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TERMS OF REFERENCE

Aquaculture Research Consultant

June – September 2017

BACKGROUND

The Issara Institute is an independent non-profit organization based in Thailand, Myanmar and the United States tackling issues of human trafficking and forced labour through data, technology, partnership, and innovation.  People – including worker voice and feedback – are at the center of Issara’s data and intelligence work, and at Issara Labs we conduct a wide range of research, analytics, and technology development related to human trafficking and global supply chains – the people, the policies, the impact, and how to eliminate it. 

Issara Institute programming runs 3 inter-linked components, at the core of which is worker voice, ensuring that all Issara work is centered on the welfare and voices of migrant workers and trafficking victims.  The 3 inter-linked components are:

1. Issara Labs – intelligence and innovation, including outreach, research, information, and assistance to thousands of migrant workers, through the Issara multi-lingual hotline, smartphone technology, and community engagement, generating data and analysis for action and decision-making.
2. Private sector partnership and action, including factory/workplace assessment and improvement solutions to identify and eliminate risks of trafficking and other labour abuses in global supply chains.
3. Victim support fund – ‘Freedom of Choice’ is Issara’s philosophy for victim support, whether support is provided directly by Issara or referral partners. The objective is to empower victims of trafficking with the widest range of options, information, and resources for them to make their own informed choices about their recovery and their futures.

Background: Aquaculture Research  

As scrutiny over the Thai seafood industry has increased in recent years, the sustained focus on and examination of the supply chain has revealed unexpected complexity as well as risks across different tiers. In particular, very little is known about the farmed shrimp harvest teams who pick shrimp from tens of thousands of individually-owned aquaculture ponds throughout Thailand and work alongside a network of aggregators and brokers who buy and sell shrimp between farms and processers.

While shrimp farms themselves are largely mechanized and require limited labour, harvesting is a year-round, labour intensive task often carried out by mobile groups of Thai and/or foreign workers moving from farm to farm. Aside from a certainty that harvesting must take place, relatively little is known about the structures, companies, team composition, and working conditions within this part of the sector. Of particular concern is that poor labour conditions and exploitation have already been identified among other tiers of the shrimp supply chain.

The overall research objective is to increase analysis and reporting around aquaculture farms and its workers, and aquaculture harvest team demographics, recruitment, and management in Thailand.  The research will focus specifically on investigating information related to social and working conditions of the harvest teams, including composition, recruitment, and management, and relationships between harvest team recruiters, managers, farm owners, and the harvesters themselves.

SCOPE OF WORK

The Aquaculture Research Consultant’s work will play a key role in the design of the study, as well as field work and report-writing through the course of the project. The Consultant will report to the Issara Institute Manager for Research, Technology and Worker Voice.  The consultancy will be for 40 days between 1 June and 30 September 2017.  Specific aspects of the scope of work of the Consultant’s work include:

1. Research approach and sampling methodology

• Provide research assistance for the background literature review on aquaculture farming in Thailand, including analyzing government and other open-source Thai language data.
• Provide input on segmenting the aquaculture farming businesses, including the target populations and geographic areas selection for interview.
• Provide input on the research instruments.
• Assist with the pilot testing of the research instruments.

2. Conducting and processing interviews in Thai language

• Conduct interviews with Thai business representatives, farm managers, workers, government officials, and other actors, at times also facilitating translation between English and Thai, with travel to relevant Thai provinces.
• Written translations of interviews from Thai to English.
• Entering data into excel, SPSS or other systems.

3. Contributing to the production of a final report for publication in multiple languages

• Drafting case studies for inclusion in the final report.
• Taking and compiling field-based photographs, images and other information for inclusion in the report.
• Translation of an abridged executive summary of the final survey report into Thai language.

Required skills:

• Fluency in English and Thai language.
• Understanding of aquaculture farming practices in Thailand, and how they are regulated by the Thai Government.
• Experience conducting field-based research and research techniques.
• Background in value-chain and supply chain analysis.
• Experience conducting qualitative interviews.
• Experience in interpretation and translation between Thai-English.

Application Instructions: 

Please submit your CV, a cover letter, and three references to: info@issarainstitute.org. The cover letter should describe how your professional and academic experience matches with the scope of the work and required skills for this position.