“Honour our voices, validate our knowledge, and let us research ourselves” – this is what Community Research heard loud and clear at our second connecting session in November for researchers from refugee or migrant backgrounds.
We encouraged and listened to these researchers to make sure they knew this was their space. They provided us with some insightful feedback on what the key goals moving forward should be:
- Sustaining our special collection of research through connecting and networking researchers and finding a funding partner. This is a community collection to grow and nurture.
- Creating space for decolonised/postcolonial methodologies that honour those voices and participants in this space
- Giving back to communities with ethical, responsible and impactful outputs
- Making sure care of refugee-background researchers is paramount so trauma is not nurtured during the research process
- Advocating to effect changes in policy around refugee support and migrant support, and system change in Aotearoa for these communities.
In order to support this mahi, we will be asking participants to complete a short survey early next year so that we can continue to grow this space and tautoko their mahi next year and beyond. We absolutely acknowledge their voices and will continue to tautoko this space in 2022.
Community Research is looking for resources and partnership to further our mahi in this area. Please reach out. Tēnā koutou.
Resources
Video of webinar ‘Hear from us, not about us: The power of refugee-background research‘