[johnsonjunior]

A friend is doing a research paper for school, and he is trying to find facts in regards to Pakistani-Americans (or Pakistanis from anywhere in Western world, not just the USA) being treated "differently" in Pakistan if they visit or move to live there permanently.

He is looking for small things like just getting the "you're from America what you doing here" looks, to shop-owners trying to over-charge you because they somehow automatically know you're from "overseas" based on your appearance and hence you must be loaded with $$; to extremes like actually being verbally/physically harassed because someone was from the West (even though they were Pakistani originally and just lived in the west), beaten, robbed, given a hard time to live there, or worse. May Allah protect us all. Ameen.

He's looking for anything at all which he can use in his research... from people's personal blog posts/forum posts to newspaper articles etc to build his research paper one way or another. Newspaper articles and other "reliable" sources will be given more weight to build the facts while things like personal blog posts and forum posts etc will be given less weight, as they have more of a chance of being not 100% true (as if the media is 100% true!). The idea is to show that it's not only non-Pakistani Westerners who may be treated differently in Pakistan, but rather anyone from the West may be considered to be in the same 'bucket', even if the westerner happens to be a Pakistani who lives overseas.

It's kind of a tough thing to research online just by googling so I figured maybe you brothers and sisters could help out if you know of anything personally or come across anything online.

[johnsonjunior]

I just deleted the speech I was typing and rather I will go with the following:

Anyone??

[SHpuntik]

whats the point, this thread will get deleted quite soon anyway.

[CuittisIL]

Here is documentary and experiences of Pakistani's abroad being abused and harassed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02uEBQojlqE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3bhqhHIfv4

I know that wasn't what you were looking for (you wanted overseas pakistani being abused in Pakistan itself) but I don't think there is any information or video of any of that type of research ...you're going to have to discuss with Pakistani families and their personal experiences.

[boanuatiguali]

Is this for a research project or a class paper? How did he arrive at the topic? Is it based on some personal experiences?

If it is for a class paper, he might want to place more emphasis on literature review (looking through previous studies of similar scope). If it is for a research project... then it gets a whole lot more complicated and he will have to go through specific protocol at his institution before he can even start his research.

The topic strikes me as sensitive so he should pay attention to research ethics even if it is just a class paper.

He also needs to be a lot more specific in what he plans to research. If it is newspapers, he should specify the paper and a time-frame and then get down to the tedious task of looking through the papers for the given time-frame. If it is blogger accounts, again, he should be specific in terms of date range and where and how he obtains his data.... etc. etc.

It seems to me your friend might want to narrow the scope of his topic or methods etc. a lot more before looking for data.

[boanuatiguali]

Also... your friend should be careful not to go in looking for exclusively negative accounts - that's not good research practice. It is good that he is looking for accounts of being treated 'differently' however that can be good or bad and he should leave it open to see what he finds.

Based on personal experiences, he may expect to find more negative than positive accounts but it may also be that he ends up with more 'good' accounts than bad ones (maybe he had particularly negative experiences but generally, people have positive experiences? Let the data speak for itself.).

[johnsonjunior]

all for the replies. Seems like I will need to get some more information from this brother, and also make sure he's doing his project in an ethical/proper manner (Masha'Allah, he's not the type do things "unethically" so probably just need some clarity), before I can report back here. Apparently not as easy as SF members replying with a bunch of links to news and sites, as I thought! I know it's a sensitive issue also (or can become one if presented in the 'wrong' manner) so I understand it must be approached with care.

again to all who gave input so far.

Any further input is welcome as well.

[johnsonjunior]

whats the point, this thread will get deleted quite soon anyway.

I appreciate your optimism and input brother.

[SHpuntik]

I appreciate your optimism and input brother.

your welcome,

see the thread is still here 'cos it contains no information of any use.

Alhumdulillah

[boanuatiguali]

That's brilliant surely in the silence and deletions there is information too. Much harder to unpack but its there so... @OP: if your friend can not find material, he can write about its absence... look into why that may be. Harder to do though.