What Am I Doing?

It’s been a long and difficult afternoon of napping and thinking, napping some more, thinking a little more, and writing. But I feel it’s been useful.

I started out with a mind map:

The ‘What Am I Doing?’ Mind Map

And then moved on to write up ‘The Situation’:
• A large employment site, employing multiple ethnicities: Tamil, Muslim and Sinhalese work side by side in a garment factory in a rural area in post-war Sri Lanka. They usually choose to have their tea and lunch separately to one another. This is likely a language issue: the main language in the factory is Sinhalese. Most of the employees are Sinhalese.

• The factory is situated in Ampara Town. Ampara Town is about 97% Sinhalese. Old laws prohibit any other ethnicities from settling here or setting up businesses here. Very few of the factory employees live in the town itself.

• Ampara Town is the main town in Ampara District. According to 2007 statistics, the ethnic composition of the district is roughly 44% Muslim, 38% Sinhalese and 18% Tamil.

• The Eastern Province suffered, supposedly, during the 30 year long civil war, that ended in 2009. There are claims that ethnic tensions persist.

• Large employment sites such as the factory are amongst the only outlets in the district where ethnicities come into contact with one another. They do so peacefully and amiably, despite some language barriers. I am told there are no tensions between ethnicities. Any worker disputes are entirely unrelated to ethnicity.

• Meanwhile, peace building and reconciliation groups in Sri Lanka promote the importance of ethnic integration

• Yet the ethnic groups in Ampara District live peaceably apart.

• Settlements have been divided since their establishment, many of them dating back to centuries ago. The British colonisers and colonists play a large part in the settlement patterns in Ampara District.

• Despite alleged tensions between ethnicities, ethnic conflict of any sort does not appear to be present in the everyday fabric of the workers’ lives

• It would appear that the tensions are purely political, at a ‘higher’ level, as I’ve been told a number of times, the rural poor have more important things to think about, like how they will feed their families each day.

• So is ethnic integration through employment a good thing? Could it help with post war reconciliation? Is it needed at all?

• Is this… ‘an investigation into the importance/relevance/necessity of ethnic integration through employment in rural, post-war, Sri Lanka’?

Maybe.

So having summarised (and simplified) a lot, I have come up with the following:

Title:

An investigation into the importance/relevance/necessity [select your favourite or suggest another and we’ll roll with it] of ethnic integration through employment in rural, post-war, Sri Lanka

Research Questions:

What opportunities exist for ethnic integration in Ampara District, both at the workplace and in the wider community?

What is the ethnic distribution in Ampara District, and when do people of different ethnicities come into contact?

What ethnic tensions are present in Ampara District, where, and why, and what causes these to build to the point of conflict?

These questions should help me investigate the topic thoroughly and come up with some kind of answer as to how important ethnic integration in the workplace is, and why.

All of the above is entirely subject to change, as always. Although I’m leaving Sri Lanka in just a few days, I’ve barely skimmed the surface with all the literature there is out there to read, and I’ll be continuing a few threads of research too. But for now, it’s good to remind myself of where I am and what the point of my research is. My mother kindly mocked me earlier for having to ask myself what I’m doing, but it really is so important to keep track of things! Hence why I don’t feel one iota of guilt for having such a seemingly lazy afternoon.

Also, just for reference, here’s a mind map I made at the beginning of my research – look how much it’s changed!!

Some ideas for research topics surrounding a preliminary title.

A New Group Activity Idea?

All four participatory mapping groups are complete, although I do still have another week in the factory (after a short ‘break’ in Colombo – hopefully some more interviews and meetings with some NGOs and researchers), so I could do some more when I’m back. Interestingly, I’ve called in Chamila’s help to arrange the last two sessions, and although up until now all the sessions have been girls only, yesterday she brought a couple of boys along too. I considered this, and then shrugged it off and thought that right now, for this activity, gender couldn’t matter less to me. The gender thing did then make me think a little more though: I can’t distinguish at all between boys of different ethnicities, whereas with girls there are very obvious markers, in terms of clothing and adornments. Food for thought.

Mapping sessions aside, however, I’ve had another idea. The direction my research is taking is slanting heavily towards looking at integration in communities and the benefits of it, so I thought I might do this:

Host several ‘build the ideal (imaginary) community’ sessions, without any input from me as to what ‘ideal’ is supposed to be (I may use a different word… like, build a good community, a perfect community, a happy community, a peaceful community, not sure yet).

I would do this by…

1. Cutting out a number of paper squares, and colour coding them according to ‘ethnicity’ – same colour code as for the mapping – black = Sinhalese, blue = Muslim, red = Tamil. I would cut out about 30 or 40 squares, and the ethnicity ratio would be roughly the same as the district ethnicity ratio, obtained from population statistics in a special enumeration report from 2007. This data is about as reliable as it’ll come.
2. Each square would represent 5, maybe 10 families.
3. I would also cut out basic outlines of a church, a mosque, a Hindu temple and a Buddhist temple, and include some symbols to clarify what they’re supposed to be. These are the four main religions in the country. Although, from the mapping sessions, religion doesn’t seem to play a huge part in the day to day routine, these buildings are still one of, if not the main landmark in each community to indicate which ethnicity the community is.
4. I would also provide four stretches of road, which when it comes to building the community, provides a few options for community layout. This could be simplified with just two stretches of road, giving options of one straight road, a t-junction, or a crossroads in the community.
5. Most communities seem to follow a river, so I would provide a couple of stretches of ‘river’, and I would also provide a ‘lake’ – another popular element to any community (hence four stretches of road – I’d be interested to see if they positioned the community around all four sides of the lake, dividing ethnicities up that way – physical barriers to integration are important to explore too, and at this scale the only real physical barriers are water sources).
6. With these props, I would ask participants, together, to build what they think would make for the ideal community.
7. This activity would hopefully last for about 15 minutes, and I hope it would stimulate group discussion.
8. Once the activity was finished, I would give them a few more black pieces of paper, and invite them to add in any amenities they thought their community should have, and place them in the appropriate places.
9. Although I could provide them with shops and schools at the beginning, I wouldn’t want to introduce the bias of there being a predefined number. For example, if I give them three shops, then they might automatically assume the community should be divided into three, according, obviously, to ethnicity. The same goes for schools.
10. The session would be followed by a brief discussion about why things have been placed where they have. These sessions would need to be smaller than the mapping sessions, otherwise there’s a risk of shyer participants not contributing. I think three or four would be the ideal number, and a mix of ethnicities would be perfect, although it may be difficult to find one Muslim, one Tamil and one Sinhalese girl who all can speak English well enough to get what’s going on. I’ll think on it.

The aim of all this is to see, without asking directly, whether people think communities are better divided by ethnicity, or integrated. When I ask directly, people seem a little put on the spot as it’s not something they’ve thought too much about. Chamila’s father, for instance, when asked whether he thought it was good for ethnicities to mix in the community, shrugged and almost asked, ‘I suppose it’s good, yes?’, but he seemed very unsure and I think he was just repeating things to give me the answer he thought I wanted to hear.

The reason I’m doing this, is that with the reading I’ve been doing and the results I’m getting, I’m not sure that integration is actually desired. Not in a hostile sense, but I think people are perfectly happy to just rub along with each other. Peacebuilders are often quoted to say that integration is key, but I think this assumption needs to be explored a little more before I decide one way or another. Before I came, I thought, well, of course integration is the way forward when it comes to peaceful communities. Now, I’m not sure, and I think it’s really important to question it further.

Feedback on this idea would be really helpful, so if you have any suggestions or improvements please leave a comment!

Making Maps!

I’ve now completed two participatory mapping sessions with groups of workers at the factory I’m researching. The aim of the maps is to understand where and when workers of different ethnicities come into contact with people of other ethnicities. In a district where Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese reside, it is surprising to see that so far, the only time my participants come into contact with people of a different ethnicity to their own is when they’re at work.

Baba G will teasingly roll her eyes and mock me for being ‘such a geographer’ whenever I start talking about maps. It’s true. I love maps. They say a picture’s worth a thousand words; a map’s worth ten times more!

I first created a large basemap myself; I would have liked to have done this with my participants, but sadly, due to time constraints, it just hasn’t been possible. So, I tried only to put down very basic information, such as main roads, main towns and main lakes as additional reference points. I wasn’t sure how clued up on maps my participants would be, because despite having been to school, whether they’ve used maps much in the past is questionable.

 

Preparing a basemap, using a purchased tourist map of Sri Lanka for reference.

I also prepared some large plastic overlays: one for the morning, one for the evening, and one for the day off, on which the girls can mark where they are, and what they’re doing, at what time. This not only helps me to visualise where Tamil, Muslim and Sinhalese paths cross, but also what places and activities in the district hold meaning for the employees. Again, I was going to have more overlays – separate ones for lunch in the factory and tea break in the factory, and a map showing the bus routes to work, but with only a half hour slot with each group, it just isn’t feasible. The overlays that have been removed from the sessions are ones for which information can be very easily gained elsewhere. Lunch time and tea break locations of workers in the factory, for example, can be deduced through participant observation, which I’ve been doing a lot of anyway, so I already have a pretty good idea of who goes where with who. Information regarding bus routes has been provided to me by HR, and I’m simply asking the girls to write down which bus route they take. The photo below shows everything prepared and ready, including choccy biscuits on the table – a little ploy to make the atmosphere a little more relaxed and welcoming, along with having opened the curtains in the room to allow more natural light to flood in.

Ready to begin.

I need to think about what to buy for Padma to thank her for all her translation skills! She’s been invaluable, and the other employees seem very comfortable with her, which is a relief. She is always smiling and laughing, and everybody seems to understand when she explains to them, so that’s fantastic! It’s really helped to make sure the girls are happy being there, and that there are no uncomfortable moments. Padma arrived a little late to my session yesterday, but I’ve learnt enough Sinhalese to get by for long enough, and there are now girls I know as friends in each of the groups, so that helps to break the ice with other participants too.

Me with the first group, and Padma translating at the side

 

More from the first group – this was at the end of the session, as I was explaining that I’d find them all in a week or so and give them a little something to say thank you.

The first group somehow arrived in two separate groups of four, which is why they’re all standing at one edge of the table. Thankfully, in yesterday’s session all 8 turned up at the same time, so there was a nice crowd around the table, munching on chocolate snacks as they placed their details onto the map.

Explaining the session to the first group, with the de-curtained window behind me

One downside of yesterday’s session was that three men had been having a meeting in the room before I wanted to use it. I asked Dharma Sir about this and he said it wouldn’t be a problem, and that I could use the room as planned at 12:30pm. I hadn’t realised that this meant the men would continue their meeting alongside my participatory mapping session, so at times there were competing voices, but thankfully the girls didn’t seem too fazed by it! I think I’ll be holding the next session tomorrow – I’m just hoping it goes as well as the first two!

All the data that I am collecting will be inputted into a GIS to create a basic time-map of the district and the employees’ movements through the district. It’ll be great watching it all come together.