Two recent interview-based studies of migrants from Burma living in Thailand highlight some important issues of narrative methodology and analysis. While narrative inquiry foregrounds the 'personal stories' that reside within political structures that shape the parameters of participants' lives, narrative ethnography is challenged to find the true voice of oppressed people in exploited populations when interpreters are needed to bridge the language divide. In addition, although ethnography traditionally involves long-term immersion in cross-cultural humanitarian research, often researchers of exploited populations cannot remain at the research site for long owing to control of them by foreign governments. In this paper we explore ways of validating the narratives of oppressed participants through interpreter training and review of interpreter translations. Interviews with multiple stakeholders offered different perspectives, but also tended to show up familiar themes; and triangulation of data from multiple participants ensured greater data reliability. Through these interview-based cross-cultural studies, we learned to understand the complexity of narrative methodology and analysis in exploited populations; appreciate that a 'life story' is determined and shaped by socioeconomic and political forces; and identify ways of validating qualitative data when interpreters are used.

The chapters in this ebook were developed from papers presented at the Second Global conference, The Value of Work: Exploring Critical Issues in Prague on Monday 31st October to Wednesday 2nd November. The Conference was organised by Inter-Disciplinary.Net which is a global network for dynamic and transdisciplinary research and publishing. The papers presented at the conference were a thought provoking mix of theoretical and practical aspects of work. Academics and practitioners from many disciplines and countries discussed the presentations. The chapters of this ebook are a result of the serious reflections by the authors of those discussions. This ebook makes a worthwhile contribution to the study of work because some chapters offer new insights about work and other chapters extend the boundaries of knowledge areas of work. As a transdisciplinary approach to work the collection of chapters provides much to connect many of the disparate disciplines that have to date dominated the publications in this field.

Poverty, lack of employment opportunities and conflict displace millions of people across the globe. In the past three decades, the number of people migrating internationally for employment has more than doubled worldwide. The vast majority of people leave their families through lack of employment opportunities in their home country, and such migration impacts on the economic and cultural life of home and host societies. Nepal, a developing country in South Asia, have become heavily dependent on income derived from labour migration to the Gulf States, with more than one million able-bodied men going there in the past twenty years. This migration is a continuing crisis for the wives left behind, who struggle in poverty throughout their working lives with the little hope of a better future. The impact of this particular type of migration is explored in a recent study into the lived experiences of the left-behind wives. This research was conducted using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The quantitative results, using health related Millennium Development Goals show that the left-behind women are significantly worse off than other Nepalese. The qualitative results show that migration is: i) a desperate act rather than an active lifestyle choice; ii) young wives struggle for years to survive while their husbands are away; and iii) after about five years the left-behind wives experience some marginal positive benefits. There are opportunities to learn from these results and to improve the quality of lives of these women. The findings offer theoretical insights to expand the interrelationships between migration and patriarchy to minimise the suffering of the left-behind wives; and suggest practical flexible development strategies to address the implications of the global crisis of male migration on the wives left behind.

Migrants have escaped intra-national conflict within Burma by seeking refuge in Thailand for over 30 years. But recent development projects in eastern Burma have further displaced segments of Burma's ethnic population, with approximately 150,000 refugees now dispersed throughout nine refugee camps in Thailand. Additionally, an estimated 2-4 million 'self-settled' refugees reside in communities along the Thai-Burmese border and in Thailand's larger cities. Both categories of migrants are referred to as the 'asylum-migration' nexus, and represent the visible side of human rights abuse in Burma.