Q: In a thematic literature essay, should I focus on the content or the gaps?

Firstly, your topic sounds quite thoughtful – it seems to have come out a feeling of understanding and empathy. If so, that’s a nice, considerate entry point for the study.

Now, before diving into the response, I would just like to bring up a couple of points.

• Rather than ‘essay,’ I guess you mean ‘review,’ as you have talked about looking up literature and are considering discussing it thematically.
• In the title, ‘case study’ may not be appropriate to use. This doesn’t seem to be a case study, which is a very detailed examination of various perspectives for a particular patient, phenomenon, or entity (like a country in this case). Instead, you should write ‘literature review.’ If however, this is indeed a case study, the title can remain, but then, of course, the content of this study would be very different.

Coming to your query, it’s great that you have found gaps, which is often the point of a literature review (whether a stand-alone review or that which is a part of a study). However, in the review, you need to focus on explaining the themes you have found in the existing literature. You may mention the gaps toward the end of each theme as pathways for future studies. You may also bring up the gaps in the Discussion and Conclusion sections. In short, existing content first and then gaps.

For more insights on writing literature reviews, you may refer to the following articles:

• A young researcher's guide to writing a literature review
• How should my literature review be structured?
• How to conduct a literature search and review [Course]

All the best for your review!