ABSTRACT
The study is also unique because of the strong link between research and social activism. The project began as voluntary work but turned into research in order to give the study greater impact. Thus, the data was not, at least initially, constructed for the research project, but was ‘naturally occurring’ data that would have been recorded whether or not the scientist was dead1 (cf. Potter, 2004). This has implications for the quality and validity of the women’s stories. I concur with Speer (2002) that Potter’s sharp distinction between ‘naturalistic’ and ‘contrived’ data is not viable. But in terms of giving voice to migrant women and allowing them to talk about their stories rather than mine, I believe that the narratives in this dataset are valuable. They do not fit into a pre-defined research paradigm with research questions and hypotheses, but they convey, in uncensored form, the women’s own life stories. It goes without saying that I have selected the narrative excerpts, but I argue that they represent salient themes, which were usually selected by the women themselves. Most (but not all) of the questions I asked were to clarify the details of particular cases – most volunteers would probably have asked similar questions. Thus, the data for this study is different from the interview data used in traditional anthropological studies. Before I turn to a summary of the salient themes this study has identified, I briefly revisit the question of truthfulness.
