Ethics

Research Ethics: Principles and Values

The three commonly held key principles of ethical research with human participants are ‘respect for persons’, ‘beneficence’ and ‘justice’. These principles are upheld in research through the practices of informed and free consent, confidentiality, and risk assessment. While these principles are originally rooted in biomedical research, particularly the 1979 Belmont Report, they have become cornerstones of most social scientific ethics codes, which apply and develop these principles to specific disciplines including anthropology  and law (for example, see guidelines from the American Anthropological Association and the Norwegian National Research Ethics Committee). 

While ethics codes are useful for establishing high-level principles for research and support research governance within institutions, navigating the ‘everyday’ ethical dilemmas requires a more holistic approach. Van Ilempt and Bilger (2018) discuss how they worked around the gaps of high-level ethics principles and generalised protocols in their research with smuggled migrants. The authors argue that the ethics codes are designed for research where there is a clear demarcation between the ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’. In research such as theirs ‘which understands research subjects as participating agents carrying knowledge and interpreting their own life worlds, ethical concerns of justice, fairness and moral actions’, this guidance is insufficient. Van Ilempt and Bilger reflect on issues that arise when working with irregularised migrants such as building trust, representing narratives and privacy. Sule Tomkinson (2014), in her fieldwork on refugee status determination in Canada, suggests looking at field diaries as a way to bridge the gap between formal ethics practices in the ‘everyday ethics’ encountered by ethnographers. 

‘Virtue ethics’ may provide a broader framework for thinking about research ethics more holistically. Bruce Macfarlane (2009) explains how ethics can be placed at centre of research from conception to its completion through the application of the virtues of courage, respectfulness, resoluteness, sincerity, humility, reflexivity at all stages of research. The Association of the Social Anthropologists of Britain and the Commonwealth (ASA) reflect on the value of an approach to research ethics that draws on virtue ethics and include a list of resources for ethnographers in their webpage ‘Ethics as Virtue’. This is part of the tool ‘'EthNav’ to assist anthropologists and ethnographers reflect on and navigate.   

Codes of Ethics and Protocols

International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM) Code of Ethics is dedicated to ethical conduct in research on forced migration. The seminar The critical role of ethics in forced migration research: Refugee participation, Do No Harm, and the IASFM Code of Ethics brings into conversation some of the drafters of the IASFM Code of Ethics with researchers and refugees. The seminar covers topics raised in forced migration research that are not addressed in existing ethics codes:  aworking with people with a precarious legal status, surveillance, criminalisation of migration and research in deeply politicised contexts.   

A further resource for research in forced migration include the ‘your rights in research’ documents produced by the Canadian Refugee Council, the Canadian Association for the Study of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (CARFMS) and the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University (CRS). Available in 8 languages, this document sets out key terms and principles in research and rights of research participants.  

Authorship protocols, such as those produced by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, are useful for building a framework for assigning authorship to fairly recognise everyone’s contribution in project outputs. 

Literature on Ethics in Forced Migration

The field of research on ethics in forced migration research is burgeoning. 

In her article ‘Ethical Considerations: Research with People in Situations of Forced Migration’ Christina Clark-Kazak discusses how principles of research ethics apply to forced migration, and identifies academic literature on ethics in forced migration. 

The Forced Migration Review (Issue 61, June 2019) dedicated to ‘Ethics’ explores numerous facets of ethics in forced migration.  It includes articles on unethical state and agency practices refugees face in their daily lives, such as the use of new technologies by humanitarian actors (Molnar 2019) and social media surveillance (Brekke and Staver 2019), the ethical considerations in ‘over-‘ and ‘under-researched’ populations, (Omata 2019, Kaoma 2019, Luetz 2019), and challenges faced by humanitarian actors providing refugees services.  

Ethics and the political economy of knowledge production

Ethical research on forced migration requires us to pay attention the political economy of knowledge production. In the context of inequality with between the Global South (where the majority of refugees live) and the Global North (where the majority of research institutions and funders are), how can forced migration research be ethical?

Mayssoun Sukarieh and Stuart Tannock (2019) describe a case study among Syrian and Lebanese research assistants working on UK-directed research projects in Lebanon with Syrian refugees between 2012 and 2018. The research assistants reported being in exploitative labour relationships where their concerns were not addressed and their contribution to projects was not recognised. The authors situate the alienation and exploitation of the research assistants they interviewed in the context of the political economy of university research, and more specifically, the ‘refugee research industry’ which can only be resolved through a ‘fundamental rethinking and restructuring of the global production of academic research’.

Richa Shivakoti and James Milner (2021) discuss the findings of their research on knowledge production in North-South forced migration research partnerships and the localisation of research. They advocate for moving beyond partnerships, which may replicate some of the unequal power relationships to acts such as ‘direct funding to researchers and research centres based in the global South, an emphasis on the transfer of power to researchers in the South, a recognition of the diverse forms and sources of knowledge produced within the field, and an appreciation for the diverse understandings of success and impact across contexts.’

These debates, while focused on North-South partnerships also raise important questions for researchers in the Global North working with refugees there by calling attention to issues such as the role of funders and universities in shaping the ‘research industry’ and how refugees are included in research. Ammar Azzouz reflects on the political economy of research on Syrian displacement as a Syrian refugee and academic himself in the blog, ‘Can the Syrians speak?’ Heath Cabot (2019), based on her research with refugees in Greece, calls attention to how anthropologists may perpetuate the divisions they seek to challenge in their work through ‘crisis chasing, or the propensity to take crisis as a driver of scholarship; assuming that “refugee experiences” need to be studied; and, finally, heeding the call to “do good” through scholarship in ways that deflect attention from anthropology’s own politics of life.’ She argues that a reflexive approach to how knowledge is produced in academia, being aware of the ‘business of anthropology’, adopting practices of ‘slow academia’ and ‘de-exceptionalising’ refugee voices, offer ways forward to overcoming some of the ethical pitfalls anthropologists working on displacement may encounter.  

Initiatives and Networks 

There are some initiatives of that aim to foster ethical research practices. 

Share the Platform Initiative is a collective of scholars and practitioners from non-refugee backgrounds who are advocating to ‘share their platforms’ with colleagues with refugee backgrounds. Their website features interviews with academics and practitioners and a recording of their inaugural event.

The Local Engagement Research Network (LERRN) is a partnership between academic institutions and civil society ‘aims to better understand and enhance the role of civil society in responding to the needs of refugees in the global south.’ The partnership also looks at knowledge production on forced migration. 

The Global Academic Interdisciplinary Network (GAIM) was established by UNHCR following the commitment of the ‘Global Compact for Refugees’ to ‘a global academic network on refugee, other forced displacement, and statelessness issues will be established, involving universities, academic alliances, and research institutions, together with UNHCR and other relevant stakeholders.” (paragraph 43). The network is developing good practices.