In October, MobiliseCare collaborated with SOS: A Global History of Boat Refugees research project (UCD) to organise a workshop on ethical considerations when involving people with backgrounds in forced migration in research. With the researchers in these two projects at the point of beginning fieldwork on different topics and in locations across Ireland and the globe, it seemed like the right time to try to collectively think through some of the current and envisaged ethical questions and challenges.
The aim of the session was for everyone participating to emerge with a clearer sense of the potential ethical challenges which might emerge in their own work, and the language and confidence to articulate these. With this in mind, we read a selection of material (see list of readings below) which would provide us with not only food for thought, but also tools for expressing and finding solutions to ethical questions and dilemmas. Each researcher then shared some of the ethical challenges that they were facing in advance of the session, so that we could tease these out together, using the shared readings as part of our toolkit to do this.
Taking a context and care-based approach to ethics, we worked on the assumption that there may not be one answer or one solution to a particular issue, but that by considering the challenges that might arise and having theoretical and practical tools to help us think through these, we might find appropriate solutions for each situation.
Some of the issues we discussed included how to ‘give back’ to research participants and about different forms of ‘giving back’ appropriate to different contexts, methods and the people involved; the importance of building trust with people involved in the research and what this entails; the complexities of working with translators and interpreters; and ways of translating an ethics of care into different settings, such as online, or working with historical and archival data.
We discussed the tensions that may occur between an approach based on an ethics of care, which is based on context, relationships and responsibility, and institutional ethics approaches, which are often more focused on protecting the researcher, and/or the institution. Where ethical approval is often viewed as a one-off exercise, an ethics of care approach views ethics as something processual – part of each stage of the research process, regularly returned to and reviewed as particular decisions are made and significant ‘ethical moments’ emerge.
Unsurprisingly, the issue of time intersected with nearly every aspect of care and ethics we discussed. We discussed the enormous importance of “slow scholarship” – here in opposition to “parachute” research; and where time is in short supply, we discussed the possibilities of “stretching” time, using it in the best way possible to carry out care-ful research.
With field work about to begin for several of the researchers on these two projects, we are curious to see how everyone might feel about the issues discussed in a year’s time, and what solutions and new dilemmas may have emerged.
These are the readings we read in advance of the session:
Albtran, A., Al-Dubaee, S., Al-Hashimi, H.,Beja, M., N.F. Gilson, Izzeddin, A., Kirkwood, S., Mansaray, A., Mpofu, S.D., Ní Raghallaigh, M., O’Reilly, Z., Smith, K., Zamir, M. (2022). ‘Research with people of refugee background: Considerations for ethical engagement’. Dublin: UCD. Available at: https://researchrepository.ucd.ie/handle/10197/12925?mode=simple
Clark-Kazak, C. (2017) ‘Ethical Considerations: Research with People in Situations of Forced Migration’ Refuge 33(2): 11–17.
Clark-Kazak, C. (2023). “Why Care Now” in Forced Migration Research? Imagining a Radical Feminist Ethics of Care. ACME, 22(4), 1151–1173. https://doi.org/10.7202/1106679ar
International Association for the Study of Forced Migration [IASFM] (2018) ‘Code of Ethics: Critical Reflections on Research Ethics in Situations of Forced Migration’. Available at: https://iasfm.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/IASFM-Research-Code-of-Ethics-2018.pdf
Kabranian-Melkonian, S. (2015) ‘Ethical Concerns with Refugee Research’. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment 25(7): 714–722.
Lenette, C. (2022) Participatory Action Research: Ethics and Decolonization. USA – OSO: Oxford University Press. [Chapter 2 – Why Decolonize?]
Ní Raghallaigh, M. and O’Reilly, Z. (forthcoming 2025). ‘Ethical research with people of refugee background: care, time and reflexivity’. In The Routledge Handbook of Social Work and Migration: Theory, Practice, Education, and Research.
Raghuram, Parvati (2016). Locating Care Ethics beyond the Global North. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2016, 15(3): 511-533
Sheringham, O. 2025. ‘Creating cities of care: Towards a new radical care framework for geographical research with urban migrants and refugees’. Progress in Human Geography. Vol. 49(3) 266–285
Tuhiwai Smith, L. (2021) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, London: Zed Books. [Introduction]
And here are some further readings that came up in our discussions:
Albtran, A., Aksu, P., Al-Fakir, Z., Al-Hashimi, H., Baillot, H., Izzeddin, A., Johannes, H., Kirkwood, S., Mfaco, B., Nicole, T., Ní Raghallaigh, M., Ogutu,G., O’Reilly, Z., Younes, A. 2024. ‘Building an ethical research culture: Scholars of refugee background researching refugee-related issues.’ Journal of Refugee Studies.
Arce Zelada, I. (2025). Desire-led futures of anti-colonial methodologies. Qualitative Research, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941251377275
The HIDDEN Toolkit: Tackling Ethical Concerns in Migration Research
Ana Belén Martínez García, Anita Lunić and Jennifer Redmond (editors). 2025
https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/id/eprint/20609
Liboiron, Max (2021) Pollution is Colonialism. Duke University Press
Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria. Matters of care: Speculative Ethics in more than human worlds