IDRC project components
There are essentially five components involved in the IDRC Project on Migration, Gender and Social Justice, namely:
- A Research Workshop
- Technical Online Support
- Training in Web-Based Research Methods
- Needs-Based Assessment and Support for Academic Writing Projects
- A Visiting Scholar Programme
1. Research Workshop
The IDRC projects portfolio on women and migration reveals a range of research approaches having different entry points and orientations. The projects are also at different stages of completion. It is therefore crucial that the components (knowledge-sharing, academic and technical support, policy briefs composition, planning for publication of the various research reports) are put together in a consultative manner with due attention to particular needs and preferences regarding the modes of knowledge-sharing and academic support. Through mutual consultation the projects will be clustered according to their approach and objectives, with a clear focus on the nature of support required, and on a publication plan for each project.
2. Technical Online Support
Within the framework of this project, technical support will include the following modalities:
a) Literature reviews on ideas and methods for exploring key issues regarding interaction between state and civic organization, being:
the extent to which structural changes in the normative international and national legal frameworks have opened new space for civic actors to promote state accountability, and the nature of their collaboration;
what role civic actors can play in the translation of international legal norms into local contexts; and
the forms of participation other than legal action civic actors currently take – non-judicial forms of representation, collaboration with government, social and policy analysis – and whether there is notice taken of multiple inequality; if so what wording is used.
b) Literature reviews on how to reveal the tensions about gender assumptions ‘sited’ as well as ‘cited’ in policy and advocacy practices – for clarifying those causes of inequality (re-)framed by states, civic actors and the migrants themselves. The relative weight given to structural and cultural aspects will be taken into account to show their bearing on choice and agency; also to demonstrate their potential for making intersectional vulnerabilities visible and enabling understanding about entitlements in everyday life.
c) The ISS team will provide comments on partners' research outputs, drawing on insights gained from debates and reflections among project partners on their own findings, which will add to the quality of the outputs and sharpen their translation into policy recommendations. The project will also assist their dissemination in forms appropriate to the context of each research endeavour.
ISS will recruit, select and employ a project assistant on a short-term contract. The research assistant will be assigned the following tasks: to set up, make operational and maintain the drop box system; to assist ISS staff with literature research and indexation and to provide other related research support activities for the project.
3. Development of training in web-based research methods
team of four ISS staff members will combine their profiles and expertise to develop the content of training and web-based research. These profiles are centred on issues of migration and human security (inclusive of human rights and human development) from different angles: public policy and development ethics (Gasper); gender in migration, international relations and political economy (Truong); socio-legal studies and migration (Handmaker) and local governance, gender and policy programming (Bergh).
4. Individual need-based assessment of academic writing skills
It is now commonly accepted that academic writing skills can transform the quality of the knowledge produced for successful public influence. The issue is not just about grammar or even word choice, but about the structure of thinking, persuasive texts and presentation of data; and more specifically about how to put crucial information where readers have been trained to see it. By involving – through a consultancy contract – a specialist on academic writing skills who has more than 15 years of experience in training academics from a wide range of disciplines, this component of the project will improve the capacity and ability of IDRC-research partners to articulate their views and present their findings in ways that benefit the quality of their output, bringing them to the attention, and holding the interest, of a wide audience.
5. Visiting scholar programme: Post Graduate Programme on Migration & Human Security
Three positions in the visiting scholar programmes are allocated to facilitate the visits of IDRC researchers to attend the post-graduate diploma programme on Migration and Human Security scheduled April-June 2011 and 2012, at the ISS.
