Opportunities for Overcoming Data Access Barriers with Vulnerable Immigrants

Many social work researchers interested in working with vulnerable immigrants face struggles in accessing clients to complete the research. Immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, may not be the first to come forward and participate in a research study. Additionally, immigrants with significant trauma backgrounds could be at risk of re-traumatization, and many researchers face language barriers. This workshop includes three objectives: (1) A presentation/group discussion of common challenges experienced in recruitment of immigrants in research, (2) sharing examples of ways to navigate around these barriers, and 3) Facilitates an interactive activity that will help participants brainstorm opportunities and ways to move forward for their career. The interactive activity is a hands-on workshop where participants gain concrete, tangible ideas, and an action plan for how to proceed with their own research. First, the presenter will share examples of different agency-university partnerships as examples of how we have bridged gaps in accessing clients. Next, participants will be guided through a series of questions, conversations, and activities to help them explore what options might be the best fit for them to overcome the challenges they have experienced (or anticipate experiencing). This will involve many components such as: completing a checklist of possible struggles; searching your geographic area for local nonprofit partners; searching your existing contact list for potential nonprofit partners outside of your geographic area; thinking about academic partners with access to clients; discussing ways we can reduce re-traumatization specific to your topical areas; etc. Even if you can locate an agency that would be a good partner, these partnerships require strong relationship building skills, which aligns with social work’s value of human relationships. We will discuss with the group how we have engaged and nurtured these relationships from the ground up. We will invite participants to share their own experiences. In small groups, we will then develop a mock pitch for a nonprofit partner about collaboration. We will help participants highlight the benefits to clients, agency (e.g. discussing how the partnership could further the agency mission), and researcher, of the PARTNERSHIP rather than focusing on a specific research study. Research shows university and community agency partnerships can foster compelling research opportunities, as well as enhance teaching and service opportunities for faculty and students (Teixeira et al., 2019). This workshop will build on this existing research by focusing on the unique context of vulnerable immigrant populations in the US. In the last part of the workshop, participants will write down both facilitators and inhibitors of such opportunities. The group will then brainstorm together ways to trouble shoot the inhibitors. To end, we will discuss action planning and ways to bring a partnership/project to fruition. Everyone will leave the session with concrete, tangible ideas, and an action plan for how to proceed.