OCVP researchers and local residents on a 'walk around' at Camp A © Chris Smith
Professor Laura Hammond presented findings of the Migrants on the margins research team to members of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at a meeting at the Society last month.
Professor Hammond, the research lead for Hargeisa, highlighted the aims of the Migrants on the margins field research project and outlined the methodology the team had used to collect their data, before commenting on the key findings of the research. She outlined the anxieties that migrants face when living in temporary settlements in urban areas and explained how the threat of eviction prevents migrants from trying to improve their temporary accommodation and home lives. Dr Hammond also pointed out how migration is often a gendered story with both men and women from internally displaced families facing different pressures.
But there are also some positive stories from the research. Dr Hammond explained how one settlement in Hargeisa had become a permanent home for a community of migrants and that this was the aspiration of many individuals in other temporary settlements in the city.
The Migrants on the margins research team are keen to support local policy makers and municipalities to improve the situation that migrants find themselves in and have been presenting their findings to the local communities where they worked. As part of this, the project’s educational resources, including four comics and a series of posters, are being translated into local languages, so they can be shared with the study communities.
Migrants on the margins is the Society’s field research programme focusing on the vulnerability and opportunities of migrants in some of the world’s most pressured cities: Colombo (Sri Lanka), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Harare (Zimbabwe) and Hargeisa (Somaliland).
Find out more about Migrants on the margins.