Abstracts
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.
Keywords:
- refugees,
- forced migration,
- ethics,
- field work,
- Tanzania
Résumé
Cet article soutient que les responsabilités éthiques dans les études sur les réfugiés se sont concentrées sur le terrain de recherche alors que l'éthique devrait également s’appliquer à la problématique de recherche - les objectifs, les questions et les concepts pouvant potentiellement causer préjudice. À partir d’un exemple issu de la Tanzanie, cet article soutient que les politiques publiques ont largement façonné le langage, les catégories étudiées ainsi que les cadres interprétatifs de la recherche sur les réfugiés, et préconise de porter une plus grande attention aux processus de racialisation historiques et contemporains qui sous-tendent les principes et pratiques humanitaires, ainsi qu’à la manière dont ils peuvent contribuer à l’exclusion et aux anxiétés ontologiques chez les réfugiés du Sud global. En élargissant la conceptualisation des responsabilités éthiques, les chercheurs sont mieux à même d’explorer la pertinence et les implications de l’approche qu’ils ont adoptée pour les communautés de réfugiés, et dans quelle mesure ils contribuent àla racialisation et la déshumanisation des personnes cherchant refuge ou la remettent en cause.
Download the article in PDF to read it.
Download
Appendices
Bibliography
- 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
- CFM (2008). Going home or staying home? Ending displacement for Burundian refugees in Tanzania . Citizenship and Forced Migration in the Great Lakes Region Working Paper Series, 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
- 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.
- Genova, N.D. (2018). The “migrant crisis” as racial crisis: doBlack Lives Matterin Europe? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41(10), 1765–1782. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2017.1361543
- 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