Social Science Baha

Ongoing Projects

Research Network on Competence and Job Creation

Collaborating Partner: Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI)
Duration: 25 February 2021 to 31 May 2026

The proposed network intends to contribute with more in-depth knowledge of policies that may contribute to a more rapid transition towards inclusive growth with competence building and increasing incomes for the unskilled poor. CMI is combining insights from the partners’ countries and neighboring countries using different methodologies, including RCTs, analysis of survey data, and qualitative methods. The network will build on previous and ongoing research programs that involve the core partners in the network.

Macro Level Study on Market Diagnostics and Supply and Demand of Skills of Nepali Migrant Workers

Funding Agency: International Organization for Migration
Collaborating Partner: Ernst and Young LLP
Duration: September 2022 to November 2022

The overall objective of this study is to generate evidence to build competencies for future skill requirements of Nepali migrant workers, support the stakeholders and returnee migrant workers and their family members who were affected by the pandemic through the identification of enterprise skill set needs in the field of work, demand needs and support in the design and delivery of relevant reintegration activities. The recommendations of the study will provide practical ways ahead to match the demand and supply in the Nepali local labor market.

Towards Decent Work: Identifying Extent, Circumstances, Factors and Nature of Informality and Decent Work Deficits in the Garbage Collection, Cleaning, and Sanitation Sectors in Nepal

Funding Agency: International Labour Organisation
Duration: 10 August 2022 to 15 November 2022

The overall objective of the study is to identify the extent, circumstances, factors and nature of informality and decent work deficits in the garbage collection, cleaning, and sanitation sectors in Nepal. The study also aims to put forth policy recommendations to effectively reduce decent work deficits in the garbage collection, cleaning, and sanitation sectors and aid the transition to formality.

Citizens’ Perspectives on the Legitimacy of Civil War Peace Processes: An Experimental Conjoint Analysis

Collaborating Partner: Gettysburg College
Duration: February 2022 to March 2022

 The study, which is being carried out jointly with Gettysburg College in the United States, aims to assess people’s perspectives on the role of various groups in peace processes. The findings will generate information about people’s preferences regarding peace processes, which may then be used to inform similar processes in other parts of the world.

An Assessment of Available Gender Data on Migration in Nepal

Funding Agency: UN Women
Duration: 10 June 2022 to 30 December 2022

Project Description: The overall objective of the study is to carry out an assessment of the extent to which available data and nationally prioritized SDG targets and indicators at both national and local levels are disaggregated by gender and other variables, viz, caste/ethnicity, social and economic status, region and other variables as required by the SDGs, and specifically related to women migrant workers.

Migrant Rights and Decent Work Project

Funding Agency: International Labor Organization
Duration: 25 April 2022 to 15 November 2022

Project Description: The overall objective of the current study is to carry out research for the development of the Nepal Labor Migration Report 2022 by providing a comprehensive overview of labor migration from Nepal with a focus on fiscal years 2019/20 and 2021/2022.

Mapping Recruitment Agencies Practices Against Fair Recruitment Principles 

Funding Agency: SaMi/Helvetas Nepal  
Duration: 20 June 2022 to 31 December 2022

Project Description: The study aims to conduct a mapping and assessment of business practices of selected recruitment agencies by comparing their recruitment process against fair recruitment principles. The study will examine the recruitment practices of the agencies in different steps of the recruitment process and post-deployment, such as sourcing of workers, selection, hiring, and post-deployment engagement with migrant workers.

Project Name: COVID-19 and the Worsening Precarity of Temporary Migrant Workers from Nepal

Funding Agency: Ryerson University
Duration: 1 May 2022 to 31 May 2024

Project Description: The onset of the COVID­19 pandemic has resulted in many migrant workers becoming particularly vulnerable to economic and social hardships. Temporary migrant workers are concentrated in industries that cannot readily adapt to remote working practices and are usually excluded from social safety nets, thus increasing their precarity. This vulnerability became dramatically visible during the global pandemic as temporary migrant workers were reported to be unemployed, unpaid, and at the mercy of their employers before having to return to their home countries. This proposed project examines the pressing issue of the impacts of COVID­19 on the worsening precarity of temporary labour migrant workers. It uses the case of Nepal to study the consequences of the large­scale return and reintegration of migrant workers to their home countries.

Heritage as Placemaking

Funding Agency: Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
Collaborating Partner: Heidelberg University
Duration: 1 October 2021 to 30 September 2025

Project Description: This four-year project promotes diversity and inclusiveness through a better understanding of solidarities forming and disintegrating amongst communities invested in lived and living heritage. The project brings together a team of critical and passionate South Asianists, specialising in anthropology, geography, art history, museum and heritage studies, literary studies and conservation architecture. Eight research sites – three cities in India and five in Nepal – were selected lying within 350km from each other, related through cosmologies and transnational histories. Ethnography with qualitative interviews, oral histories and participant observation will provide the key methodological framework within a relational and comparative case study approach. Archival material, bureaucratic frameworks and documentation, media analysis and object studies will enhance the data repertoire.

Sajag-Nepal

Funding Agency: UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
Collaborating Partner: Durham University, BBC Action Media, NSET, Northumbria University, The University of Auckland, Oxford University, Tribhuvan University, University of British Columbia, ADDRN, University of Bristol, University of Newcastle, University of Canterbury, UNRCO Nepal
Duration: 2021-2024
In the Sajag-Nepal project, we examine how to use local knowledge and new interdisciplinary science to inform better decision making and reduce the impacts of multi-hazards in mountain countries. We focus on Nepal, which experiences a range of hazards resulting from earthquakes and monsoon rainfall. Nepal is also undergoing complex social, political, and economic changes as it moves to a federal system of government. Our project is grounded within long-term community-based work with rural residents in Nepal, and reflects their articulations of the need to make better decisions to reduce the risks that they face. It also builds on experience of assessing and planning for earthquake and landslide risk with the Government of Nepal, the United Nations and other humanitarian organisations, and householders themselves.

Website: https://www.sajag-nepal.org/

Batoghato: Himalayan Lives and Landscapes, and the Roads That Change Them

Funding Agency: Open Society Foundations

Batoghato is pioneering communication project: a research-based graphic novel (a book that tells a story via drawings and text) that dramatizes the human stories within a pressing national issue, the politics of road construction in rural districts of Nepal.

Post-publication dissemination activities create contexts for discussion of the book’s themes, for participatory story-telling, and for introductory training so that others can use the graphic novel medium for socially-relevant stories.

Evaluating Governance Reform Using a Case-Control Approach

Collaborating Partner: University of North Carolina

Project Description: This project is about a study of the Provincial and Local Government Support Program (PLGSP), a multi-faceted intervention to build the capacity of local government units (LGs) to effectively administer their new powers. The programme is part of Nepal’s 2015 new constitution designed to transition the country to a federal state with three levels of government at federal, provincial and municipal level. This is the first study to provide a rigorous study of a nation-wide federalization on long-term outcomes. In this study, Social Science Baha is collaborating with Carolina Population Centre, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The study team includes Co- PIs Sudhanshu Handa and Brigitte Seim (Zimmerman), Public Policy, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Dr. Jeevan Baniya, Assistant Director, Social Science Baha, and Daniel Pamstein, Political Science, North Dakota State University (2020-2023). For more detail, please visit: https://cedilprogramme.org/funded-projects/programme-of-work-1/evaluating-governance-reform-using-a-case-control-approach