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Workstream 2: Burden and Lived Experiences

Burden and Lived Experiences

This Workstream is one of three iterative workstreams around which the work of GEMMS centres.

This Workstream centres around conducting research with migrants in precarious situations, health workers and service providers to generate new knowledge about:

(a) The burden and lived experiences of the intersecting risks of gendered violence and poor mental health; and

(b) Socio-economic determinants and contextual mechanisms that shape gendered violence and poor mental health risks, including the distribution and accessibility of resources that can help reduce gendered violence and enhance mental health. Our research questions include:

  1. What is the burden and lived experiences of gendered violence and poor mental health risks among migrants in precarious situations? How do these risks change with movement across time and places?
  2. What are the socio- economic, geo-political contextual mechanisms underlying gendered violence and poor mental health risks among migrants?
  3. What are the availability, distribution and access barriers to resources and services to address these risks and enhance well-being? And
  4. What methods and technologies are effective in understanding s and responding to the needs of migrants as they move across time and places?

Our Approach

This Workstream involves collecting cross-sectional and longitudinal data and involves two distinct, but complementary methodological approaches. The first is a quantitative cross-sectional survey and longitudinal phone tracing study on prevalence and determinants of gendered violence and mental health in India (M East), Cambodia, Manicaland in Zimbabwe, and along the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe. Data collection will involve a cross-sectional survey to identify the social and neuropsychological consequences of gendered violence, while the longitudinal phone tracing survey will allow for an exploration into the ways in which these consequences change over time, and across the different spaces migrants travel.


The second methodological approach will involve ongoing engagement in participatory action research (PAR). A subset of the population surveyed will be invited to participate in more in-depth qualitative enquiry. This will involve in-depth qualitative interviews utilising the Adversity Grid to examine the household, community and institutional levels that structure experience of everyday violence and psycho-social well-being. In addition to participatory workshops that will help establish the co-design group (for Workstream 3) and yield information on resources and assets they use or the barriers in accessing these.


We plan to use participatory resource mapping and photovoice – photovoice is an audiovisual method gaining popularity as a promising visual/ image-based method increasingly utilised by researchers, policy makers and practitioners to engage affected people and communities in studying, planning for, and/or tackling global health and development challenges. Its focus on collective production of knowledge towards social change, especially involving those who are excluded in policy decisions and most in need to be heard, is particularly amenable to our project’s objective and ethos.