FIELD RESEARCH EXPERIENCE IN GHANA

AN EXPERIENCE FROM A MIGRAWARE PHD STUDENT – ALINA SCHÜRMANN

september 25, 2022

Field Research In Ghana

For my PhD thesis in the MIGRAWARE project, I traveled to Ghana in March 2022 for the first time in my life. The aim was to interview experts on migration in order to get a weighting for factors that have an impact on the migration decision.

Since it is probably easiest to reach people in Ghana when you are on the ground, my strategy was to contact directly the NGOs and institutes I had picked out beforehand. I spent the first nights in a quiet AirBnb. For the last 10 days I moved to an international hostel where I met some partners from the sister project MiTra|WA by chance. Here we could talk about our projects in a relaxed atmosphere.

To reach the individual NGOs and institutes, I drove via Uber through chaotic Accra and visited the various NGOs. This strategy turned out to be very successful. Even though some of the NGOs I found on the Internet and were marked on Google Maps didn’t exist in the reality.

Finally, I was able to interview a total of 11 experts, such as IOM and Caritas. With the support of Eric Duku, a research associate from Hen Mpoano, it was possible to contact 4 more interviewees in the Western Region, so in the end I managed to have 15 interviews.

In addition to the interviews, I was also able to meet with researchers from the Center for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana, where Itohan-Osa Abu (a doctoral student at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg) and I had the opportunity to present our current work within the MIGRAWARE project.

Furthermore, I had the opportunity to travel to Kumasi together with Itohan-Osa to get to know the WASCAL Competence Center and to meet the project partner Michael Thiel from the University of Würzburg.

In Cape Coast, I met our partners from the University of Cape Coast around the team of Prof. Nyarko, who welcomed me warmly. In addition, the project coordinator Justice Inkoom took me on a tour around his hometown. All in all, the trip was a great success with many great impressions and interactions that will enhance my research.