No abstract

In the medical humanitarian context, the challenging task of collecting health information from people on the move constitutes a key element to identifying critical health care needs and gaps. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), during its long history of working with migrants, refugees and mobile populations in different contexts, has acknowledged how crucial it is to generate detailed context-related data on migrant and refugee populations in order to adapt the response interventions to their needs and circumstances. In 2019, the Brazilian Medical Unit/MSF developed the Migration History Tool (MHT), an application based on the life history method which was created in close dialogue with field teams in order to respond to information needs emerging from medical operations in mobile populations. The tool was piloted in two different contexts: firstly, among mobile populations transiting and living in Beitbridge and Musina, at the Zimbabwe-South Africa border; and, secondly, among Venezuelan migrants and refugees in Colombia. This article describes the implementation of this innovative method for collecting quantitative retrospective data on mobility and health in the context of two humanitarian interventions. The results have proven the flexibility of the methodology, which generated detailed information on mobility trajectories and on the temporalities of migration in two different contexts. It also revealed how health outcomes are not only associated with the spatial dimensions of movement, but also with the temporalities of mobility trajectories.

International Non-governmental Organisations (INGOs) have long been conducting operational research (OR), which is a mode of research that follows very specific principles. In the present work, I reflect upon my experience of conducting operational research with migrants and asylum seekers in Mexico, while working for an INGO. By centring my analysis on a question that was often posed by colleagues– “how much do we need to know?” - I explore three interrelated topics. First, I look at the advantages and the ethical dilemmas that emerge from the organisation’s ambivalent role as practitioner and researcher. I then discuss how research is not only being used to evaluate programs, but also as form of témoignage, and how hierarchical research designs may incur process of othering. I follow with an appreciation of how surveys implemented in such contexts contribute to framing migrants’ experiences according to pre-determined categories of trauma and suffering.