account for variation^.

The above comments notwithstanding, it is worth mentioning that the majority of

^ Political restrictions in Malawi, as discussed in a later section, precluded the inclusion in this research o f self-settled refugees outside recognised refugee settlements. An extension o f the logic o f the iterative research design would have been to include such ’spontaneous’ settlements.

refugees in all four settlements and in both study areas originated from the Province of Niassa. As the district within Niassa from which the majority in each study area differed, and as the variation between districts in Niassa in terms of the experience of war past and present are so different (see Chapter 5), this choice was felt not to interfere with the principle of an iterative research design. Nevertheless, the decision was intentionally to address the lacuna in research in and on Mozambique which virtually ignores the northern-most Provinces of Niassa and Cabo Delgado (Wilson, 1992a).

4.4.3. Sample populations

While the agent and informant interviews were primarily on an availability basis, a sampling procedure had to be arrived at for the structured household surveys.

The basis of my sampling procedure was random sampling. However, each settlement was organised, for administration purposes, into blocks of roughly equal size. Plots had been allocated chronologically and by block, such that the earliest arrivals in each camp were in Block 1, and later arrivals in higher order blocks. I initially presumed that this process would mean that the introduction of blocks into the sampling procedure would allow the introduction of time in exile as a variable. However, during the construction of community profiles in each settlement, it became clear that the majority of refugees in each camp had arrived within a very short time span. Nevertheless, the profiles did reveal that the each block generally housed refugees from the same village. Partly this was because many villages arrived en masse, but partly it was because of an informal exchanging of plots so that people from the same village could live close to one another. This meant that the introduction of blocks into my sampling procedure was still relevant, as it allowed the introduction as a variable of village of origin.

The sampling procedure therefore adopted was a structured random sampling procedure, whereby a certain number of households were drawn randomly from each block.

4.4.4. Conclusion

In this section, it has been shown how the analytical framework derived from the need to test the ’model o f a repatriation information system and how it determined the research design adopted. As the analytical framework decided upon was to test the model

in the context of as many variables as possible, the research design adopted was iterative. After the decision that the research should be in only one country, and the choice of Mozambican refugees in Malawi, the iterative research design dictated to a large extent the choice of study areas and sample populations.

In the following section, the details of the operationalisation of the field strategy described in the first section, in the context of the research design described in this section, are considered.