MEMO West Africa: Community Partners & Academics Meeting

This regional coordinator meeting focused on having discussions on if and how to modify the comprehensive data collection instruments to create country-specific / region-specific data versions, ensuring contextual relevance while maintaining a comparative perspective during analysis. Shifting to would people favour common training of the researchers that will conduct interviews with West Africa: Community Partners & Academics resulted in the following discussions. Ashika Niraula emphasized fostering collaboration between academics and community partners before fieldwork. She noted the importance of these partnerships for effective recruitment strategies and mentioned that necessary clearances were being sought for data collection. The project will use a mixed-methods approach, including focus group discussions and interviews with migrants and key informants. Prof. Setrana introduced a matrix for the West Africa region, focusing on both return and potential migrants, and discussed determining sample size through data saturation points. Participants discussed identifying immigrant groups, with suggestions to gather data from areas like Darkuman and Agbobloshie. Robert mentioned his modelling experience with internal migration and his willingness to adapt to international migration. and focus groups – per migration system or for the entire project? Ending the meeting by providing any foreseen challenges during the fieldwork that require discussion.