Part 3 Summary of Findings, Conclusions and
5.4 Data Analysis: Methods and Process
5.4.3 Adjunctive Procedures and Conceptual Development
129
Surviving, exploring, however, the intersection of cross-border migration and class. A detailed audit trail of the data analysis for this publication can be found in Appendix 2.2.2.
130
‘Responsibility Taking (Relating II)’, benefited from my ability to distinguish between varying degrees of closeness and distance and how this impacted practitioners’ responses to their service users’ plights (see audit trail for this article in Appendix 2.2.1).
As described in Section 5.4.2, all empirical papers in Part 2 of the thesis were constructed around one or two core categories which were then elaborated in relation to those aspects of social justice literature with which they corresponded best. Both Dreams (Chapter 6) and Subjectivities of Survival (Chapter 7) are organised around the core category, ‘Surviving’, albeit with different emphases. Dreams (Chapter 6), which foregrounds women’s experiences and perspectives, draws on a range of gender analysts and is framed by Martha Nussbaum’s (2000, 2006) concept of central capabilities. My main reason for selecting the human capabilities approach as the article’s theoretical frame was its articulation of a set of minimal requirements of social justice. Nussbaum’s (2000) monograph, Women and Human Development, was particularly helpful in keeping the perspectives of those whose welfare was at stake in the centre of attention. This allowed my co-authors Reshma, Consolée, and me to make strong and pertinent points, akin to taking ‘snapshots’ of the intersecting ways in which women migrants experienced, and sometimes resisted, the social injustices prevalent in their lives.
In Subjectivities of Survival, I was more concerned with what impressed me as a cumulative loss of agency among both migrant men and women, and how this experience was connected with South Africa’s class structure and the conditions of structural violence to which it gives rise. While exploring these using Bob Mullaly (2010) and the work of miscellaneous political economists, I found the Amartya Sen (1999, 2009) writings most useful in anchoring the discussion, simply because of the centrality he accords to the idea of agency. Both my engagement with the data and my renewed reading highlighted two properties of ‘Surviving’
as particularly important: dignity and hope (cf. Appadurai 2004; Simone 2004, 2010, 2011).
To further explore their relevance for social work’s commitment to social justice, I drew on Margaret Urban Walker (2006) and Martha Nussbaum (2000), respectively. As with Nussbaum, Sen’s approach enabled me throughout the article, to keep within focus the individual perspectives of the protagonists of the stories.
Neither Nussbaum’s nor Sen’s work, however, seemed sufficient to inform my discussions of the relational aspects of social injustice which are the subject of the other three publications.
131
Of these three, Encountering the Other (Chapter 8) was the first to be written. Its title at once denotes the core category at the heart of this article – Encountering (Relating I)’ – and points to the phenomenon of Otherness, and unfolding processes of Othering, to which my interest was drawn especially during the earlier phases of the data analysis (see Appendix 2.1.1 and the discussion above). My co-author Vivienne and I considered a range of related concepts, including difference, inter-group domination, oppression, and resistance. The resultant publication relies on a variety of works, including Iris Marion Young (1990), Emmanuel Lévinas (Zygmunt Bauman 1993), Joan Tronto (1993), Nancy Fraser (2008a), and Lena Dominelli (2002). Conversely, Reflections on Misframing (Chapter 9), was inspired by my reading of Fraser’s (2008a) Scales of Justice, which fitted well with the core category of ‘Voice’ that I had already developed (see Section 5.4.2). Importantly, Fraser (2008a) provides the idea of
‘Framing’, which, when introduced into the analysis, wielded such ‘conceptual power’ that it enabled me to group a whole range of concepts around it, which I now began to regard as its
‘subcategories’ (Strauss and Corbin 1990:65).
Together, these four publications well illuminate the structural injustices at play in the field of cross-border migration in South Africa. What remains insufficiently clear in all of them, however, is how practitioners should respond to the comprehensive regimes of injustice in which they were so apparently implicated. This is the chief interest of the thesis’ fifth publication, Assuming Responsibility for Justice (Chapter 10). In it, my co-authors Vivienne, Michalinos and I sought to retain a relational perspective, to critically engage with the social positioning of service providers vis-á-vis service users in the field, and to develop a more pointed discussion of what social workers could do about social justice. Iris Marion Young spent the last years of her life exploring the question of responsibility for justice (see Young 2006, 2007, 2011), thus providing a most suitable framework for our endeavour. In addition, Derek Clifford and Beverly Burke (2009) offer helpful deliberations on the relationship between individual identity and social histories, and on the role of social service organisations as a hinge around which social structures and individual perceptions and interactions are connected. The core category, ‘Responsibility-taking (Relating II)’ denotes all of these concerns.
With each of these five publications focusing on specific aspects of social justice, and employing different approaches to achieve their respective purposes, the thesis still required
132
an overarching framework, able to pull together the various issues raised in the articles, and the different ways in which they were raised. With this in mind, I developed the chapters that are now located in Part 1: Overarching Considerations of the thesis. Chapter 2 delineates the study’s historical context, considering a range of economic, political, social, cultural, and ideological factors. Chapter 3 explores the ethics of social work with cross-border migrants and enables the study to reach conclusions around the ways in which the experiences around displacement and cross-border migration that lie at the heart of this study might be considered typical of the field at large. Lastly, Chapter 4 considers those ethical approaches and debates that are not sufficiently explored in the publications section of this thesis, yet are deemed suitable to pull together the five articles’ philosophical contents in a concluding debate: these are Young’s (1990, 2007, 2011) theorisation around the person-structure interface, the political ethics of care (Tronto 1993, 2011, 2013, 2014; Robinson 2010), an anti- oppressive critique of virtue ethics (Clifford 2014), and a consideration of how affective turn theorists might contribute to a re-grounded conceptualisation of social work’s commitment to social justice (Hemmings 2012; Zembylas 2014; cf. Hugman 2005). Table 5.2 contains an overview of Chapters 4 and 6 to 10, outlining the data segments on which they are based, method of data analysis, core categories, aspects of and approaches to social injustice, and key theorists considered.
133
Key theorists consulted: M. Nussbaum B. Pease; misc. gender analysts A. Sen B. Mullaly; misc. political economists M.U. Walker , M. Nussbaum I.M. Young, L. Dominelli Z. Bauman (E. Lévinas), J. Tronto, I.M. Young N. Fraser N. Fraser I.M. Young Z. Bauman (E. Lévinas) D. Clifford and B. Burke I.M. Young J. Tronto, F. Robinson D. Clifford R. Hugman, C. Hemmings, M. Zembylas Table 5.2.:: Overview of Data Analysis and Theoretical Choices
Aspects of/Approaches to Social Justice Considered: Central Capabilities Intersectionality and the multiply reinforcing nature of oppression Agency Structural violence and surplus populations The dialectics of hope, dignity, and agency Injustice as oppression Privilege and relating toOthers; the dialectics of structural and interpersonal violence The dialectics of (mis)recognition and (mal)distribution The dialectics of (mis)framing, (mis)representation, (mis)recognition and (mal)distribution Social connection and political responsibility for justice Moral encounter The dialectics of individual and social histories; the role of organisations in structural processes of injustice The person-structure interface The political ethics of care An anti-oppressive critique of virtue ethics Critical emotional reflexivity and affective dissonance
Core Categories Surviving (Focus on the intersection of cross- border migration with gender) Surviving (Focus on the intersection of cross- border migration with class) Encountering (Relating I) Framing Voice Responsibility Taking (Relating II) N/A; Integrative chapter
Methods (and Periods) of Data Analysis Thematic Content Analysis (2011) Constructivist Grounded Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis (2013) Constructivist Grounded Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis (2011) Constructivist Grounded Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis (2011) Constructivist Grounded Theory And Critical Discourse Analysis (2012) N/A
Data Sources Life stories Life stories Research Site 2: Life stories; interview with practitioner of care; field notes Research Site 2: Life stories; interview with practitioner of care; field notes Research Site 1: Field notes N/A
Publication (Chapter) Dreams (Chapter 6) Subjectivities of Survival (Chapter 7) Encountering the Other (Chapter 8) Reflections on Misframing (Chapter 9) Assuming Responsibility for Justice (Chapter 10) Overarching, Paradigmatic considerations (Chapter 4)
134
Returning to the use of adjunctive procedures, I need to comment, finally, on my use of diagrams in this study. Strauss and Corbin (1990:197) discuss different types of diagrams which they define as ‘visual representations of relationships between concepts’. Producing diagrammatic representations of my emergent understanding of the structural processes of injustice at work in the data was a strategy that I found particularly helpful and which I employed throughout my data analysis. The earliest diagram dated was 26 October 2010 and the last one 16 June 2013. Indeed, I started the writing process for three of the empirical papers – Encountering the Other (Chapter 8), Reflections of Misframing (Chapter 9) and Subjectivities of Survival (Chapter 7) with diagrammatic representations, and then wrote the first drafts of the publications along the structures provided by the diagrams. Table 5.3 lists the visual representations I selected for inclusion in this thesis. Other aspects pertaining to the data analysis – including triangulation, blind coding by an independent researcher, critique and confirmation by co-authors and members check by research participants – are discussed in Section 5.6: Issues of Trustworthiness. First, however, I will touch on the ethical concerns that emerged in the context of the study.
Date Diagram Type Reference
26 October 2010 Open coding diagram on the core category, ‘Encountering (Relating 1)’
Appendix 2.1.2.
17 December 2010
Axial coding diagram for the publication, Encountering the Other
Appendix 2.1.2
13 February 2011 Conditional matrix for the publication, Encountering the Other Figure 9.1: Socio-economic Structures and Dynamics Surrounding and Impacting the Encounters between Them and Us 01 August 2011 Flow chart depicting the dialectics of (mis)framing,
(mis)representation, (mis)recognition and (mal)distribution for the publication, Reflections on Misframing
Figure 9.2: Circle of Social (In)justice at Work in the Study
7 June 2013 Flow chart with themes for the publication, Subjectivities of Survival
Appendix 2.2.2
16 June 2013 Flow chart with categories and sub-categories for the publication, Subjectivities of Survival
Appendix 2.2.2
Table 5.3: Overview of Diagrams Included in this Thesis
135