Ethical Considerations for Humanizing Refugee Research Trajectories

Authors

  • Patricia Daley School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.40808

Keywords:

refugees, forced migration, ethics, field work, Tanzania

Abstract

This paper argues that ethical responsibilities in refugee studies have focused on fieldwork, yet ethics ought to be applied to the research problematic—the aims, questions, and concepts—as potentially implicated in the production of harm. Using an example from Tanzania, I argue that policy has largely shaped the language, categories investigated, and interpretive frames of refugee research, and this article advocates greater attention to historical and contemporary processes underpinning humanitarian principles and practices, and how they might contribute to exclusion and ontological anxieties among refugees in the Global South. By expanding our conceptualization of ethical responsibilities, researchers can better explore the suitability, and the implications for the refugee communities, of the approach that they have adopted and whether they contribute or challenge the and dehumanization of people seeking refuge.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

References

Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life (D. Heller-Roazen, Trans.). Stanford University Press.

Bakewell, O. (2008). Research beyond the categories: The importance of policy irrelevant research into forced migration. Journal of Refugee Studies, 21(4), 432–453. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fen042

Brankamp, H., & Daley, P. (2020). Laborers, migrants, refugees: Managing belonging, bodies, and mobility in (post)colonial Kenya and Tanzania. Migration & Society, 3(1), 113–129. https://doi.org/10.3167/arms.2020.030110

Campbell, J. (1999). Nationalism, ethnicity and religion: Fundamental conflicts and the politics of identity in Tanzania. Nations and Nationalism, 5(1), 105–125. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1354-5078.1999.00105.x

Centre for Forced Migration (CFM), International Refugee Initiative, & Social Science Research Council. (2008, November). Going home or staying home? Ending displacement for Burundian refugees in Tanzania (Citizenship and Forced Migration in the Great Lakes Region Working Paper No. 1). https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/53b3defa6.pdf

Chaulia, S. (2003). The politics of refugee hosting in Tanzania: From open door to unsustainability, insecurity and receding receptivity. Journal of Refugee Studies, 16(2), 147–166. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/16.2.147

Clark-Kazak, C. (2017). Ethical considerations: Research with people in situations of forced migration. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 33(2),11–17. https://doi.org/10.7202/1043059ar

Crawley, H., & Skleparis, D. (2018). Refugees, migrants, neither, both: Categorical fetishism and the politics of bounding in Europe’s “migration crisis.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44(1), 48–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2017.1348224

Daley, P. O., Kamata, N., & Singo, L. (2018). Undoing traceable beginnings: Citizenship and belonging among former Burundian refugees in Tanzania. Migration and Society, 1(1), 22–35. https://doi.org/10.3167/arms.2018.010104

De Genova, N. (2018). The “migrant crisis” as racial crisis: Do Black Lives Matter in Europe? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41(10), 1765–1782. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2017.1361543

Duffield, M. (2012). Challenging environments: Danger, resilience and the aid industry. Security Dialogue, 43(5), 475–492. https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010612457975

Espinoza, M. V. (2020). Lessons from refugees: Research ethics in the context of resettlement in South America. Migration and Society, 3(1), 247–253. https://doi.org/10.3167/arms.2020.030121

Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks (C. L. Markmann, Trans.). Pluto Press.

Fassin, D. (2010). Inequality of lives, hierarchies of humanity: Moral commitments and ethical dilemmas of humanitarianism. In M. Ticktin, & A. Feldman (Eds.), In the name of humanity: The government of threat and care (pp. 238–255). Duke University Press.

Foucault, M. (1976). The will to knowledge: The history of sexuality, Vol. 1 (R. Hurley, Trans.). Penguin Books.

Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Polity Press.

Heilbrunn, S., & Iannone, R. L. (2020). From center to periphery and back again: A systematic literature review of refugee entrepreneurship. Sustainability, 12(18), Article 7658. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12187658

Jacobsen, K., & Landau, L. B. (2003). The dual imperative in refugee research: Some methodological and ethical considerations in research on forced migration. Disasters, 27(3),185–206. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7717.00228

Krause, A. (2017). Researching forced migration: Critical reflections on research ethics during fieldwork (Refugee Studies Centre Working Paper No. 123). https://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/publications/researching-forced-migration-critical-reflections-on-research-ethics-during-fieldwork

Krause, U. (2021). Colonial roots of the 1951 Refugee Convention and its effects on the global refugee regime. Journal of International Relations and Development, 24, 599–626. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-020-00205-9

Kyriakides, C., Taha, D., Charles, C. H., & Torres, R. D. (2019). Introduction: The racialized refugee regime. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 25(1), 3–7. https://doi.org/10.7202/1060670ar

Lemarchand, R. (1996). Burundi: Ethnic conflict and genocide. Cambridge University Press.

Maass, E. (1958). Integration and name changing among Jewish refugees from Central Europe in the United States. Names: A Journal of Onomastics, 6(3), 129–117. https://doi.org/10.1179/nam.1958.6.3.129

Malkki, L. H. (1992). National geographic: The rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugees. Cultural Anthropology, 7(1), 24–4. https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1992.7.1.02a00030

Malkki, L. H. (1995). Purity and exile: Violence, memory, and national cosmology among Hutu refugees in Tanzania. University of Chicago Press.

Massey, D. (2004). Geographies of responsibility. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 86(1), 5–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0435-3684.2004.00150.x

Mayblin, L. (2017). Asylum after empire: Colonial legacies in the politics of asylum seeking. Rowman & Littlefield.

Moriel, L. (2005). Passing and the performance of gender, race, and class acts: A theoretical framework .Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, 15(1), 167–210. https://doi.org/10.1080/07407700508571493

Muller-Funk, L. (2020). Research with refugees in fragile political contexts: How ethical reflections impact methodological choices. Journal of Refugee Studies, 34(2), 2308–2332. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feaa013

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2013). Empire, global coloniality and African subjectivity. Berghahn Books.

Noxolo, P., Raghuram, P., & Madge, C. (2012). Unsettling responsibility: Postcolonial interventions. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(3), 418–429. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00474.x

Osei-Nyame, K. (2009). The politics of “translation” in African postcolonial literature: Olaudah Equiano, Ayi Kwei Armah, Toni Morrison, Ama Ata Aidoo, Tayeb Salih and Leila Aboulela. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 21(1), 91–103. https://doi.org/10.1080/13696810902986474

Rosenthal, J. (2015). From “migrants” to “refugees”: Identity, aid and decolonization in Ngara district, Tanzania. Journal of African History, 56, 261–79. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853715000225

Run, P. (2012). “Out of place”? An auto-ethnography of refuge and postcolonial exile, African Identities, 10(4), 381–390. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2012.692544

Rutabizwa, O. U. (2021). What’s there to celebrate? What’s there to mourn? Decolonial retrievals of humanitarianism. In A. Rigon, R. Zakaria, J. Fiori, F. Espada, & B. Taithe (Eds.), Amidst the debris: Humanitarianism and the end of liberal order (pp. 369–376). C. Hurst & Co.

Sommers, M. (2001). Fear in Bongoland: Burundi refugees in urban Tanzania. Berghahn Books.

Siyame, P. (2017, August 24). Nchemba tells former refugees—Behave, else you forfeit citizenship. Tanzania Daily News. https://allafrica.com/stories/201708240164.html

Taha, D. (2019). Intersectionality and other critical approaches in refugee research: An annotated bibliography (Local Engagement Refugee Research Network Paper No. 3). Carleton University.

Turner, S. (2010). Politics of innocence: Hutu identity, conflict, and camp life. Berghahn Books.

Weheliye, A. G. (2014). Habeas viscus: Racializing assemblages, biopolitics and Black feminist theories of the human. Duke University Press.

Yacob-Haliso, O. (2016). Intersectionality and durable solutions for refugee women in Africa. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 113, 53–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2016.1236698

Zetter, R. (1991). Labelling refugees: Forming and transforming a bureaucratic identity. Journal of Refugee Studies, 4(1), 39–62. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/4.1.39

Zetter, R. (2007). More labels, fewer refugees: Remaking the refugee label in an era of globalization. Journal of Refugee Studies, 20(2),172–192. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fem011

Published

2021-11-22 — Updated on 2021-11-22

Versions

How to Cite

Daley, P. (2021). Ethical Considerations for Humanizing Refugee Research Trajectories. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 37(2), 11–19. https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.40808

Similar Articles

<< < 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.