Beyond extractivism? On some everyday ethical dilemmas in forced migration research

Privacy-related ethical requirements are prioritised in EU programmes funding collaborative research on migration. Much less attention is devoted to the far more actual and widespread damages caused by an extractivist approach to empirical fieldwork with forced migrants and practitioners in the asylum field. In particular, the very tangible problem of over-exploitation of unremunerated primary sources is neglected and financial remuneration of primary sources (in particular migrants) remains a matter of embarassment (and a source of bureaucratic hurdles). While in some disciplinary areas and in some world regions, remuneration of sources is a pragmatically accepted necessity (e.g. this is routine in social psychological experimental research and it is more frequently practised in North America), in other areas this practice remains a taboo or is radically rejected and condemned as a way to reproduce hegemonic structures. Various forms of “inclusive methodologies” (ranging from “giving migrants voice” to full-fledged “co-production”) are proposed as an alternative to traditional approaches and also as a specific form of compensation/restitution when financial remuneration is rejected. But while such approaches are ever more often proposed and implemented, they are seldom assessed and, in our experience, they often risk being reduced to forms of ex-post and superficial ethical maquillage. A more demanding and structural response to power issues in migration research comes from the inclusion of researchers with migrant background (and research partners from migrant-sending countries) in a full capacity since the early research design stage. But this is a long-term endeavour that requires to tackle massive structural inequalities and systemic obstacles. In the short-medium term, even these more radical participatory approaches often fall short of their declared objectives or are even reduced to easy moral alibis for persisting neocolonial approaches.A more explicit and frank discussion of the practical implications of these ethical dilemmas for the everyday professional practice of researchers is needed in order to go beyond merely rhetorical innovation.