Behind the research: Dorte Thorsen

Over the course of the last 10 years, the Migrating out of Poverty consortium has drawn on the enthusiasm and expertise of many people across the globe. This blog series focuses on the people behind the research, who have kindly shared personal reflections and learning from their experience of working with the consortium.

Dorte has led the programme’s work on gender analysis and qualitative research for five years, working with partners across the consortium to integrate questions about gender dynamics in migration from research design, to analysis, to developing evidence-based material for policy-making and programming.

During this time she has also worked with partners in Bangladesh, Singapore, Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal and Zimbabwe to understand the different processes of social change that lead to new categories of migrants and, in turn, the social changes generated by the absence of migrants, remittances and return migrants. For the past three years, she has led the Gender and Generations theme, focusing on bringing new angles to the study of migration by looking the impact on family relations, empowerment and equality issues in rural areas of four African countries.

I have truly appreciated working with long-time and new partners across the consortium, developing working relationships that thrived on the sharing of insights from all the research sites.  

Together we have learned a lot about how people deal with absence, and sometimes loss, and about the diverse ways that remittances can change everyday lives and social positions not only of migrants but also of the people back home. We are now sharing our findings with policy makers and civil society in each country as well as international organisations.

The Migrating out of Poverty programme has been a true team effort, and we appreciate the role each individual has played in producing and disseminating the research.

Thank you for all your hard work with the Migrating out of Poverty programme, Dorte!