Browsing by Person "Kirkwood, Steve"

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Building an ethical research culture: Scholars of refugee background researching refugee-related issues
(Oxford University Press, 2024-03-25) Albtran, Ahmad; Aksu, Pinar; Al-Fakir, Zuhair; Al-Hashimi, Heidar; Baillot, Helen; Izzeddin, Azad; Johannes, Hyab; Kirkwood, Steve; Mfaco, Bulelani; Nicole, Tandy; Ní Raghallaigh, Muireann; Ogutu, Gordon; O’Reilly, Zoë; Younes, Angham
Recent scholarship on the need to decolonize refugee research, and migration research more generally, points to the urgency of challenging ongoing colonial power structures inherent in such research. Increased involvement of scholars with lived experience is one way to challenge and remake unequal and colonial power relations. Through discussions with researchers of forced migration, we aimed to explore the challenges, barriers, and supports related to involvement in such research, and to identify how research practices and structures could be improved to increase and facilitate the involvement of scholars with refugee backgrounds. In this field reflection, we highlight key points and suggestions for better research practice that emerged from these discussions. In doing so, we are endeavouring to contribute to the important ongoing conversation about ethics and decolonizing research. We build on existing ethical guidelines by opening up some of the complexities of ethical practice and offering concrete actions that can be taken to work through these.
He's a cracking wee geezer from Pakistan': Lay accounts of refugee integration failure and success in Scotland
(OUP, 2014-03-21) Kirkwood, Steve; McKinlay, Andy; McVittie, Chris
Previous research on the integration of asylum seekers and refugees has aimed to develop conceptual frameworks for understanding integration or to measure the extent to which people are integrated. However, this research tends to pay insufficient attention to the rhetorical functions of integration discourse. The current study addresses this gap through a discursive analysis of 'lay' accounts of asylum seeker and refugee integration in Glasgow, Scotland. The analysis highlights that accounts of integration 'failure' may support 'two-way' conceptions of integration while still blaming asylum seekers for any lack of integration. Furthermore, accounts of integration 'success' may reinforce assimilationist policies or otherwise function to reinforce the view that adult asylum seekers generally do not integrate. The analysis highlights the importance of attending to the rhetorical functions of integration discourse in order to understand how particular policies and practices are supported or criticised at the community level at which integration takes place.
The Language of Asylum: Refugees and Discourse
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2015-10) Kirkwood, Steve; Goodman, Simon; McVittie, Chris; McKinlay, Andy
The early part of the 21st century has been marked by widespread social upheaval and geographical displacement of people and the need for refuge on a scale not previously encountered. Using the case of the UK as an example, this text examines how refugees, asylum-seekers, locals and professional refugee workers make sense of asylum and refuge against this background and in the light of current asylum policies. It also discusses contemporary debates on integration, such as whether or not those seeking asylum should be entitled to work following arrival, and explores how such rights and entitlements are bound up with questions of who the refugee or asylum-seeker is and how he or she got to the UK. In these ways, the text follows the asylum-seeker's 'journey', from arrival, through the experiences of what happens to them while they are here, to the eventual outcome of their applications for leave to remain.
'They're more than animals': Refugees' accounts of racially motivated violence
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2012-10-22) Kirkwood, Steve; McKinlay, Andy; McVittie, Chris
Previous discursive research has found that minority group members may deny or downplay the existence of discrimination. However, to date little research has addressed the issue of violence against minority group members. This study therefore draws on interviews with asylum seekers and refugees in a Scottish city to analyse their reports of violence committed against them. One form of reporting violence was by way of a complaint available to any speaker, in making no reference to attributes of attackers of victim. When racism was alleged, it was presented as a tentative, reluctant or 'last resort' explanation. The descriptions offered by interviewees reflected the contributions made by the interviewer, highlighting the ways in which these reports are interactional co-productions. The results suggest that accounts from victims of seemingly racially motivated violence may function in similar ways to 'new racism' in making racism seem to 'disappear'. These findings point to the potential difficulties that arise in identifying and looking to challenge instances of 'new racism'.
We represent, here, the interests of the free world': Accountability in Israeli leaders' media talk on the Gaza Crisis (2008-2009)
(University of Glasgow, 2010) Sambaraju, Rahul; Kirkwood, Steve
he Palestinian-Israeli conflict turned into an armed crisis from the 27th of December 2008 to 22nd of January 2009. Instances of such armed conflict make issues of accountability highly pertinent. In this paper we analyse media news interviews conducted with then Israeli political leadership after the start of the Gaza Crisis. From the analyses we show that: a) accountability is an interactional concern that interviewers and interviewees orient to within the interactional setting of a media news interview; b) Israeli politicians manage Israel's accountability for events in Gaza crisis via employing particular narratives and descriptions of both Israel and other parties; c) in managing their accountability they are seen to make avowals to peace and moderation which are then used for justifying extant military practices.