Gathering the Data

Abstract

This chapter offers detailed information on how data for the reported study were obtained and what characteristics the sample has. To ease understanding for the general readership, the chapter also includes brief portrays of the six European countries (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, and UK) included in the study. Furthermore, the chapter discusses details of quantitative and qualitative design, sampling methods, procedures for data collection, statistical analyses, per country and for the grand sample. The settings are discussed on a demographically comparative basis for migration patterns of African migrants to the EU. The intra-EU comparative approach of the study is a stand-alone feature, as no explicitly comparative studies of the current kind seem to exist. Portrays of the instruments used for the study are also part of this chapter: The instrument on personality is the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (48 Items). To evaluate pre and post migration stress levels, the migration stress questionnaire (MSQ) was included. To assess participants’ mental health status, the classical General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) in its 28-item version was used. The extent to which participants suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was also assessed via a pertinent scale. Additionally, the quantitative leg of the reported study experimented with a scale to assess the degree of racial and ethnic prejudice among the migrants themselves. The method chapter discusses reasons for choice of the above-enumerated scales and documents their psychometric properties.

The journey was unknown for me. The companion’s company was thrilling. The beginning was also wondering but the ROAD had no end……

(Pritam Kundu)

https://www.yourquote.in/pritam-kundu-pf6/quotes/journey-unknown-me-companion-s-company-thrilling-beginning-t-bfxxq. Accessed March 26, 2020.

Introduction

The data used for this study are integrated, synthesized or multimethod, they subscribe to what the literature describes as a mixed-method approach (Bryman, 2006; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2010). A mixed-method approach is a newly evolving method that originated in the 1980s and early 1990s and popular among social scientists and those in health sciences. The method has metamorphosed from a formative stage through periods of developments, philosophical debates to more present-day reflective and procedural developments and has expanded into different disciplines and many countries (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011; Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009). According to Harding (2019), both quantitative and qualitative methods have equal status unlike in triangulation, one is used to check the other. However, mixed method is used when one has both data, when the researcher seeks to build on the strengths of both methods, i.e., having a “powerful mix” (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 1994, p. 42), when either approach is not enough to address the research problems and when there is the need to promote an alternative perspective in your study. In this book, data are generated from 3500 plus questionnaires for the quantitative study, whereas twelve focus group discussions (FGDs) and six in-depth interviews among African migrants from six European countries (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom) form the qualitative body of data. During the FGDs, participants were asked to provide thorough life stories that served as points of departure of the discussion and offered insights into migration patterns and networks, as well as problems encountered before, during and after migration periods, therefore, necessitating the use of a mixed-method approach.

The Convergent Parallel Mixed Methods Design

The convergent mixed methods approach is a familiar, and one of the basic and advanced mixed methods strategies. In this approach, a researcher collects both quantitative and qualitative data, analyses them separately, and then compares the results to see if the findings confirm or disconfirm each other (Fig. 7.1).

Fig. 7.1

Adapted from Demir and Pismek (2018)

Convergent parallel mixed methods design.

The key assumption of this approach according to Creswell (2014) is that both qualitative and quantitative data provide different types of information—often detailed views of participants qualitatively and scores on instruments quantitatively—and together they yield results that should be the same. It builds off the historic concept of the multimethod, multitrait idea from Campbell and Fiske (1959), who felt that a psychological trait could best be understood by gathering different forms of data. Although the Campbell and Fiske conceptualization included only quantitative data, mixed methods researchers extended the idea to include the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data. The rationale for using this design include the fact that we have both quantitative and qualitative data, we seek to build on the strengths of both methods offering the powerful mix Miles et al. (1994) spoke of, either approach is not enough to address the problems of migrations among Africans and we feel there was a need to promote an alternative perspective in our study. The design gives equal priority to both approaches, collects both data simultaneously or concurrently and compares both results to determine if the two databases yield similar or different results. However, some authors (Spicer, 2012) have argued that quantitative and qualitative approaches are different in methodologies and as such cannot be combined within one research while other researchers (Moses & Knutsen, 2007) have argued that such conclusions are unhelpful but we view the mixed method as not only a method that synthesizes and integrates but that both methods serve as different points on a continuum.

Socio-demographic Characteristics of Respondents

Accounts of the socio-demographic characteristics of the study participants will be given for the overall sample first, and—subsequently—country-by-country, separately.

Gender. In the overall sample, there were 49.3% women and 50.7% men. These percentages signal that gender proportions are equal in the studied sample of African migrants to Europe. Due to the fact that sampling for the present study was done via snowballing, it can hardly be tested, in what way the observed gender proportions are representative for African migrants to Europe. It seems obvious, however, that the gender distribution of current populations of African migrants to Europe is not that of a sequential migration, where men seek their fortune away from home, whereas women only follow them when men have successfully settled at their destination. This may have been the case earlier (see Idemudia & Boehnke, 2010), but at least in current times, there is little reason to believe that it is still the case (Fig. 7.2).

Fig. 7.2

Age distribution of the full sample

Age. The mean age of the full sample is 31.99 with a standard deviation of 8.46. The age range of included respondents was quite wide: The youngest participants were 18 years of age (under-age migrants not included for legal reasons), the oldest—four—participants were 72 years old. The age average closely resembles the average reported for the authors’ earlier study (31.60): African migrants to Europe typically are between their mid-twenties and their mid-thirties. Figure 7.3 documents the age distribution of the study participants.

Fig. 7.3

Marital status (percentages, rounded)

Marital Status. In the overall sample, 49% were single, 10% were either separated or divorced, and 30% were married, 4% were cohabiting without being married, 5% were traditionally married, meaning that they were married under indigenous African customary law, 2% were widowed. The percentage of singles is clearly higher than it had been reported for the authors’ prior study (38%). Figure 7.3 documents percentages in a pie chart.

An assessment as to whether these percentages are representative for Africans residing in the six included European countries is difficult. Adedeji (2019) reports highly sophisticated estimations for Germany and supports the notion that a clear majority of African immigrants are single, whereas at most one third is married. No comparative data is available for illegal immigrants. Furthermore, it is difficult to determine, how people who in our survey indicated that they were separated would formally have been categorized in the official statistic. It does seem likely, however, that our sample of legal and illegal African residents of Europe has more divorcees and separated individuals than is the case in a sample of legal residents only.

Educational and Professional Attainment. Current levels of educational attainment are as follows in the grand sample: Some 14% have only primary or no education. Fifteen percent have completed primary school; 17% have attended high school for a certain time, 22% have completed it. Some 31% have enjoyed at least some tertiary education. African migrants to Europe, on average have a fairly high educational attainment (Fig. 7.4).

Fig. 7.4

Levels of educational attainment (percentages, rounded)

As documented in Fig. 7.5, almost 60% of all participants were not working, suggesting that they contained the pool of those unprocessed refugees and awaiting documentation (structural delay of documentation as reported in results) or are either undocumented/stateless and with the few of those processed as bona fide refugees receiving welfare support of some kind or another. Thirty-two percent were either working or at least casually employed at the time of surveying, 7% indicated that they were officially unemployed, whereas 1% each reported that they had never worked or ticked the ‘other’ category.

Fig. 7.5

Relative and absolute frequencies of current employment status of migrants

Country of Origin, Migration Motivation, and Duration of Stay in Europe. Participants were also asked to indicate from where they migrated to Europe and a relative majority of respondents came from Nigeria (37%). Table 7.1 offers details information on the geographic setup of the sample. However, an explanation must be given here: Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and according to the Worldometers (2019) 2.61% of the total world population live in Nigeria, making it the population-wise seventh largest country in the world. By 2100, the UN estimates that the Nigerian population will be between 505 million and 1.03 billion people with a middle estimate as 730 million thereby making one in four Africans a Nigerian.

Table 7.1 Participants’ countries of origin

As for reasons to migrate to Europe, some 45% of the study participants who were willing to respond to this question, named economic hardship as their primary reason, 32% spoke of political problems, a sum total of 5% named health problems, problems with family or partners, and problems with the authorities (most likely a euphemism for fleeing from possible incarceration). Another 18% spoke of unspecified other reasons (Fig. 7.6).

Fig. 7.6

Migration motives (percentages)

As for the number of years participants have stayed in Europe, answers had a considerable range, varying between less than half a year and 70 years. The average duration of stay in Europe was 5.47 years with a standard deviation of 7.27 years. However, well over 30% of all study participants had been in Europe for less than one and a half years; more than one half of all participants were in their first three years of living in Europe. Figure 7.7 documents details.

Fig. 7.7

Duration of stay in Europe

Socio-demographic Characteristics of Respondents by Receiving Country. At first, we take a look at country-specific gender distributions. Gender balance varies between the subsamples. Table 7.2 documents the exact gender distribution for the six included countries. Also, with regard to age, the samples of people of African origin in the studied countries differed. The youngest sample was studied in the UK, whereas the oldest sample was included in the Italian sample. Table 7.3 documents details.

Table 7.2 Gender * country cross tabulation

Table 7.3 Country-specific age means

Proportions of singles in comparison to any other legal status also do differ between countries. Tested by a binomial test, there are significantly more singles (57%) in Germany and in Italy than in the grand sample. In Spain to the contrary, there are significantly fewer (41%) singles than in the grand sample, where the overall proportion is 49%.

As for educational attainment, country-specific samples also differ significantly from the grand sample average. Whereas in the grand sample, 31% of the participants reported that they had at least some tertiary education, the German sample encompassed more highly educated migrants (36%). The Dutch sample did not differ significantly from the grand sample in this respect (32%). In the other four countries, proportions of migrants with at least some tertiary education were significantly lower—as revealed by binomial testing. Proportions ranged from 4% in Spain to 21% in the UK.

Participants dramatically differ between countries into how far they are integrated into the job market. In France, 87% indicate that they work or are at least casually employed. In the Netherlands, this percentage is at 43%, in Germany at 39%. In Spain (18%), Italy (14%) and in the UK (3%), these percentages are substantially lower.

Countries of origin of the migrants included in the study are not all that different in the six countries. In all countries, Nigerians are the largest group. The second and third largest groups occasionally differ. In Germany, Ghana and Cameroon have the second and third-largest contingent. In Spain, Togo and Mali have the second and third-largest contingent. For Italy, the second and third-largest contingent—after Nigerians—come from Ghana and Togo. In France, Libya and Senegal have the second and third-largest contingents. In the Netherlands, the second and third-largest contingents come from Ghana and Cameroon. In the UK, the second and third-largest contingent—discrepant from the other countries—come from Congo (Kinshasa) and South Africa. Of course, one has to point out that drawing snowball samples for a given study offers no guarantee whatsoever to reach a representative sample. Given that sample sizes are large in the present study, one can, however, assume that Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands have indeed large populations of migrants from West Africa, and Spain does too, to some degree. France and the UK, on the other hand, do seem to have somewhat different African migrant populations.

As for reasons of migrating to Europe, migrants to Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands indicated economic hardship as the main reason for emigrating, whereas in Italy, France, and the UK, political problems most often were reported as main emigration reason.

Finally, the duration of stay of migrants also varied between the included countries. The average duration of stay varied between 4.9 years in Italy and 6.8 years in Spain.

As our analyses of variation in socio-demographic variables across countries revealed substantial differences in the set-up of the country-specific samples, it is necessary to not just treat the overall sample as a unified entity, but also check for the possible impact of country-specificities in the sample set-up in our subsequent analyses.

Contextual Settings

The settings are the six European countries (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and the UK) used for the study. Before we discuss the details of each country, it is necessary to discuss in general the relationship between these countries within the EU and Africa. According to pertinent Wikipedia (2019)¹ entries, European colonialism and colonization was the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over other societies and territories, creating a colony, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically. Studies (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2001; Bruhn & Gallego, 2011) have suggested that the current conditions of postcolonial countries have roots in colonial actions and policies including colonial policies of rule (Crowder, 1964), nature of investments (Huillery, 2009, 2011) and identity of the colonizers (Bertocchi & Canova, 2002). That the state-building process, economic development, cultural norms, and mores all bear the hallmarks of the direct and indirect consequences of colonialism on the postcolonial states. As indicated earlier, the major European colonial powers in Africa are the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands; only Ethiopia managed to remain uncolonized by Europeans between 1880 and 1914 when European powers competed to invade and colonize the African continent. By the end of the invasion period, roughly 90% of Africa was colonized by European nations (see Fig. 7.8).

Fig. 7.8

Map of Africa showing colonies after the Berlin conference of 1884

Before we proceed to addressing further details of gathering data from African migrants in the six EU countries to which the present research pertains, a more in-depth look at some parameters of the study settings of the current six EU countries seems in place. Information given in the subsequent section relies heavily on material published in The CIA World Factbook² and the pertinent Wikipedia entries.³ We refrain from inserting references for every single information and request readers to consult the sources references in Footnotes 21 and 22. In addition, in the description of Germany, we ‘confess’ auto-plagiarism of our monograph, I’m an Alien in Deutschland: A Quantitative Mental Health Case Study if African Immigrants in Germany (Idemudia & Boehnke, 2010, pp. 27–32).

Germany. Although Germany is not one of the classical immigration countries (as are, for example, the United States, Canada, Australia, Israel, or New Zealand), and is also a country without strong colonial ties in Africa, an increasing presence of African immigrants has become obvious. Germany lost its African colonies after World War I in the Treaty of Versailles. Before World War I Germany held colonies in South-West Africa, now Namibia and a small part of Botswana, West Africa, now Cameroon and Togo, and East Africa, now part of Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and a small part of Kenya and of Mozambique.

Today, Germany is a country with an immigrant population of over 10 million people, a figure including recent naturalizations, thereby taking Rank 3 in the World (United Nations, 2006) after the US (35.4 million) and Russia (12.1 million).

Germany has a total population of 80.5 million (CIA World Factbook, 2019). Of this figure, 87.2% are German nationals. Among the non-nationals Turks form the largest group (1.8%), with immigrants from Poland and from Syria forming the next largest groups. The relatively largest non-European groups come from the US, Vietnam, and China. At the end of 2018, altogether about 570,000 African nationals lived in Germany in 2018.⁴ Their average age was 30.6. Moroccans form the largest African group of non-German nationals (an estimated 240,000 have Moroccan roots in 2018). In comparison to the other included countries, Germany remains the country with least afro-descendants; estimates vary depending on the inclusion of all or only sub-Saharan Africans. If all are included the estimated population percentage lies at 0.6%, otherwise at 1‰.

Only about 110,000 non-German nationals obtained German citizenship through naturalization in 2018, among them about 11,000 Africans, the relative majority of them from Morocco.

The Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland), bordering the Baltic and the North Sea, is in a way Europe’s dominant country, both in economic power and population. Located approximately in the center of Europe, Germany is comparable in size to Zimbabwe and the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville). The country shares common borders with Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Today Germany is the European Union’s most populous nation. However, Germany as a unified nation is much newer than most of its European neighbors. Germany was founded as a unified nation and had her independence on January 18, 1871 under the leadership of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, after Prussia (Preußen) had conquered most of German-speaking Europe. Prior to that, “Germany” had been a loose association of 39 German states known as the German League (Deutscher Bund). The German Empire reached its zenith under Emperor (Kaiser) Wilhelm II just prior to the start of World War I in 1914. After the end of WW I, in 1918, Germany attempted to become a democratic republic in 1919, but the so-called Weimar Republic proved to be only a short-lived prelude to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the dictatorial “Third Reich” of the Nazis.

Following World War II, after the murderous Nazi era, the country was divided into four zones of occupation (UK, US, USSR, and later, France). The western part of the country became the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, or West Germany), proclaimed May 23, 1949, and included the former British, American, and French zones. Its eastern part, the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) was proclaimed October 7, 1949, and included the former Soviet zone. Unification of West Germany and East Germany took place on October 3, 1990, and all four-power rights formally relinquished 15 March 1991 (Fig. 7.9).

Fig. 7.9

Political map of Germany

After the Second World War, one man often gets most of the credit for creating today’s democratic Federal Republic of Germany. In 1949, Christian Democrat Konrad Adenauer became the new Germany’s first chancellor, sometimes labeled the “George Washington” of West Germany, a questionable honor, as this label had been used by the British politician Lloyd George for Adolf Hitler some years before (von Nostitz, 1967). That same year also saw the birth of communist East Germany (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) in the former Soviet Occupation Zone, ruled by the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) for some 40 years. It was, however, not until August 1961 that a wall physically split the two Germanys. The Berlin Wall (Mauer) and the barbed wire fence that lined the entire border between East and West Germany became a major symbol of the Cold War. By the time the Wall fell in November 1989, Germans had lived two separate national lives for four decades. Many Germans, including West German then Chancellor Helmut Kohl, underestimated the difficulties of reunifying people that had been divided and living under very different conditions for 40 years. Even today, some three decades after the Wall’s collapse, true unification is still a goal in many societal spheres.

Germany’s constitution (Grundgesetz, Basic Law) of May 23, 1949 became unified Germany’s constitution on October 3, 1990 (now a national holiday, Tag der Deutschen Einheit). There are two federal legislative bodies. The Bundestag is Germany’s House of Representatives or lower house. Its members are elected to four-year terms in popular elections. The Bundesrat (Federal Council) is Germany’s upper house. Its members are not elected but are the members of the federal state governments or their representatives. By law the upper house must approve any law that affects the Länder. The Federal President (Bundespräsident) is the titular head of state, but has no real political power. He⁵ holds office for a five-year term and can be re-elected only once. The current Federal President is social democrat Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The Federal Chancellor (Bundeskanzler) is the German “premier” and political leader. He/she is elected by the Bundestag for a four-year term. The current federal chancellor is Angela Merkel, heading a grand coalition government formed by Christian and Social Democrats. The Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) is the highest court of the land and the guardian of the Basic Law. There are lower federal and state courts. Germany has 16 federal states (Länder) with governmental powers similar to those of states in the US. West Germany had eleven Länder; the five so-called “new states” (neue Länder) of East Germany were reconstituted after unification. The GDR had 15 districts, each named for its capital city.

Religious groups in Germany include Roman Catholics (katholisch) 30.0% and Protestants (evangelisch), both at most 30%; Muslims, some 4%. Well over a third of the population has no religious affiliation, thereby making Germany one of the countries with the highest percentage of religiously non-affiliated inhabitants, many of them declared atheists (Zuckerman, 2007; Jagodzinski & Greeley, 1991). Since 2002, the monetary unit of Germany is the euro, which replaced the Deutsche Mark at that time.

With a per capita GDP around $US50,800 (PPP), Germany ranks somewhere between Ranks 16 (World Bank, 2018) and 19 (CIA World Factbook, 2019) in the world. It must be emphasized, however, that when looking at overall GDP (PPP) Germany takes Rank 5 after China, the United States, India, and Japan.

Ethnically Germany is clearly dominated by Germans (87%), no other ethnic group makes up for more than 2% of the population, with Turks, Poles, and Syrians the three largest other ethnic groups. As for refugees, Syrians, Iraqis, and Afghans constitute the three largest groups, with Eritreans and Somalis the largest African groups.

France. According to Ginio and Sessions (2016), the French presence in Africa dates to the seventeenth century, but the main period of colonial expansion came in the nineteenth century with the invasion of Ottoman Algiers in 1830, conquests in West and Equatorial Africa during the so-called scramble for Africa, and the establishment of protectorates in Tunisia and Morocco. The origins of French North Africa lay in the decline of the Ottoman Empire. In 1830, the French captured Algiers and from 1848 until independence in 1962, Algeria was treated as an integral part of France. Seeking to expand their influence, the French established protectorates to the east and west of it. French colonial expansion was not limited to the New World. In 1664, the French East India Company was established to compete for trade in the east. The French motivation for imperialism in Africa was to enhance the French economy to help pay the Prussian indemnity and to recover from the Great Depression of the 1870s. They also wanted to block British expansion in West Africa. French colonies in Africa include: Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco in North Africa, and Senegal, French Guinea, French Sudan, Upper Volta, Dahomey, and others in West Africa, and Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, Ubangi-Shari in Central Africa. France used a system of direct rule and assimilation (making French Africans) policies in their colonies hence to date French-speaking African countries include a network 26 members: twenty-two French-speaking (Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo (Republic), Democratic Republic of Congo (D. R. C), Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, and Senegal.

France, officially known as the French Republic (République Française) is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is bordered by Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany to the northeast, Switzerland, and Italy to the east and south east, and Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The country’s 18 integral regions (five of which are situated overseas) span a combined area of 643,801 km² and a total population of 67.3 million (as of October 2018). France is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country’s largest city and main cultural and commercial center. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille, and Nice (Fig. 7.10).

Fig. 7.10

Political map of France

Refugees and internally displaced persons in France come from Syria, Venezuela, and Ukraine, as the three largest groups.

In France, sub-Saharan African migrants are the second-largest migrant group after migrants from Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) (Pannetier, Lert, Jauffret Roustide, & du Loûa, 2017). Data from 2012 (INSEE, 2011, Pannetier et al., 2017) showed that African migrants from sub-Saharan Africa are a heterogeneous group, highly educated compared to other migrants (Ichou et al., 2017), mainly unemployed and represented approximately 13% of migrants in France and 1% of the French population who come mainly from West and Central Africa, of which about 60% are residing in the Paris metropolitan area and who in addition, earn their livelihoods through menial occupations or undeclared employment (Annequin, Gosselin, & Dray-Spira, 2017). In addition, migrants from sub-Saharan Africa face more discrimination than migrants from other regions (Beauchemin, Hamel, & Simon, 2015). Compared to natives, sub-Saharan African women and men migrants have an increased risk of hospital admission for psychosis (Tortelli et al., 2018).

Since the mid-1970s, French immigration policies and laws have become stricter, first limiting the flow of migrant labor and subsequently progressively restricting family reunification, in accordance with the general European context (Block & Bonjour, 2013). For many migrants, arrival in France is a time of legal insecurity. On average, after arrival, it requires three years for women and four years for men to obtain a residence permit valid for at least a year (Gosselin, Desgréesdu-Loû, Lelièvre, Dray-Spira, & Lydié, 2016). Recently, the French Defender of Rights has denounced discrimination regarding access to administrative rights for migrants (i.e., excessive requirements to comply with immigration regulations),⁶ which may represent an important source of stress.

Italy. The migration profiles of women and men are becoming more similar than previously. Women increasingly migrate to find employment, to pursue their education (Beauchemin, Borrel, & Régnard, 2013) and—more recently—to flee threats in their country of origin (Gosselin et al., 2016). Forced migration is accompanied by an increased risk of sexual violence (Pannetier, Ravalihasy, & Desgrées-du-Loû, 2017), with potential consequences for mental health.

Italy is one of the European countries with colonies in Africa during the modern period which lasted from 1890 to 1941. Italian colonies include present-day Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. The zeal to have their hands on the natural resources of Africa to power machines and improve their technology was the main reason for colonial conquest in Africa. History shows that Italy launched an invasion of Libya in 1911 in order to protect its banking interest in the Ottoman Empire and following a treaty with Ethiopia in 1889, the Italians declared the colony of Eritrea in 1890. According to Pretes (2019), Italy when compared to other EU countries, is a young country, having become unified as one nation only in 1861. Before that time, what is twenty-first-century Italy consisted of several independent kingdoms. Unification brought Italians together as one people and created a sense of shared national identity—as Italians rather than as Florentines or Neapolitans—including a feeling of common national destiny. Part of this feeling, among some Italians, included a desire to acquire overseas colonies—as other European countries were doing—and to relive the glories of the Roman Empire.

Italian colonialism in Africa came to an end with the death of the fascist Italian leader Benito Mussolini, the collapse of his regime, and the defeat of Italy in World War II. Half a century of Italian colonialism had long-term effects on attitudes towards race and racism in both Italy and its colonies. Italian colonization of Africa took place during the same period as other European colonization in the region. Italian colonial policies very much looked the same as other European colonial powers. The only difference between Italy and others is that Italy’s colonial policies were premised more on enhancing the glory and overall international prestige of Italy, rather than on the economic benefits that could be gained from colonies. Italian colonialism was also not guided by religious motives of converting native populations to Christianity. Italian imperialism was later shaped by Fascist doctrines of governance and social policy, which affected methods of administration and treatment of the indigenous African population (Pretes, 2019). Historical accounts also showed that a two-phased period of Italian colonization: from 1890 with colonization of Eritrea, the acquisition of Libya, Somalia, the invasion and occupation of Ethiopia and post 1937, when the occupation of Ethiopia was complete and the rise of the brutal Fascism took place.

Italy, as a relative latecomer to the colonial project, acquired what many Europeans considered to be the less desirable territories in Africa, including Eritrea, where Italian colonization was established in 1890; Somalia, where Italian rule began in 1905; and Libya, where Italian rule commenced in 1912. Italy had also attempted to invade Ethiopia in 1895, but was repulsed by Ethiopian forces in the Battle of Adwa, a sharp blow to many Italians in that a European army was defeated by an African one. The memory of this defeat would later inspire a second invasion of Ethiopia.

Pretes (2019) historical account also shows that Italian colonization was brutal and that the conquest of Libya—sometimes called the “Fourth Shore” of Italy—was lengthy and oppressive. Italy began its invasion of Libya in 1911, and succeeded in driving out the Turks, who controlled the territory, in 1912. But the Arab Libyans did not see the Italians as liberators; they resisted the Italians until 1932. The resistance movement, the Zanussi, was repressed, and its mosques closed and its leaders, such as Omar Mukhtar, imprisoned and executed. More than 100,000 Libyans were imprisoned in concentration camps, and from 1928 on cities were bombed with poison gas (despite Italy being a signatory of the Geneva Convention in 1925), which one Fascist commentator described as a “cleansing.” Separate communities were established for Italians, keeping them apart from Arabs and Jews.

Fascism also brought about a policy of apartheid in its colonies particularly when the race laws of 1938 (madamismo—sexual relations between Italian men and African women—was widespread in Italy’s East African colonies) were passed (Bosworth, 2006), although they remained ineffective. Around 10,000 children of mixed race were born during the period 1936–1941 in Ethiopia alone. Many Italians remembered the brutality of the conquest of Ethiopia in 1935, and were sympathetic with its inhabitants and critical of racist laws and policies. One working-class Italian was quoted as saying that the Fascist regime “would have been better off first to think about civilizing the Italians” before trying to civilize Africans.

Italy (Fig. 7.11) has 15 regions (regione) and five autonomous regions: Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Lazio (Latium), Liguria, Lombardia, Marche, Molise, Piemonte (Piedmont), Puglia (Apulia), Toscana (Tuscany), Umbria, Veneto; The autonomous regions include: Friuli-Venezia Giulia; Sardegna (Sardinia); Sicilia (Sicily); Trentino-Südtirol (German); Vallee d’Aoste (French).

Fig. 7.11

Political map of Italy

The ability of Italians and the colonized to get along meant that Italians, after the defeat of Italy in World War II, were treated relatively well by the people they colonized, especially in Ethiopia and Eritrea. The Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, when restored to his throne, granted clemency to Italians in Ethiopia. Many Ethiopians even thought that Italy had brought many benefits to the country, including the abolition of slavery, new roads, the control of famine, and the reduction of intertribal warfare. This generally positive view of the former colonizing power can be attributed to the good personal relations between Italians and Africans.

Spain. Spain has a border with Portugal in the west and borders with France and Andorra in the North. In the south, it borders Gibraltar, a British territory. Its territory also includes two archipelagos: The Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, and the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The African enclaves of Ceuta, Melilla, and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera make Spain the only European country to have a physical border with an African country (Morocco). The Spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla are in North Africa and border onto Morocco. Melilla, like Ceuta, was a free port before Spain joined the European Union. Both cities are a magnet for thousands of traders and menial workers who cross the border from Morocco each day to earn a living. Spanish West Africa (Spanish: África Occidental Española) is a former possession in the western Sahara Desert that Spain ruled after giving much of its former north-western African possessions to Morocco. It was created in December 1946, and combined with Ifni, Cape Juby and Spanish Sahara.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Spain had two major colonies in the continent of Africa: Spanish Guinea on the west coast of Africa, bordering the Gulf of Guinea. Spain did not engage directly in slave trade. The European countries that traded most were the Portuguese, British, and French. The Spanish used enslaved Africans as workers to develop their agriculture and settlements. They also used them in defense of the colonies.

The Strait of Gibraltar is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Gibraltar and Peninsular Spain in Europe from Morocco and Ceuta (Spain) in Africa. Political disputes with Spain shows that Morocco protests Spain’s control over the coastal enclaves of Ceuta, Melilla, and the islands of Penon de Velez de la Gomera, Penon de Alhucemas, and Islas Chafarinas, and surrounding waters; both countries claim Isla Perejil (Leila Island); Morocco serves as the primary launching site of illegal migration into Spain from North Africa.

Spain (Fig. 7.12) has 17 autonomous communities (comunidades autónomas) and two autonomous cities: (ciudades autónomas); Andalucía; Aragon; Asturias; Canarias (Canary Islands); Cantabria; Castilla-La Mancha; Castilla-Leon; Cataluña (Castilian), Catalunya (Catalan), Catalonha (Aráñese) [Catalonia]; Ceuta; Comunidad Valenciana (Castilian), Comunitat Valenciana (Valencian) [Valencian Community]; Extremadura; Galicia; Illes Baleares (Balearic Islands); La Rioja; Madrid; Melilla; Murcia; Navarra (Castilian), Nafarroa (Basque) [Navarre]; País Vasco (Castilian), Euskadi (Basque) [Basque Country]. However, note that the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla plus three small islands of Islas Chafarinas, Penon de Alhucemas, and Penon de Velez de la Gomera, administered directly by the Spanish central government, are all along the coast of Morocco and are collectively referred to as Places of Sovereignty (Plazas de Soberanía).

Fig. 7.12

Political map of Spain

In 2002, Gibraltar residents voted overwhelmingly by referendum to reject any “shared sovereignty” arrangement; the Government of Gibraltar insists on equal participation in talks between the UK and Spain; Spain disapproves of UK plans to grant Gibraltar greater autonomy; after voters in the UK chose to leave the EU in a June 2016 referendum, Spain again proposed shared sovereignty of Gibraltar; UK officials rejected Spain’s joint sovereignty proposal.

The statistics for refugees in Spain include Syrians, Ukrainians, and Venezuelans as the three largest groups. Spaniards of African descent mainly come from Cameroon, Gambia, Mali and Senegal. Additionally, many Afro-Spaniards born in Spain are from the former Spanish colony Equatorial Guinea.

Netherlands. According to historical reports, Netherlands in the seventeenth century, through its Dutch East India Company had surpassed Portugal in spice and silk trade and in 1652 founded a colony at the Cape of Good Hope on the southern African coast, as a victualing station for its ships on the route between Europe and Asia. The history of Dutch settlement in South Africa started in 1647 with the shipwreck of the Dutch ship Nieuwe Haarlem. Then, in 1652, a Dutch expedition of 90 Calvinist settlers under the command of Jan van Riebeeck founded the first permanent settlement near the Cape of Good Hope. History also showed that the colonization of the Dutch West Indies, an island group at the time claimed by Spain, began in 1620 with the taking of St. Maarten, and remains a Dutch overseas territory to this day, as part of the Netherlands Antilles. A ‘Boer’ means husbandman or farmer in Dutch and is a person of a South African of Dutch or a German or Huguenot descent especially one of the early settlers of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Descendants of Boers are currently known as Afrikaners.

In 1654, Indian slaves from the Dutch colonies had been introduced into the Cape area of South Africa by the Dutch settlers and by the end of 1847, following annexation by Britain of the former Boer republic of Natalia, nearly all the Boers had left their former republic, which the British renamed Natal.

The Dutch East India Company received a monopoly on the Indian Ocean spice trade in 1602, but needed to create supply forts along the African coast. Their biggest was Cape Town, founded in 1652 by Jan van Riebeeck. They settled along the Gold Coast, today around Ghana, and established major slave trade networks there. The Dutch colonized many parts of the world, from America to Asia and Africa to South America. From the seventeenth century onwards, the Dutch started to colonize many parts of Africa, including Ivory Coast, Ghana, South Africa, Angola, Namibia and Senegal.

The Netherlands (Nederland) sometimes known as Holland, is a country located mainly in Northwestern Europe (Fig. 7.13). The European portion of the Netherlands consists of twelve separate provinces that border Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, with maritime borders in the North Sea with Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. Together with three island territories in the Caribbean Sea—Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba—it forms a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The six largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht, Eindhoven and Tilburg. Amsterdam is the country’s capital while The Hague holds the seat of the State’s General, Cabinet and Supreme Court.

Fig. 7.13

Political map of the Netherlands

Ethnically, the Netherlands encompass 77% Dutch, with Turks, Moroccans, and Indonesians the three largest non-Dutch groups. Refugees come predominantly from Syria, Somalia, and Eritrea.

United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has a long history of colonial ties in Africa. In the 1880s, the British empire transited from an “informal empire” of control through economic dominance to direct control which later took the form of a “scramble” for African nations. Historical accounts state that Britain needed money to pay for its war debts and therefore started by way of engaging in surficial trade with their colonies. The King and Parliament believed they had the right to tax the colonies. They decided to require several kinds of taxes from the colonists to help pay for the French and Indian War, and as a result, the British Parliament passed the 1764 Currency Act which forbade the colonies from issuing paper currency. This made it even more difficult for colonists to pay their debts and taxes. Soon after Parliament passed the Currency Act, Prime Minister Grenville proposed a Stamp Tax. In addition, the British wanted to control South Africa because it was one of the trade routes to India. However, when gold and diamonds were discovered in the 1860s–1880s their interest in the region even increased. This brought them into conflict with the Boers. Tensions between Boers and British led to the Boer War of 1899–1902.

The United Kingdom, officially known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or referred to as Britain, consists of a group of islands off the northwest coast of the European mainland. It is a unique country made up of four nations: England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. England, Wales, and Scotland also make up Great Britain. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland (Fig. 7.14). The United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world. It is also the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017.

Fig. 7.14

Political map of the United Kingdom

The UK has a history of small-scale non-white immigration, with Liverpool having the oldest Black population in the country, dating back to at least the 1730s during the period of the African slave trade. During this period, it is estimated the Afro-Caribbean population of Great Britain was 10,000–15,000. In 1950 there were probably fewer than 20,000 non-white residents in Britain, almost all born overseas. In 1951, there were an estimated 94,500 people living in Britain who had been born in South Asia, China, Africa and the Caribbean, just under 0.2% of the UK population. By 1961 this number had more than quadrupled to 384,000, just over 0.7% of the United Kingdom population. Since 1948, substantial immigration from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia has been a legacy of ties forged by the British Empire.

Of the UK population 87% are whites, with Afro-Brits, Indians, and Pakistanis forming the three largest non-white groups. Refugees come predominantly from Iran, Eritrea, and Afghanistan.

Instruments

As stated earlier on, for the present study the quantitative part of the research used a structured questionnaire to collect data from African migrants in six European countries. The questionnaire contained the sections-A to H. Section A requested background (demographic) information on variables such as age, sex, educational qualification, marital status, migration variables like modes of transportation to Europe, migration status, length of stay in their various countries, reasons for leaving home, past and present working conditions, general past and current problems, history of migration, knowledge of migration travel and past and present expectations. Section B contained the Migrant Stress Questionnaire (MSQ) designed by the first author measuring Pre and Post Migration Stress. It has 26 items. Section C contained the General Health Questionnaire in its 28-item version, GHQ-28, measuring mental health, Section D contained the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-48), measuring personality dimensions of extraversion, psychoticism, neuroticism, whereas Section E contained a Xenophobia scale, asking participants for their own degree of support for xenophobic attitudes.⁷ Section F contained the posttraumatic stress disorder checklist (Civilian Version-PCL). The 17-item PTSD Checklist is a self-report measure that assesses trauma that people have in response to stressful experiences. Sections G and H contained the Brief Coping Scale and a modified version of the Schwartz Value Survey (PVQ, Schwartz et al., 2001) respectively.

Pre and Postmigration Difficulties Checklist: Migration Stress Questionnaire (MSQ). To measure pre and post-migration stressor difficulties among African migrants, a 26-item checklist designed by the first author was used to measure migrants pre and post-stress or difficulties experienced before leaving their countries and on arrival in their new host countries. Some of the items were adapted from the Wyatt Sexual History Questionnaire which assessed child and adult sexual abuse. The instrument has a 5-point response format (from strongly agree to strongly disagree). The 26 items are documented below in Table 7.4. The Migration Stress Questionnaire was derived from reports on daily experiences of African migrants themselves, items were retained in the language used by migrants. In other words, the items of the MSQ were deliberately kept in a lingo common among English-speaking sub-Saharan Africans (in italics), but the table offers the items in a Standard English version (see Table 7.4 for the exact formulation of the items). The instrument has been validated among African migrants from the general population in Bremen, Germany (Idemudia & Boehnke, 2010) to establish the consistency and validity of the Migration Stress Questionnaire (MSQ), which yielded an internal consistency of α = 0.86. The same checklist has been previously used among African migrants in Germany (Idemudia, 2011; 2014a, Idemudia & Boehnke, 2006, 2010) and for Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa (Idemudia, 2014b; Idemudia, Williams, & Wyatt, 2013; Idemudia, Madu, Wyattt, & Williams, 2013; Idemudia, 2017).

Table 7.4 Items of the migration attitude questionnaire

During validation, content validity was assessed using the judgment of experts from universities in Africa and the USA and from the review of several peer-reviewed journal articles. In addition, some of the 14 items that qualify as A-criterion items as specified in DSM-IV (TR) (APA, 1994) have been used to measure negative life events in the areas of problems with human rights abuse/violence/police victimization, poverty/lack, and sexual/physical abuse among male and female Zimbabweans in South Africa yielding two subscales: one on ‘threat to life’ (nine items), and the other on ‘abuse’ (five items).

The ‘threat to life’ subscale exhibited a consistency of α = 0.86 (♀ : α = 0.85; ♂ : α = 0.86) for pre-migration stress, and α = 0.83 (♀ : α = 0.85; ♂ : α = 0.80) for post-migration stress. The ‘abuse’ subscale exhibited a consistency of α = 0.84 (♀ : α = 0.82; ♂ : α = 0.85) for pre-migration stress, and = 0.87 (♀ : α = 0.82; ♂ : α = 0.88) for post-migration stress (Idemudia, Williams, Boehnke, & Wyatt, 2013).

General Health Questionnaire 28 (GHQ-28). The General Health Questionnaire is a psychological instrument used in measuring psychological mental health or dysfunctions (Goldberg & Williams, 1988; Goldberg, 1978; Goldberg & Hillier, 1979).

The scale is a self-administered screening instrument designed to detect psychiatric disorders in community settings and in non-psychiatric clinical settings such as primary care or general practice. It comes in three packs GHQ 60, 28 and 12. This study used the GHQ 28. The GHQ is popular and widely used in research across different cultural settings (Peltzer, 1999; Smit, van den Berg, Bekker, Seedat, & Stein, 2006; Gureje, & Obikoya, 1990; Aderibigbe, & Gureje, 1992; Idemudia & Matamela, 2012).

In this scale, the respondents are asked to compare their recent psychological state with their usual state. It consists of 28 items comprising four sub-scales. Scale A (questions 1–7) measures somatic complaints, scale B (questions 8–14) measures anxiety and insomnia, scale C (questions 15–21) measures social dysfunction, and scale D (questions 22–28) measures severe depression. All items have a 4-point scoring system using Likert scoring (0-1-2-3) less than usual, no more than usual, not at all, and much more than usual, respectively). Each question has four possible responses. Some of the items are also reversed and so is the scoring. In this study, scoring was done in such a way that the higher the score, the poorer the psychological symptom report. A test-retest in two weeks (Idemudia et al., 2013) demonstrated good reliability (r = 0.91). The GHQ-28 is validated for African cultures in Nigeria and South Africa with high reliabilities of α = 0.71 to α = 0.80. Idemudia et al. (2013) also recorded consistency coefficients of 0.55 (♀ : α = 0.49; ♂ : α = 0.59) for the somatic complaints subscale, α = 0.51 (♀ : α° = 0.46; ♂ : α = 0.55) for the anxiety and insomnia subscale, α = 0.59 (♀ : α = 0.64; ♂ : α = 0.53) for the social dysfunctions subscale, and α = 0.64 (♀ : α = 0.61; ♂ : α = 0.65). The overall scale exhibited a consistency of α = 0.79 (♀ : α = 0.80; ♂ : α = 0.77).

PTSD Checklist—Civilian Version (PCL). The PTSD Checklist—Civilian Version (PCL), Weathers, Huska, and Keane (1991) is a 17-item PTSD self-report measure of trauma that people have in response to stressful experiences. The items correspond to criteria for diagnosis of PTSD from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (APA, 1994). The scale has a Likert scoring system ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely). The PCL-C can be used with any population. The symptoms endorsed may not be specific to just one event which makes it useful when assessing survivors with multiple (pre-migration, mid- and post-migration) events. The PCL-C determines whether the total severity score exceeds a given cut-point. It has been used in migration study among Africans in Germany (Idemudia & Boehnke, 2010). In addition, the scale has been validated in health care settings (Stein, McQuaid, Pedrelli, Lenox, & McCahill, 2000) and among older adults (Cook, Elhai, & Areán, 2005). This instrument has been extensively used in South Africa and has been validated for South African men and women (Peltzer, 1998, 1999; Smit et al., 2006). Its consistency of α = 0.80 (♀ : α = 0.81; ♂ : α = 0.78) was also demonstrated (Idemudia et al., 2013) with the cut-off point of 50, corresponding with the validation done by Hudson, Beckford, Jackson, and Philpot (2008). PTSD is a pervasive disorder that affects some individuals following a traumatic experience. The diagnosis of PTSD according to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is predicated on “Exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence…” (American Psychiatric Association (APA), 2013, p. 271). This exposure may be direct or indirect like witnessing a traumatic event (TE), learning of trauma to a close family member or friend, or cumulative or extreme exposure to TEs.

Traumatic memories are laid down differently than normal memories. Cognition of the memories (explicit memories) is not always accessible. However, the implicit memories (the sensory and emotional memories that are related to the body’s learned memories) are stored and accessible. Because the cognitive piece is missing, the victim cannot always put these memories into words. Also, for a young child, because of developmental reasons, expressing traumatic memories may not be possible (Irby & Brown, 2011).

PTSD is a type of anxiety problem. It can develop after your safety or life is threatened, or after you experience or see a traumatic event. Some examples of traumatic events are a natural disaster, rape, severe car crash or fighting in a war. Usually, the event makes you feel very afraid or helpless. People with PTSD have trouble coping with and getting over traumatic events and often feel the effects for months afterward. PTSD can result from experiencing or witnessing any number of traumatic incidents, including hijacks, domestic violence or violent attacks, road accidents, robberies, and natural disasters. People with PTSD are plagued by persistent frightening memories of the traumatic event and often feel emotionally numbed and detached from the world due to their experience.

Coping Scale: Brief COPE. The Brief Cope Scale (Carver, 1997) contains 28 items with 14 subscales or styles people use when they encounter stressful life events. Two items each measure a subscale. As already laid out in Chapter Four, these scales include acceptance (A), emotional support (ES), humor (H), positive reframing (PR), religion (F), active coping (AC), instrumental support (IS), planning (P), behavioral disengagement (BD), denial (D), self-distraction (SD), self-blaming (SB), substance use (SU) and venting (V). Whereas A, ES, H, PF and R are considered emotionally focused coping, AC, IS and P are problem-focused coping (Carver, 1997). The other coping methods which include SD, SB, SU and V are termed dysfunctional coping strategies. Using a bi-dimensional approach, Meyer (2001) classified the problem and emotion focused strategies as adaptive coping, whereas the dysfunctional strategy is classified as maladaptive coping. While the adaptive coping strategies are associated with positive psychological wellbeing, the maladaptive coping methods are shown to predict mental health problems and perceived stress (Meyer, 2001; Alveal & Barraza, 2015).

The items deal with ways people cope with stress in their lives. The scale is applied to difficulties in migration in receiving countries which many people deal with differently. The items ask what individuals do in coping and how a person has tried to deal with it. Each item says something about a particular way of coping. Respondents are encouraged to answer in the extent they have been doing what the item says in terms of how much or frequently and not on the basis of whether it seems to be working or not—just whether or not you’re doing it. The scale has a 4-point Likert’s format of 1-4 response choices from (1) I haven’t been doing this at all to (4) I have been doing this a lot (Table 7.5).

Table 7.5 Brief COPE scale

The subscales are computed as follows (with no reversals of coding): Self-distraction, Items 1 and 19, Active coping, Items 2 and 7, Denial, Items 3 and 8, Substance use, Items 4 and 11, Use of emotional support, Items 5 and 15, Use of instrumental support, Items 10 and 23, Behavioral disengagement, Items 6 and 16, Venting, Items 9 and 21, Positive reframing, Items 12 and 17, Planning, Items 14 and 25, Humor, Items 18 and 28; Acceptance, Items 20 and 24; Religion, Items 22 and 27, Self-blame, Items 13 and 26. The original version of the scale has 60 items. The brief cope scale has only 28 items. The instruments have been used extensively used in diverse research.

The author does not encourage using the scale in a two-coping-style format or an overall coping index. The author also did not recommend any particular way of generating a dominant coping style for a given person. Specifically, some studies have used the Brief COPE instrument to investigate type of coping strategies utilized by migrants and refugees. For example, Strug, Mason and Auerbach (2009) found that older Hispanic and non-Hispanic migrants born in the United States adopted passive (emotionally focused) coping methods of the Brief COPE instrument. Using the 60-item version of the instrument, Khawaja (2007) found emotional and avoidance coping as positive predictors of psychological distress among some selected Muslim migrants in Brisbane, Australia. Also, in some British migrants in Australia, Shooter (2008) suggested that the use of denial as coping method associated with depressive scores while active coping, emotional and instrumental support did not. In contrast to the importance of denial, the findings of Chase, Welton-Mitchell and Bhattarai (2013) demonstrated that the most utilized coping mechanisms among Bhutanese refugees in Nepal include active coping, positive reframing and planning while religion, emotional and acceptance were less used.

The scale has been validated widely (Monzania et al. 2015; García, Barraza-Peña, Wlodarczyk, Alvear-Carrasco, & Reyes-Reyes, 2018) with results showing conformation for the theoretical factor structure of the situational Brief COPE and with all the 14 dimensions showing acceptable reliability and relationships with goal commitment and progress, attesting to the reliability and usefulness of this measure to evaluate coping responses to specific events. The scale has also been used widely with migrants globally (Chase et al., 2013, Bhutanese refugees in Nepal; Shooter, 2008, British migrants in Australia; Khawaja, 2007, Muslim migrants in Australia; Strug et al., 2009, immigrants in New York).

Schwartz Value Survey (PVQ). To assess value preferences of study participants, a ten-item version of Schwartz’s Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ) was utilized. This version of the PVQ is also being used in the World Values Survey (Inglehart et al., 2014) since its Wave 5. The instrument sets out to acquire information on participants’ preferences for each of the ten basic human values explicated by Schwartz (1992)—see Table 7.6 below and Chapter Four.

Table 7.6 Schwartz’s Ten Motivational Types of Values (including sample items)

Additionally, scores were usually (for exemptions, see Chap. 8) ipsatized. This means that scores indicated by individual participants were averaged across all ten value ratings. The overall person average was then subtracted from each of the ten value ratings. subsequently the midpoint of the response scale (3.5) was added as a constant in order to bring ratings back to the original level. This transformation is suggested by Schwartz (2009) to correct for individual response tendencies of marking all items on a specific (high or low) idiosyncratic level.

Reliability and validity of the instrument cannot be assessed in a ‘classic’ way: There only is one item per value type, so that no consistency coefficients can be offered. In order to remedy this shortcoming, it is advisable not to use the single value items as predictor or outcome variables in most subsequent analyses, but aggregate them to what Schwartz (1992) calls ‘higher-order values.’ Schwartz assumes four higher-order values, namely Self-Transcendence (two items: UN, BE), Conservation (three items: TR, CO, SE), Self-Enhancement (two items: PO, AC), and Openness (three items: HE, ST, SD). In the grand sample these four short scales exhibited sufficiently high consistency coefficients of α = 0.70, α = 0.82, α = 0.69, α = 0.64, respectively.

To test the validity of the four value preference measures vis-à-vis Schwartz’s theory, we performed PROXSCAL multidimensional scaling as offered by SPSS25.⁸ Findings are sufficiently in line with conceptual expectation as shown in Fig. 7.15 (compare also Chapter Four).

Fig. 7.15

PROXSCAL solution of higher-order value types

Qualitative Study

The instruments for the qualitative phase were audio recording tapes, pencil and paper. No video devices were used. The objectives of the qualitative research embedded in the questions during the FGDs and in-depth interviews are as follows:

• 1. What are the push and pull factors for migration in each country of origin and of destination?

• 2. Which motivations (reasons) exist to migrate to one of the six European countries included in the study?

• 3. What are the pre-migration, mid-migration, and post-migration stressors (challenges) among migrants?

• 4. Which coping strategies are preferred in pre-migration, mid-migration, and post-migration?

• 5. What are the common features of stress in all of the six European countries?

• 6. What are the common features of coping in all of the six European countries?

• 7. What are the different features of stress among all the countries?

• 8. What are the different forms of coping in all six countries?

• 9. Are there intentions among migrants to go back their countries of origin?

• 10. Which recommendations do migrants overall and in each of the six European countries voice?

FGDs were planned to have ten participants in each of the six countries (two per country) and were supposed to take no less than 90 min and no more than 240 min. FGDs commenced with a welcome and short talk about confidentiality. Then, an overview was given over topics to be discussed in the allotted time. Topical questions read:

• 1. Let us discuss our lives in our various home countries before we came to Europe. What happened and why did we decide to leave?

• 2. During the journey: How did we travel and what good and bad experiences did we encounter?

• 3. We will also talk about what happened when we arrived Europe. Is this our first entry point or did we go to another before coming here? What experiences did we encounter? Why did we choose to change and if not why?

• 4. Let’s talk about the people we met in Europe. How did we or do we find them? What are our experiences? We will also talk about police behavior, immigration officers’ behavior, asylum workers etc.?

• 5. Let us talk about what problems (if any) we suffered such as health issues, physical issues, money issues.

• 6. Let us also talk about enjoyment issues, things we have gained or lost and what are we doing about it now and the future.

• 7. Let us talk about how we have been or are still coping with the stress/problems/enjoyments/ events, etc., discussed earlier on and what we think we and others such as European and African governments/individuals can do to help the situation or solving the problems.

• 8. Any emerging themes from No. 1–7 are being clarified and discussed in group format.

Participants for the focus group discussions (FGDs) and in-depth-interviews were reached by means of snowballing which in turn led us to larger groups such as in churches or mosques or social places of gathering. Fliers were put in place and used to advertise the days and time of the study. Participants who were interested in the study indicated interest either by telephone or during physical meetings. Participants were then told to arrive at a specific place—a designated house, hotel, church or mosque premise (etc.) for the meeting where the aims and objectives of the study were described and explained. The first time point occurred at the screening. Participants were screened and informed of the purpose of the study and afterwards if qualified informed consent was obtained. The second time point was to have participants explain the study in their own words to help us know that they had a clear understanding of the purpose of the study and the procedures before they were allowed to sign the informed consent forms and to participate in the study. Only eligible persons participated in the study.

Informed consents were collected before they participated. No identifying information was collected. Participants were given incentives to participate as advertised on the fliers. Participants were given incentives which included monetary and non-monetary assistance such as gift vouchers (€10 which is approximately about $US11) and transportation fares (€5 which is approximately $US6) for their trip. Participants were sampled based on the following entry criteria: (i) Minimum of one month stay in host country (ii) self-identified as a migrant, (iii) males and females, (iv) 18 years or older, (v) ability to express his or herself in English/Pidgin English and (vi) willing to participate. Exclusion criteria were (i) stateless persons (ii) non-Africans, (iii) under 18 years (iv) unable to participate in discussions due to serious drug, alcohol-oriented illness where they would not be able to concentrate or participate in discussions.

The study commenced at a time when in Germany, Jacobs University Bremen and the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS) being the academic host of the study, formal ethics checks were not required before fielding a research project. When accepting funding of the research and when signing work and visitor contracts with Jacobs University, both authors were, however, required to ascertain that they would adhere to the rules of Good Academic Practice as spelt out by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.