Description

To better understand the process of migration, you will be conducting interviews with two students in the class (who have migrated between cities or between an outlying town and city) to gather their migration history. Then, you will be depicting their migration patterns on a spacetime chart, and examining the factors underlying reasons for these migrations.

Research Subjects

You will be interviewing two students in our class. Please contact the Instructor if you experience difficulties in organizing your interviews. The two students you select need to have migrated between cities or between an outlying town and a city (e.g. from Bruce Mines to Sault Ste. Marie). A move within the city of Sault Ste. Marie is ineligible. And, the migrations must exceed 10 months (respondent must have lived in the new location for at least 10 months).

Conducting the Interviews

The process for conducting the interviews is described below. 1. State Purpose of Interview.

a. This is an interview related to an Algoma University Population Geography class project. You will only be referred to by a fictitious first name in any written materials. The results of the project will be shared with the professor of the course (Dr. Nairne Cameron) for grading purposes only. The general findings (no names mentioned) may be discussed in the class. Confidentiality of your responses, and as much anonymity as possible will be provided.

2. Ask for the Individual's Consent to Participate, and ask them to sign the Consent form. Store the signed consent forms in a locked cabinet, then submit the 2 consent forms with your assignment. Provide each participant with a separate signed copy of their consent form. They will be held by the Instructor in a locked cabinet and destroyed 6 months following grade submittal for the course.

3. Ask Questions Neutrally (pre-prepared questions in a structured interview). a. Are you willing to participate? > Yes (proceed and code the respondent as #1 or #2 – the respondents' real names should not appear in the interview notes), > No (thank individual, stop). Some individuals may have experienced difficult circumstances in their migrations, for example refugees, so please do not press anyone who does not want to participate.

a. In which year *or within which 10 year period (in case respondent is hesitant to provide their age)* were you born? (If a respondent provides a range, plot the point on the diagram as an open circle at the mid-point of the range.) b. In what places have you lived since then? In which years did you move to this/these location(s) for at least 10 months?

c. What were the reasons for the migration(s)?

i. Note: you will want to probe for the pull factors (positive factors relating to d. What were the challenges related to the migration? Note: you are researching the "intervening obstacles" (such as moving costs) and "personal factors" (such as age and presence and number of children) in this question. See text p. 208. destination) and push factors (negative factors relating to the origin).

e. Prior to your migration(s), did friends or family members provide any information about the destination? If so, what kind of information did they provide (how did they describe the destination)? Note: you are researching whether 'chain migration' was a factor.

4. Record Responses (by taking notes – see below procedures for securing data). 5. Thank Respondent.

6. Create a survey key as a separate file that contains the real name of the respondent and their assignment as #1 or #2 respondents, and then designate a fictitious name to be

used exclusively in the report. The survey key should not be submitted with the report.

Drawing the Space-Time Chart [5 marks] You will drawing a chart similar to the one pictured below to display your respondents' migration

patterns visually. Distance in kilometres is represented on the y-axis, while time in years is on the x-axis. You will be plotting distances according to their displacement from Sault Ste. Marie (Sault Ste. Marie is zero). Prior to drawing the chart, you will have to calculate the distance

between Sault Ste. Marie and the other migration locations. To do this, you can use an online service such as Google Maps Canada http://maps.google.ca/ to calculate the distances by road

transport. For worldwide distances, you can use a global distance calculator (see an example at Map Crow: http://www.mapcrow.info/). For the time axis, you will be referring to the information you collected in your interview. Your chart can be drawn by hand or using spreadsheet or graphics software. If you are drawing it by hand, please scan your diagram for inclusion in your electronic report. You can scan using the university photocopiers and have the image sent to your email address (can ask in library for instructions). The mock diagram below shows four migrations, but you will only be mapping two. Source of diagram: Nairne Cameron. Report [25 marks]

Begin your report with an introduction explaining the project and methodology. Then, write up a discussion explaining when, where, and why your respondents migrated. Also, you will be relating your findings to topics and terms discussed in Chapter 8 (p. 199-242) if applicable. Finally, describe your completed space-time diagram in terms of individual migrations and interactions between individuals. Check to see if there are any similarities or differences between the migrations. Were respondents' reasons for migrating the same or different? The report portion of the assignment should not exceed 10 pages double-spaced (not including chart

and interview notes). Hard copy interview notes must be stored in a locked cabinet, and soft copy notes must be password protected. Include the interview notes (typed or handwritten) in

the Appendix of the hard copy assignment. You can keep only one copy of the graded material for academic use purposes. All other hard and soft copy notes including the survey key must be destroyed or permanently deleted once you have received your final grade for the assignment.