This paper uses a reflexive approach to consider the opportunities and challenges of using a visualisation tool in qualitative research on social networks. Although widely used to map social networks over many decades, particularly in health studies and psychology, network visualisation tools are less common in qualitative sociological research. While recent trends in Social Network Analysis (SNA) have tended to concentrate within the quantitative domain, our paper is influenced by the ‘cultural turn’ in network research, and aims to respond to calls for more exploration of how social ties are constructed and represented in qualitative research. Having used a target sociogram to visualise the networks of highly skilled migrants, we reflect critically on how this tool, far from being a neutral data collective device, influences how networks were described, explained, and perceived by participants. Focusing on the dynamics within the interview encounter, especially in the context of ‘researching up’, we explore participant reactions, what we learned and might do differently, next time. We conclude that, despite certain limitations, the sociogram helped mitigate the abstract nature of some topics by connecting them to specific groups of people drawn on the diagram. The tool not only enhanced participants’ reflection process but allowed certain topics to emerge which might have not otherwise surfaced, hence greatly contributing to the collection of rich data. Nonetheless, as we discuss, there are also ethical issues associated with its use.
In this article, through comparing two highly skilled migrant groups in London, we explore how new types of information and communication technologies (ICTs) shape the form and content of transnational practices through time and space. In so doing, we aim to contribute to several debates in the field of migration studies. First, our findings highlight enduring practical constraints emanating from everyday routines and responsibilities, thus questioning the extent to which ICTs may be shrinking the globe and freeing people, even highly skilled ones, from spatial and temporal fixity. Second, we challenge assumptions about the ease of transnationalism by exploring the range and complexity of long‐distance interpersonal relationships and their dynamics over time. Third, by focusing on a comparison of relatively affluent, highly skilled migrants, we question the usefulness of the category of ‘middling migrants’. Our findings illustrate that, within this general and wide ranging category, there are diverse experiences, expectations and opportunities of maintaining contact with friends and family at home.
Further national and international research is needed to understand better the causal variables underpinning differential attrition rates, with particular regard to understanding how different groups may experience the relationship between education and their broader circumstances and between the theoretical and the clinical elements of nurse education itself.
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