Selective Coding to Identify Overarching Themes

Once I had completed the process of identifying themes and coding the data, I began to interrogate the interconnections between them (Stage 5 in Figure 3.2) in order to start a process of selective coding (e.g. Gibson and Hartman 2013; Robson 2011; Urquhart 2012): to identify associated categories (or interconnecting themes), inherent to the data from a cohort or across cohorts. Approaching the analysis of the participants’ responses

individual by individual within a cohort, and then cohort by cohort, enabled the codes to be compared within and across cohorts. Categories associated with these codes were identified as part of this selective coding process. Three main overarching themes were eventually established. In this section I provide an example of the process of coding and how the overarching themes were selected.

Only one cohort participated in the first field research visit to Kenya in 2012, the young men who were supported by Imani to be apprentices. The data from this cohort was, therefore, the first to be analysed. In focusing on the research question, I coded extracts related to the process of leaving the street and the participants’ lives afterwards. A number themes applied to the whole cohort. For example, all of the young men at Imani appeared to engage in income generating opportunities on the street, alongside their apprenticeship training. The motivations for this street-(re)connectedness were related to the challenges they faced in establishing a life for themselves after leaving the street.

Street-(re)connections was a prominent theme. In coding for it, the extracts associated with the code fell into the two main categories: how the young men were engaging with the opportunities available on the street, and why they were engaging with them, shown in Figure 3.6. Focusing on why, as this explained the challenges the young men were facing, I identified four reasons why the young men were (re-)connecting with the opportunities available on the street (listed in the Why? box in Figure 3.6). All of the young men mentioned having to pay for rent and food, six of the nine supported their families in some way, two spoke of preparing for the future (getting married, having

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children and/or building a house), and the majority of the cohort discussed how the extra money earned helped them to buy accessories that other young people in the community possessed. These reasons suggested four associated categories, included in Figure 3.6. Each of these categories related to interactions with other people, or actors, involved in the lives of the young men. Associated categories were compiled for each of the themes identified in the data from the cohort.

Street-(re)connections

Figure 3.6: Relating the code street-(re)connectedness to the reasons behind the code and the associated

categories developed, for the young men at Imani

I followed the same process of analysis for all of the cohorts. I noted themes associated with leaving the street, or related to the participants’ lives after the street and other aspects arising from the data, and coded for these themes. I established categories of

How?

-Portering outside supermarket and at main stage

- Collecting Scrap - Cleaning market stalls - Cleaning Verandhas - (Boda driver)

Why?

- Supporting incapacitated single parents (roles of responsibility) - Saving for future families/ weddings/ building homes - Buying clothes/accessories/ mobile phone credit

- Paying rent and buying food

Associated Categories

- Roles of Responsibility - Plans for the future - Identifying with local youth community

- Survival and self-sufficiency

Influential Actors

- Family - Friends - Wider Society

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codes that were compared across the participants within a cohort, listening again to the interview recordings to see if themes present in interviews analysed later, could also be identified in those analysed earlier. Comparing the content of the photographs across the cohort, immediately identified important themes. If a number of the participants took photographs of a similar subject, it stood out very quickly as a significant to the transition. Corresponding audio recordings were compared to establish similarities and

interconnections. These interconnections between the participants’ stories were established more easily in relation to similar photographs.

The categories were adapted in order to more effectively describe all the corresponding extracts of data, or they were split into smaller categories to better represent the differences. Associated categories that described interconnecting themes within and across cohorts were identified and compared, by revisiting the data to code for themes in earlier cohorts analysed that only became evident in later cohorts. For example, the auto- photography exercise conducted at Nyumbani, emphasised the importance of being clean to the children living there. Returning to the data from Imani identified responses that also referred to the state of being unclean or dirty on the street. These responses, shown below, had not been immediately identified in the initial analysis, as the references to being clean were brief and subsumed within broader discussions of negative social interactions and being out-of-place on the street.

After Jail I was on the street, I was dirty.

Andrew, from Imani, describing one of his returns to the street Mostly in a town chokora are street boys and the kanjo they do not like to see them there. The kanjo they think that they make the town dirty.

James, from Imani, describing life on the street I was used to education, taking baths, being smartly dressed all the time and sleeping in a house.

Josephat, from Imani, describing his first few days on the street

Being clean, as a code within the data, was categorised as keeping up appearances, which was later subsumed within the associated category of respect and status.

When I was confident all of the themes had been identified, I selected the most prominent associated categories across all of the cohorts by interrogating how they

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interconnected with each other. Many of the categories overlapped and a hierarchy could be developed, in which I determined sub-categories and identified the three overarching themes explored in Chapter Four. These were: Support through Acceptance, Respect and Status, and Relating to Family. The overarching themes were selected because they interconnected with a large number of the other themes and they were the most relevant to the research question.

Figure 3.7 is a visual representation of how a number of the themes and associated categories are interconnected. The Three overarching themes are shown within text boxes. With these overarching themes as the focus, I revisited the data, and the extracts selected as part of the earlier stages in the analysis, to develop a comprehensive picture of the different ways in which these themes were manifest.

In addition to these three overarching themes, revisiting the data suggested an all- encompassing theme that became the central thesis of this study. To a large extent the young people’s journeys away from the street could be characterised by their efforts to develop a sense of belonging to the situations in which they found themselves after leaving the street. This sense of belonging was influenced by competing aspects of their lives and, given its prominence in the data, appeared to be central to their experiences of transition.

Summary

This chapter has presented the research design of the study, explaining the rationale behind my choice of an exploratory, qualitative study before evaluating the research methods I engaged for generating data. An overview of the processes through which I analysed the data highlighted the identification of three overarching themes: Support through Acceptance, Respect and Status, and Relating to Family. In the following chapter, I interrogate how these three overarching themes are manifest in the experiences of leaving the street related by the participants. I assess the extent to which the analysis of these experiences, and the corresponding themes, contributes to the development of a conceptual overview of such transitions, and how they can be characterised by the process of developing a sense of belonging to their new situation.