Study title

Sweden, Great Britain, Denmark

Group

74 qualitative interviews and 6 oral histories were carried out. In total, the activist participation and observation took approximately 500 hours.This research has been organised around a case study approach, focusing on three North-ern European countries with varying – rapidly changing – approaches to immigration. As Flyvbjerg (2006) argues, case studies facilitate generalisability of social issues whilst al-lowing for the value of in-depth analysis in specific localised areas. This project adopted case study analyses in these countries for three reasons: firstly, to draw in a qualitative intersectional approach in looking to the micro impacts of meso and macro structures and political decisions; secondly, to allow for in-depth policy analysis and consideration of each socio-political context of the countries included – all with varying dominant so-cio-economic structures; thirdly, to gain insight into best practice so that it might be shared across the countries and broader regions. The study incorporated 74 in-depth semi-structured interviews with psychologists, support workers, detention custody officers, lawyers, advocacy workers and other such social actors working with people seeking asylum in the three case study countries (Britain: n23; Denmark, n: 21; Sweden: n30 ). Participants were recruited through purposive sampling initially directed at relevant institutions and organisations working with people seeking asylum in state and NGO capacities, and snow-ball sampling within organisations once some contacts had been established. This has been supplemented with over 500 of ethnographic activist research with women seeking asylum during this period, as well as in-depth oral histories with six women seeking asylum. Interview responses were coded using NVivo 8 and analysed from an interpretive perspective (Mason, 2002), read literally first and then deconstructed in relation to wider literature and the socio-structural and political context from which they responded. It is important to note, however, that themes were also informed by the longer-term participation with practitioners, activists and women seeking asylum, through which I was enabled to focus on aspects of the process which can otherwise be invisibilised or determined as a ‘by-product’ of asylum systems.