Between the necessary compliance with the ethics committees’ requirements and the sensitive experience of encountering refugees and migrants, navigating ethics can create complex inner dilemmas. Departing from these aporiai, what is the relationship between, on the one hand, the expectations, assumptions, and taken-for-granted categories (the vulnerable migrant?), and on the hand, the encounter with others in the field? What does an ethical approach entail in terms of unbalanced relationships formed in the field?

Organised by Dr. Alessandro Corso (University of Oxford) and Elsa Gomis (University of East Anglia) with support from the Oxford Migration and Mobility Network, this workshop provides a space to discuss main issues related to a variety of methodological aspects including consent, anonymity, copyright and payment. It will adopt a decolonial approach aiming to raise an awareness of reciprocal projections that can influence the research. Focus will also be made on the influence of mainstream representations which tend to stand for presentations of refugee’s narratives. Concerns around this topic will ultimately provide us with the means to inform an understanding of ethics that emerges from the uncanny, uncomfortable or disruptive encounter with others in the field.

Speakers

Prof. Loren Landau (Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford )
Dr. Hari Reed (Advocacy coordinator at Asylum Welcome Oxford)
Associate Prof. Naomi Sunderland (School of Health Sciences and Social Work, Griffith University).

Format

The event will begin with the speakers' presentations. Then, based on selected short fieldwork excerpts that will be distributed prior to the event via email, participants will be asked to critically think of ethics (in conversation with their knowledge of relevant literature and personal research experience) by focusing on: (a) Texture of the everyday (Veena Das 2007); (b) Issues of care; (c) Details (in language, text, representation); (d) Categories (addressed in decolonial and deconstructive approaches).

Intended audience

This workshop is open to anyone having an interest in ethics in relation to refugee and migration studies or planning to undertake fieldwork. Please register only if you intend to attend, as the event can host only up to 25 participants.

Resources

Cabot, Heath. The business of anthropology and the European refugee regime, American Ethnologist, Vol. 46, No3, Aug. 2019 (pdf downloadable on Solo).
Das, Veena. 2015. What does ordinary ethics look like? In Lambek, M., Das, V., Fassin, D., and Keane. 2015. In Four Lectures on Ethics Anthropological Perspectives. HAU Books.
Jackson, Michael. 2008. Between Biography and Ethnography. Harvard Theleological Review, 101(3-4), 377- 397.
Lenette, Caroline. Arts-Based Methods in Refugee Research. Creating Sanctuary, Singapore: Springer, 2019
https://www.riserefugee.org/10-things-you-need-to-consider-if-you-are-an-artist-not-of-the-refugee-and-asylum-seeker-community-looking-to-work-with-our-community/

Workshop: Ethics in the field