From ethical challenges to opportunities: Reflections on participatory and collaborative research with refugees in Australia

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This reflective article draws upon our recent experiences in researching with refugees, especially women and youth, who have resettled in Australia. It is a practice and research-oriented article that presents our experience as...

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Main Authors: Dantas, Jaya A R, Gower, Shelley
Format: Journal Article
Published: Taylor & Francis 2020
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/82645
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author Dantas, Jaya A R
Gower, Shelley
author_facet Dantas, Jaya A R
Gower, Shelley
author_sort Dantas, Jaya A R
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This reflective article draws upon our recent experiences in researching with refugees, especially women and youth, who have resettled in Australia. It is a practice and research-oriented article that presents our experience as a series of ethical challenges and how these were resolved to form opportunities for ongoing collaboration. We discuss the limitations of existing ethical guidelines relating to research with displaced people especially refugees; the difficulties of gaining consent in a manner that balances university requirements with participant self-determination; the issue of tangible benefits and reciprocity for participants; the challenge of accurate representation of refugee voices, using imagery; and finally our ongoing accountability to participants. In trying to address these issues, our projects have used a participatory, collaborative research method, in keeping with recent calls for greater use of this approach. In doing so, we have attempted to redistribute social power, ownership of results and resources from the researchers to the participants. We posit that giving refugee participants the opportunity to actively participate in sharing their stories is empowering and builds strength and resilience.
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institution Curtin University Malaysia
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publishDate 2020
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-826452021-10-21T00:16:28Z From ethical challenges to opportunities: Reflections on participatory and collaborative research with refugees in Australia Dantas, Jaya A R Gower, Shelley © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This reflective article draws upon our recent experiences in researching with refugees, especially women and youth, who have resettled in Australia. It is a practice and research-oriented article that presents our experience as a series of ethical challenges and how these were resolved to form opportunities for ongoing collaboration. We discuss the limitations of existing ethical guidelines relating to research with displaced people especially refugees; the difficulties of gaining consent in a manner that balances university requirements with participant self-determination; the issue of tangible benefits and reciprocity for participants; the challenge of accurate representation of refugee voices, using imagery; and finally our ongoing accountability to participants. In trying to address these issues, our projects have used a participatory, collaborative research method, in keeping with recent calls for greater use of this approach. In doing so, we have attempted to redistribute social power, ownership of results and resources from the researchers to the participants. We posit that giving refugee participants the opportunity to actively participate in sharing their stories is empowering and builds strength and resilience. 2020 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/82645 10.1080/17496535.2020.1825765 Taylor & Francis fulltext
spellingShingle Dantas, Jaya A R
Gower, Shelley
From ethical challenges to opportunities: Reflections on participatory and collaborative research with refugees in Australia
title From ethical challenges to opportunities: Reflections on participatory and collaborative research with refugees in Australia
title_full From ethical challenges to opportunities: Reflections on participatory and collaborative research with refugees in Australia
title_fullStr From ethical challenges to opportunities: Reflections on participatory and collaborative research with refugees in Australia
title_full_unstemmed From ethical challenges to opportunities: Reflections on participatory and collaborative research with refugees in Australia
title_short From ethical challenges to opportunities: Reflections on participatory and collaborative research with refugees in Australia
title_sort from ethical challenges to opportunities: reflections on participatory and collaborative research with refugees in australia
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/82645