Part 1: Essay
(90 per cent of the mark for this assignment)
Explain how different kinds of evidence from the Connecting lives strand of DD102 can support the claim that place is important to the migrant identity.
Word limit: 1250 words
Student notes for Part 1
Part 1 of TMA 04 gives you the opportunity to demonstrate:
- the skill of selecting and using evidence to support a claim
- the skill of writing an academic essay.
TMA 04 therefore builds on the earlier skills you have acquired in writing and planning your assignments and identifying the different elements of social science inquiry.
You are required to write an essay that explains what different sorts of evidence drawn upon or covered in DD102 can be used to support the claim that place is important to the migrant identity.
This requires you to select examples from the range of study materials in the ‘Connecting lives’ strand and to set out for your reader what kinds of ‘evidence’ these provide. There is a variety of material on place and migration in the strand but for the purposes of this TMA you need to focus upon that which speaks directly to the claim that place is important to migrant identity. Your essay is likely to be better if you can draw on a wide range of study materials from the strand.
Information sources
The main sources of information for this essay are summarised in the table below.
| Information source | Summary |
|---|---|
| PRINT MATERIALS | |
| Chapter 1 of Understanding Social Lives, Part 2, Section 1.3 |
This section introduces in broad terms how identities are used by social scientists and may be a useful starting point for your essay. |
| Chapter 1 of Understanding Social Lives, Part 2, Section 4.1 | The construction of family identity and origins through real and imagined links to places is explored in this section. |
| Chapter 3 of Understanding Social Lives, Part 2, Introduction | This section discusses the street as a place where migrant identities can be displayed. |
| Chapter 3 of Understanding Social Lives, Part 2, Section 2 | The relations of connection and disconnection in relation to divided cities is discussed in this section with reference to solidarity, identity and belonging. |
| Chapter 4 of Understanding Social Lives, Part 2, Section 2.1 | This section introduces the idea of connections between places in relation to identity. |
| Chapter 4 of Understanding Social Lives, Part 2, Section 2.2 | The concept of diaspora is introduced in this section. |
| Chapter 4 of Understanding Social Lives, Part 2, Section 2.4 | This section discusses translocalism as a way of understanding people’s simultaneous links to more than one locality. |
| Chapter 5 of Understanding Social Lives, Part 2, Section 1.1 | The concept of migration is explored through different definitions and categories. |
| Chapter 5 of Understanding Social Lives, Part 2, Summary | You may find useful the summary of content on migrant identity and place. |
| Chapter 5 of Understanding Social Lives, Part 2, Section 4 | This section shows how social scientists use evidence and is useful in summarising some different approaches to the question ‘How do social scientists know?’ |
| ONLINE MATERIAL | |
| Introduction to Connecting Lives (Week 13, Introduction) | This section of the online materials introduces the ways in which lives and societies are made through connections and disconnections and is worth reviewing. |
| Migrating mothers (Week 16, Section 3) | This section discusses aspects of translocalism through the experiences of three migrant women. |
| Working with different types of evidence and Top tips for thinking about evidence (Week 15, Sections 4 and 5) | Reviews the different kinds of evidence that can be used to support social science claims. |
| Using evidence and top tips for selecting evidence (Week 17, Sections 3 and 4) | These sections explore how to identify and select evidence in supporting your arguments. |
Writing tips
To reinforce the advice above, as part of the preparation for your essay, you should ensure that you have worked through the following Skills activities on using evidence in the social sciences:
- Week 15, Section 4, Activity 15.3 ‘Working with different types of evidence’ and Section 5 ‘Top tips for thinking about evidence’.
- Week 17, Section 3, Activities 17.1–17.4 and Section 4 ‘Top tips for selecting evidence’.
One way or the other, your answer will have to do three broad things:
- Firstly, you will need to provide a clear indication that you understand what the terms: migrant identity and place mean.
- Secondly, you will need to engage with the claim that place is important to migrant identity and then select appropriate evidence of these connections.
- Finally, you will have to highlight the different sorts of evidence contained in the module that have been or might be used to support that claim.
That’s quite a lot of things to do in a restricted number of words, so you’ll need to spend some time before you begin writing in earnest on selecting material and developing a clear structure that helps you do all three of these things and thus clearly answer the question.
In terms of selecting your material:
- The task of choosing what sort of evidence social scientists use to support arguments is central to the DD102 question ‘How do social scientists know?’ This question can be used as a guide to selecting which examples of evidence you might use in your answer. Different sorts of evidence in DD102 material can be used to support the claim that place is important to migrant identity. Your task in this TMA then is to concentrate on selecting evidence to show the ways in which migrant identity and place are connected.
- A good way of reminding yourself of the different kinds of evidence that exist is to work through Skills Activities 17.1–17.4 in Week 17. Think about the implications for your answer. For example, is there both quantitative and qualitative evidence in the module to support the claim?
- You will also need to select some key examples or case studies through which you can illustrate and demonstrate the importance of place to migrant identity. If you review the main sources of information for the essay in the table above, you’ll realise that there are more than you can do justice to in the words available, so carefully choose the ones that you feel will best bring your answer to life (which will include identifying which ones you can use to showcase different kinds of evidence).
In terms of structuring your material:
- Good answers will also be clearly structured and written, address the question in a direct and focused manner, and will be able to show an understanding of how evidence is used in the social sciences.
- Remember to define key terms early on. Make sure in particular that you outline what migrant identity means up front in your essay, with some reference to the links of this to ‘place’.
- The main body of the essay should progress through a series of key points made in paragraphs that advance your explanation of how different sorts of evidence in DD102 can be used to support the claim that place is important to migrant identity. See if you can use your carefully chosen case studies or examples to show how different forms of evidence can be used to demonstrate this claim.
- Your conclusion should then sum up your response to the claim that place is important to migrant identity and the types of evidence which can be used to demonstrate this.
- Finally, remember to reference the sources you are drawing on, both in the body of your essay and in a reference list at the end of your essay, and to include a word count. The reference list at the end of your essay is not included within the word count but the references in the body of your essay are included.
Sample references for Part 1
The Open University uses the ‘Cite Them Right’ version of Harvard. You can find advice on the ‘Referencing and Plagiarism’ page of the Library website, which provides access to the Cite Them Right website, a practical guide to referencing commonly used by UK universities.
In-text citations which you might include in the body of your assignment should look like this:
| For book chapters: | (Dixon et al., 2022, p. 93) |
| For module videos: | (The Open University, Year of module start) |
| For module online activities: | (The Open University, Year of module start) |
Note: Year of module start refers to the year in which you begin the module so if you begin in 2023, this is the year you would insert into the reference e.g. (The Open University, 2023).
Full references which you might include in the reference list at the end of your assignment should look like this:
(Note that the sample references provided here are to show you how your references should look – i.e. the format and structure they should take. The ‘Available at’ URLs shown are not for the current presentation – you should include the current URL for the item you are referencing.)
- Dixon, J., Hinchcliffe, S. and Hassan, I. (2022) ‘Connecting people and places’, in Clarke, J., Doye, Z., Hassan, I. and Woodward, K. (eds) Understanding social lives, part 2. 2nd edn. Milton Keynes: The Open University, pp. 93–140.
- The Open University (Year of module start) ‘Arnold Circus: making and remaking the street through migration’, DD102 Introducing the social sciences. Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=1211042§ion=3 (Accessed: date).
- The Open University (Year of module start) ‘Using evidence’, DD102 Introducing the social sciences. Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=449181§ion=3 (Accessed: date).
- The Open University (Year of module start) ‘Migrating mothers’, DD102 Introducing the social sciences. Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=1393658§ion=3 (Accessed: date).
If you cite a source that is mentioned in the module materials but that you haven’t actually read yourself, this should be presented as a secondary reference. An example of an in-text citation for a secondary reference is:
- Coleman (1988, cited in Dixon et al., 2022, p. 133) showed that …
For the full reference, you simply show the publication details of the source that you have read:
- Dixon, J., Hinchcliffe, S. and Hassan, I. (2022) ‘Connecting people and places’, in Clarke, J., Doye, Z., Hassan, I. and Woodward, K. (eds) Understanding social lives, part 2. 2nd edn. Milton Keynes: The Open University, pp. 93–140.
In Part 1 of TMA 04, your tutor will be looking for you to:
- show that you understand how social scientists use evidence
- show that you can select relevant material from across the ‘Connecting lives’ strand of the module to build a social science argument using concepts, claims and evidence
- write a structured essay drawing upon a range of evidence to show how it can be used to support the claim that place is important to migrant identity.