Between December 2010 and July 2011 we conducted Phase 2 of our fieldwork – in-depth, semi-structured interviews with migrants from Ukraine, Morocco and Brazil. We gathered 360 interviews in one or more locations across each of the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the UK.
This stage of the THEMIS project involved the development of good contacts and relations with relevant local migrant organizations and communities to locate interviewees and to increase our understanding of the heterogeneity of migration patterns by these groups. For example, the IMI team worked closely in London with the Al-Hasaniya Moroccan Women’s Project, the Ukrainian Migrant Network (with Oleg Pasichnyi) and with GEB - Brazilian Migration to the UK Research Group. These contacts and the wider knowledge gained will be invaluable in helping to analyse our data, and in finalizing our sampling strategy for the quantitative surveys of Phase 4.
The initial findings of our Phase 2 research were shared at the Lisbon THEMIS team workshop, March 2011, and used to guide our selection of the most relevant location within each origin country (Brazil, Morocco, and Ukraine) where later stages of THEMIS research will be carried out.