Kajsa Hallberg Adu, Ph.D, Personal Blog
Now, my research seminar from March 5th, 2015 at IAS, University of Ghana, is available on YouTube for those of you interested in my research. In this one-hour-seminar, I talk about the rationale for my research and results from my e-survey among university students in Ghana.
You can also read more about my project here: studentmigrationaspirations.com
Last year, I got an email from Professor John Gallagher of Boston College asking if I could meet with his students during their study trip to Ghana in May. I was excited to be asked, really it is not everyday the educational city of Boston calls! – so I said yes and after some emailing back and forth, I was asked to not just meet with John’s students, but also organize a panel with Ashesi students about social media in Ghana. Here is the long overdue blog post about this panel!
First, I decided to ask my colleague Kobina Graham to go with me as we have been coteaching Social Theory, a freshman class where we tried to integrate Twitter. Additionally, Kobby worked as the Social Media Officer for the Constitutional Review Commission a few years back. To find the best students for the panel, we held a (Twitter) competition, asking students to contribute to the Ashesifun hashtag invented by Ashesi student, Edwin. This hashtag is a way of indexing ideas on how to make the Ashesi campus and consequently college experience more vibrant. Edwin was by default shortlisted for the panel, with him came Martha (a third year student) and Makafui (a first year student).
On the evening of our panel, we met at MEST and had dinner with the visitors. We talked about our experiences with social media in Ghana, the teaching experiments we had done, how we use Internet (several of us are bloggers), but we were also interested in listening to the Boston College students and hear more about what they had discovered. A Boston College student later tweeted:
Unforgettable wisdom imparted by @kajsaha on #TechTrekGhana “every person brings knowledge to a room.” Always relevant. #thankyou
— Julianna Vitolo (@julianna_vitolo) June 15, 2013
Most interesting of their observations were: the low, but growing, Internet penetration; the high energy of the Ghanaian IT sector and last, but not least; the intensive use of Twitter for professional communication (“Ghanaian professionals seem to prefer a Direct Message on Twitter to a phone call or an email!”). I checked the last by tweeting about it and got mixed feedback from (the already biased) Twitterverse. Still, getting that comparison with Boston ecosystem was enlightening. It seems many times we are maybe too pessimistic here in Ghana?
To conclude, thank you Prof. Gallagher for giving me the opportunity to interact with you, your colleagues and students. I also blame you for the surprising – and loudly cheered on – end to our panel, when two of the Ashesi students did an impromptu rap battle after having been prodded by you. Really, the panel could not have had a better ending!
Through my friend Edward, I recently got to know that Google Docs now offer forms for free. The forms can be used to gather simple information such as “which of the following alternatives do you prefer?” and for more complicated forms. Forms can be embedded in emails or websites or you can direct respondents to your survey with a link.
I have tried it out for a draft of the survey I will use for data collection for my dissertation. Likely, the respondents to my survey will fill it out on paper, but I thought Google Forms could be useful for a trial version of the survey to easily be able to obtain feedback on the questions and structure. So far, the experience has been nice – except for the first time I filled the questions and realized after almost one hour’s work that I want connected to the Internet anymore and none of my changes had been saved… Otherwise, I found the tool very quick and intuitive.
You can add questions, select what type of answer you want (multiple choice, text, check boxes, scale etc), add headers and move questions around. The look is instantly professional and the backend allows you to see summaries of your questions with pie charts and percentages already calculated for you as well as the answers in a neat spreadsheet that is downloadable to Excel!
This tool opens up to so many opportunities, my mind just goes off thinking about all the cool surveys one could do!
You can see my questionnaire here – if you are a Ghanaian student, please do fill it out – and if you can remember to give me feedback on the questionnaire itself in the last section.
If you want to try this tool out, go to Google Docs, click on “file”, choose “new” and then “forms” in the drop down list. Happy research Monday!
Today, I am researching The EU Blue Card, a directive passed by the EU in 2009 to simplify immigration for highly skilled workers from non-EU countries. The directive is to be fully implemented into legislation by member countries this year.
The EU Blue Card is modeled on the US Green Card and is hence a temporary work visa (1-4 years) and at the same time a one-stop-shop for applying for residency and work permit.
On the europa.eu website which collects, summarizes and explains EU legislation it is stated that the objective of this particular directive is to:
improve the European Union’s (EU) ability to attract highly qualified workers from third countries. The aim is not only to enhance competitiveness within the context of the Lisbon strategy, but also to limit brain drain. (my italics)
The Lisbon strategy or agenda was drafted in March 2000 and reviewed in 2005 and was the overarching direction for the union aiming to turn EU into “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy by 2010”. I can see how the EU Blue Card is in alignment with this ambitious goal and how it helps to attract highly qualified workers. However, I have a hard time understanding how it will limit brain-drain.
I am not the first to question this, migration and development have been discussed together for many years now and others before me have pointed this out for this particular directive. In 2007, African ministers of health viced their worry of that this scheme would increase the brain drain of health professionals from their countries. Also, Professor Kingsley Banya has also written a conference paper where he in the abstract suggests the EU Blue Card scheme is “poaching Africa’s talent” (I am yet to find the full paper).
The rationale behind the EU Blue Card is the fact that EU has a low level of highly-skilled foreigners in its workforce when comparing to the US and Canada. Levels of 4% and 7% of the total labor force for US and Canada respectively, comparing to 1,7% for the EU is brought forward by the Migration Information Source here.
To qualify for the EU Blue Card, one must have a college diploma or five years occupational training, already have landed a job (countries can choose if individual or companies hiring them should apply) as well as show that the job the worker is migrating to do pays more than 1,5 times the country’s average salary.
Despite above-mentioned critique against the directive, it is being implemented as we speak (although some say it is way too slow) with very little debate within Europe and in the countries that are likely to be affected by the policy change.
In my opinion, what needs to be discussed further (and very soon measured) is how the EU Blue card is to affect African professionals and their migration desicions. It seems nobody yet knows.
Will it lead to increased migration and possibly brain-drain or could there be positive effects for developing countries like increased circular migration when opportunity for legal migration increases? As my research area – Ghanaian students’ migration aspirations- encompasses the migration environment,or legal frameworks for migration, I will be including this European development in my study and discussion.
I will try to write on migration issues every Monday from now on! Need to get back into the research game!
Pic borrowed from The Swap Blog.