I am conducting research on children of migrant parents and want to include children of parents who are legally resident in the country as opposed to illegal immigrants. This is for protection purposes as illegal migrants may fear to participate because of their illegal status. As this is a study of children, I have to go through their parents, so the status of the children is of no concern as it is dependent on the parents' status. For the legal migrants, how can I know about their legal status without actually asking for their documentation, which I feel is too intrusive? Is there another way to recruit legal migrants without asking about their status? I would appreciate any other ways to recruit only legal migrants that you have experienced. Thanks in advance.
Hello Getrude,
I hope you have already been able to deal with this challenge. I was once involved in a study where we interviewed immigrants but they were all students at a university so issues of their residence/migration status were not much of concern as they will have to be in the country legally to be studying. Yours involving parent and children is a bit more complicated. But drawing from my own experience, I think the issue of the migration status of parents may not be a concern if they are selected from occupations where only people with legal migration status could work. With such knowledge, you can assume that they are all legal residents. Of course it depends on how you intend to identify participants and whether you expect such information to influence the stories that children will tell (if not, then probably best not to ask about migration status).
Thank you for your response Ebenezer. I was able to deal with the issue by not asking about legal status since that is not the focus of the study, but their experiences during COVID-19 lockdown. Since all responses will be anonymous, I have been able to recruit without worrying about whether they are legal or illegal.
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