Recruitment

This photo is of me and my spaniel Rosie at one of my favourite places, Hetchell Wood Nature Reserve. It’s a beautiful place and during the pandemic lockdowns I came to fully appreciate how fortunate I am to live within walking distance of it.

When we talked about trees as a theme for this toolkit, this particular example immediately came to mind. I’ve spent a lot of time in this spot over the years watching my children play on the rope swing, before heading down to the nearby stream for a paddle and some den-making. As you can see, because the tree is on the edge of a slope much of the intricate root system is completely exposed.

These exposed roots put me in mind of the experience of our peer and community researchers. It prompted me to reflect on their roles and job titles and the fact that in simply doing this role they automatically share, or at least draw attention to, something of their personal history and background – their ‘roots’ are, in a sense, exposed. Lived experience of migration is just one part of their identity and experience, but one that can sometimes feel as if it has a disproportionate focus. I’m not sure what, if anything, could be done to address this – we thought it was important to ringfence these opportunities for people with lived experience with migration, so there is some inevitability about the situation. Perhaps in future we could consider job titles which make the ‘peer’ aspect of the role less obvious. My personal vision for the future would be that creating such roles would be unnecessary, because lived experience would be valued on a par with other skills and experience seen as necessary for a migration researcher role.

What we could do is to talk more about the other valuable skills and experience that the researchers bring to the table, and to shift the focus onto the research they have been involved in. We’ve had quite a few invitations to talk about our peer research approach – we are always happy to do this but it feels right that as time goes on the researchers are asked to talk about the research they have been involved in, rather than just their experience as a peer or community researcher. At the time of writing we have completed a number of research projects, and opportunities are arising for the researchers to be involved in presenting findings at dissemination events.

Jack, one of our peer researchers, took the same view during a conversation and suggested that placing too much emphasis on the lived experience rather than on other skills when we refer to peer researchers, may in many contexts, lead to attaching a sense of vulnerability to the role. For that reason he preferred the title ‘community researcher’.

The peer and community researchers have also had significant input into this toolkit – their blogs form part of it, and it has been informed by their feedback and reflections. We are however always aware of power dynamics, and it’s important to acknowledge these – we hope that contributors have felt able to be honest but we’re aware of how a precarious employment position might be constraining in terms of sharing anything which may appear critical of one’s employer.

I would recommend you read Tesfalem and Vanja’s reflections on peer research, and Tesfalem and Hyab’s thoughts on the term ‘experts by experience’ – these blogs explore further the questions around identity and positionality that I have touched on here.

Finally, I’ve shared a bit more of myself in this post than I normally would in a work context, which is a little uncomfortable, and has helped me to reflect on what we expect of our peer and community research team in terms of disclosing something very personal, just by virtue of the job they are doing.

Kate James, Policy and Research Officer at Migration Yorkshire.