Co-producing knowledge with African migrants in the United Arab Emirates during the COVID-19 pandemic

By Jonathan Ngeh | Issue 26

Photo by Michaela Pelican, one of the three Principal Investigators, taken on 9 March 2022, at Corniche Beach in Abu Dhabi.

The global impact of COVID-19, which began as a local issue in China, underscores our world’s interconnectedness and how unresolved local problems can easily spread across regions. Furthermore, it highlights the necessity of collaborating and “co-producing knowledge” with those directly affected by an issue in order to tackle it effectively. “Co-producing knowledge” refers to the collaborative process where researchers and research participants jointly contribute to creating knowledge about a specific issue of interest. This approach enables researchers to collaborate with research participants as active agents rather than passive subjects, thereby challenging traditional top-down research models.  

Migrants as research collaborators

This article is based on the study Communication during and after COVID-19 from 2020-2022. The study involved two field sites, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and China, led by three Principal Investigators (PIs): Jonathan Ngeh and Michaela Pelican in the UAE, and Tu Huynh in China. 

While the study examined how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted social inequalities, this article focuses on the research process, specifically addressing power imbalances between researchers and research collaborators, which often diminish the collaborators’ contributions. Nine African migrants participated in the UAE study as research collaborators. They comprised three men and six women, ranging in age from mid-20s to late 40s; they hailed from Cameroon, Eritrea, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Their educational backgrounds ranged from secondary school to undergraduate degrees, with some holding additional specialised qualifications, and none had prior research experience. The research team also included three master’s students and a student assistant.

Addressing power asymmetry in the study

My point of departure is that conventional research approaches are hierarchical and exclusionary. Therefore, to effectively co-produce knowledge, the power imbalance between researchers and research participants must be addressed. I draw on the idea of a “third space”, which is like a creative meeting ground that makes room for different ways of thinking and being. It allows people from different backgrounds or with competing worldviews to share and modify their ideas. Zhou and Pilcher call for deliberate interventions in the third space to dismantle power asymmetry.

Poster of ‘Ushiku’ © Thomas Ash 2020

Interventions to foster the co-production of knowledge

The research collaborators received payment for their work to encourage long-term commitment to the project. They worked ten hours a week over a period ranging from six to eighteen months. The payment was necessary because their responsibilities extended beyond data collection, and to ensure a less exploitative relationship.

Securing funding for research collaborators was crucial for transforming the research process into a more equitable partnership. We had previously wanted to conduct research that involved co-producing knowledge, but we faced difficulties securing funding to pay collaborators. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Volkswagen (VW) Foundation allocated funding under the call Corona Crisis and Beyond – Perspectives for Science, Scholarship and Society to support research on the pandemic that adopted innovative scientific methods and theories. We successfully applied for this VW Foundation grant and received funding to pay research collaborators.

Moving towards a third space 

We shared the project proposal with research collaborators early on so they could get a complete understanding of the research. A series of online meetings followed this to discuss the proposal’s content. Since the collaborators had no research background, we provided online training on how to conduct ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on how to document their daily experiences of the pandemic, do participant observations and interviews, collect secondary data, and reflect on the data collected. This training lasted five weeks, with meetings held twice weekly, including one-on-one sessions when needed.

We, as the PIs, worked with the research collaborators throughout the data collection phase—fieldwork (diaries and interviews), data analysis and interpretation (data coding), and the writing and dissemination of results (blogs and presentations at workshops and conferences). At each stage, we set aside a few meetings for training. 

During the fieldwork, we jointly developed question guides, and the collaborators decided whom to interview, formulated follow-up questions, and determined the topics to explore while considering the research objectives and key questions. They worked independently and, on a few occasions, alongside the PIs and students in the project when we travelled to the UAE after lockdown restrictions were lifted to conduct additional fieldwork. Some of the topics the collaborators identified to explore independently include the emergence of informal taxis as an economic activity that flourished during the lockdown, benefiting some migrant workers, and the pros and cons of quarantine centres. Regarding data analysis and interpretation, we worked together to make sense of the collected data and developed arguments based on our findings. Finally, regarding writing and dissemination, the collaborators chose to publish their results as a podcast in the series Alter Voices–Covid Stories. 

Challenges in achieving a third space

We noticed limited exchanges between collaborators when the PIs were absent, especially in the early stages of the project. This indicated the central role the PIs occupied despite our best efforts to avoid such an outcome. We saw this as an indication of the difficulties in completely destabilising the power dynamics in research, which favours the PIs. At the same time, the improvement in exchanges between collaborators shows that time is needed for them to develop skills and gain the confidence to work independently from the PIs.

Research is inherently a collaborative process because researchers rely on information from research participants to make sense of what they are investigating. The question is, do we limit research participants to just providing information, or do we involve them more deeply? We chose to involve them more. We believe that the people we study have a better understanding of their own world than outside researchers do. By working with them on an equal footing, we can gain inclusive and in-depth insights that help address complex issues affecting all societies, such as deforestation and conflicts like those between Russia and Ukraine or Israel and Palestine, which have global repercussions. 

Jonathan Ngeh

Jonathan is a Post-doctoral Researcher at the Global South Studies Center (GSSC) in Cologne, where he also serves as the speaker for the Co-producing Knowledge thematic group. His research explores social inequalities, including labour exploitation, unequal power relations, and social exclusions. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Cameroon, Sweden, and the United Arab Emirates.