Implementing collaborative qualitative data collection

This chapter sheds light on a collaborative approach to large-scale, qualitative, cross-country data collection, with emphasis on ‘implementation’. Implementation here refers to a deliberate approach to the stages of the research process: from planning and preparation for data collection, through doing during fieldwork - conducting focus groups, observing, and interacting with people, to the documentation stage, with particular modes of quality assurance of data submission and reflection on modes of co-production of knowledge. The chapter draws on experiences from the EU funded research project MIGNEX (Aligning Migration Management and the Migration-Development Nexus), which collaboratively collected data in 26 research areas, in 10 countries, in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The value added of the discussed approach lies both in its systematic take on the research process and its constituent phases - planning, doing and documenting, and in its approach to collaboration - as integral to the research process.