During our Brown-bag seminar last week we discussed how to involve refugees in migration-research and, linked to this, what it means to be an activist researcher. The latter is discussed by Charles R. Hale (ed.) in Engaging Contradictions. Theory, Politics, and Methods of Activist Scholarship (2008). With different approaches the tension that many migration researchers find themselves in, between demands for rigor and objectivity on the one hand and direct engagement in social activism on the other, is discussed.
A central question to the authors in the book is how anthropology, the discipline in which many of them are trained, can be part of the creation of activist scholarship. Nearly all of the authors remind us that the discipline’s methods of collecting and measuring data were born through colonial relations of domination. Contemporary manifestations of anthropology often work in the service of governments, NGOs, and multinational corporations to destabilize communities. Editor Charles R. Hale’s advice is that activists should follow the methodological directives of their disciplines to prove scholarly rigor. This however is questioned in the afterword by Joy James and Edmund T. Gordon who stress the importance of physical and intellectual exits from the academy: “We have little control over the meanings given to our appearances or our words within the academy; we have agency only over our departure from the academic staging of our radicalisms” (page 372).
In the book Doing research with refugees. Issues and Guidelines, Bogusia Temple, Rhetta Moran and others discuss more practically what a participatory approach within migration research can be. Jointly developed between academics, voluntary organisations, service providers and refugee communities, the book aims to open up debate on research with refugees, to expand what is counted as evidence in future research, and to foster the inclusion of perspectives of people whose experience it is, that is, refugees themselves. The reason for initiating the book was an increased intolerance of refugees in the UK and the issue of poverty as the prevailing context for the asylum seeker community. Furthermore in the research community there had been a growing feeling of the lack of resourced space and time to share and develop a more coherent understanding about the intersections between their research and development activities and the constantly changing policy landscape.
The authors use the terms ‘refugee’ or ‘refugee people seeking asylum’ in their broadest senses to make the point that, irrespective of where individual people may be in relation to their claims for asylum, they are all seeking refuge from persecution and, like everyone else, they have many other roles: they are mothers, sisters, fathers and brothers. We are not interested in how many people the government feels should be allowed to stay in the UK or in the different labels it uses to categorise people as deserving or otherwise.
In the editors’ introduction they explain their points of departure, which isn’t to present a literature review of current research with refugees. Readers looking for this may instead read Castles et al (2002), and the website of the Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees (www.icar.org.uk). The aim of the guidelines are instead
– to reflect the importance of moving beyond the unproblematic use of language. It’s recognised that words and concepts have different meanings in different languages and that the languages used in research may affect findings.
– to describe the variety of ways in which refugees can be involved in research, pragmatically in that they recognise that issues of funding and time restraints are important influences on research, whatever the intention of the researchers.
– to show an understanding of the importance of ethical considerations.
Further, benefits of participatory approaches are presented as something maximising local participation so that proposed projects better fit the needs of local people. In connection to this a reference is made to literature showing that people who speak little or no English do not access services because they see them as inappropriate (Robinson, 2002). Participatory approaches furthermore force researchers to employ rigorous processes of checking interpretation and exposing their own perspectives; They can, ideally, lead to a sense of ownership, responsibility and self-esteem; They recognise that people have skills and capacities rather than seeing sections of society as permanently needy; and they can release community development capacities. Some disadvantages of participatory approaches are that they are highly resource and labour intensive; that participation tends to stay at the practice level, leaving academics and service deliverers to reassert their expertise at the policy level. Furthermore, they are sometimes seen as not real science and are therefore dismissed. These disadvantages of participation are related to concerns with qualitative research generally. The disadvantages surrounding traditional, completely researcher-led agendas using quantitative methods are less often spelt out. Communities are often seen as undifferentiated wholes and little time is given to engaging with different sections within communities. Sometimes only formal community organisations are approached and issues of accountability and representations are often not addressed. Users rarely have the resources, insider knowledge of the system or language used by service providers and academics to engage on an equal footing.
I think the books lend themselves well to a discussion of the role of migration researchers in society. Working on highly politicised issues we need to think about why we do research and how our research can be used. What it should mean to involve refugees in research isn’t discussed in depth in the books but several contributions may be used as illustrations of how this can be done and as a point of departure when reflecting on methodological considerations.