Geographical Research with 'Vulnerable Groups'

Re-examining Methodological and Ethical Process

Nadia von Benzon, Lorraine Van Blerk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351180825
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Drawing on varied expertise from specialisms across the sub-disciplines of social and cultural geography, this book seeks to interrogate what it is to do research with people widely considered to be vulnerable. Written from an emancipatory standpoint, this book addresses the ethical and practical challenges that face researchers working with marginalised people. With chapters exploring the authors' own experiences of working with a wide range of participants including homeless people, indigenous peoples, drug addicts, learning disabled children, and prisoners, the book draws on research undertaken by academics across the globe. Geographical Research with 'Vulnerable Groups' unpicks and interrogates each part of the research process, from obtaining ethics permission from review bodies, to recruitment and gatekeepers, through to dissemination of research findings. Throughout the discussion, authors foreground the relational identities of the actors in the research process, highlighting the ways in which institutional attempts to protect marginalised people from risk, perpetuate a perceived, and even material, vulnerability. This honest and empirically driven text will provide an illuminating insight for researchers embarking on research with marginalised people.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Social & Cultural Geography.

Research relationships and responsibilities: ‘Doing’ research with ‘vulnerable’ participants: introduction to the special edition*

Nadia von Benzon and Lorraine van Blerk

ABSTRACT

For some decades now, human geography has sought to engage with the narratives of those deemed least powerful in society. This interest in the experiences of those who have traditionally been sidelined from political agendas has been part of move towards an increasingly critical approach to the social sciences, and ultimately as a way of using the academy as a tool for social justice. Researching the experiences of socially, politically and economically marginalised groups of people, is no longer a new endeavour. What is new, however, is the rapidity in the growth of interest of researchers seeking to engage with these populations, and the variety of the toolkit of methods, for research and analysis, available to support this engagement. Whilst this special edition seeks to draw out and explore a variety of novel approaches to research methods and practice, the particularly unique contribution presented by this publication is a candid exploration of the ethical challenges of engaging with populations identified as ‘vulnerable’ as expressed through the discussion of first-hand fieldwork experience.

Rapports et responsabilités de la recherche: ‘faire’ de la recherche avec des participants « vulnérables » : introduction à l’édition spéciale

RÉSUMÉ

Il y a maintenant quelques dizaines d’années que la géographie humaine tâche de s’intéresser aux discours de ceux qui sont considérés comme ayant le moins de pouvoir dans la société. Cet intérêt pour les expériences de ceux qui ont été traditionnellement écartés des projets politiques fait partie d’un mouvement vers une approche de plus en plus critique des sciences sociales et en fin de compte est une façon d’utiliser la recherche universitaire comme outil de justice sociale. Faire de la recherche sur les expériences de groupes de personnes marginalisées socialement, politiquement et économiquement n’est plus une démarche nouvelle. Ce qui est nouveau cependant, c’est la rapidité de l’augmentation de l’intérêt des chercheurs qui désirent entrer en contact avec ces populations et de la variété de la panoplie des méthodes, pour la recherche et l’analyse, disponible pour soutenir cet engagement. Cette édition spéciale cherche à mettre en lumière et explorer une variété d’approches nouvelles pour rechercher les méthodes et les pratiques et la contribution particulièrement exceptionnelle présentée dans cette publication est une exploration candide des défis éthiques de la mise en contact avec les populations identifiées comme « vulnérables » telles qu’elles sont articulées à travers la discussion de l’expérience à chaud sur le terrain.

Las relaciones y responsabilidades en la investigación: ‘haciendo’ investigación con participantes ‘vulnerables’: introducción a la Edición Especial

RESUMEN

Desde hace algunas décadas, la geografía humana ha tratado de comprometerse con las narrativas de aquellos que se consideran menos poderosos en la sociedad. Este interés en las experiencias de aquellos que tradicionalmente han estado al margen en las agendas políticas ha sido parte del movimiento hacia un enfoque cada vez más crítico a las ciencias sociales y, en última instancia, como una forma de usar la academia como un instrumento para la justicia social. La investigación de las experiencias de los grupos de gente social, política y económicamente marginados, ya no supone un nuevo esfuerzo. Lo que es nuevo, sin embargo, es la rapidez en el crecimiento del interés de los investigadores que buscan involucrarse con estas poblaciones, y la variedad del conjunto de herramientas de métodos, para la investigación y el análisis, disponibles para apoyar este compromiso. Si bien esta edición especial pretende extraer y explorar una variedad de enfoques novedosos de los métodos y la práctica de la investigación, la contribución particularmente singular que presenta esta publicación es una franca exploración de los desafíos éticos al involucrarse con poblaciones identificadas como ‘vulnerables’, como se expresa a través de la discusión de la experiencia de campo de primera mano.

Introduction

For some decades now, human geography has sought to engage with the narratives of those whose voices have been absent from research accounts and policy discourse. This interest in the experiences of those who have been sidelined from social, cultural, economic and political agendas has been part of move towards an increasingly inclusive approach to the social sciences and a means of using the academy as a tool for social justice. This approach is illustrated through geography texts since the 1990s, a new wave of ‘critical geography’ encompassing the burgeoning sub-disciplines of social and cultural geography. With roots in both a Marxist and a Feminist approach (Gibson-Graham, 1996; Massey, 1994; McDowell, 1999; Valentine, 2001), geographical engagement with the lived experiences of socioculturally, politically and economically marginalised groups of people, is no longer a new endeavour. What is new, however, is the rapidity in the growth of interest of researchers seeking to engage with these populations, and the variety of the toolkit of methods, for research and analysis, available to support this engagement. Whilst this special edition seeks to draw out and explore a range of novel approaches to research methods and practice, the particularly unique contribution presented by this publication is a candid exploration of the ethical challenges of engaging with populations identified as ‘vulnerable’ as expressed through the discussion of first-hand fieldwork experience.

The increased interest in research with people considered to be vulnerable mirrors a recent rapid development in interest and practice in social and cultural geography, and associated sub-disciplines such as children’s geographies, the geography of education and geographies of disability (van Blerk & Kesby, 2009). What is clear from this body of work is that vulnerability is socially-constructed and dependent on the way in which power relations are created between mariginalised people, be they children, elderly, sick, disabled, or otherwise marginalised, and non-marginalised adults at a structural level across society (Pells, 2012; Tisdall & Punch, 2012). This special issue seeks to demonstrate the relational nature of vulnerability (see particularly Baillie Smith and Jenkins; and Eggleton, Kearns and Neuwelt, 2017). A relational approach demonstrates that vulnerability is context-dependent, with groups being more or less vulnerable to exploitation (in the widest sense of the word) based on the particular circumstances of an encounter. Therefore, research methodologies that are power-laden and unequal in their presentation and outcomes will position marginalised people as ‘vulnerable’. At the heart of the methodological and ethical challenges to researching with groups who may be positioned to some degree as vulnerable, is the need to transform research from a ‘top-down’ researcher-led encounter to a ‘bottom-up’ participant-led encounter (Aldridge, 2014).

Qualitative approaches have been favoured for reflecting on the potentially unethical practices of some methods that may objectify marginalised groups, and geographers have increasingly sought to find new ways to engage in research relationships on a more equal footing (Hall & McGarrol, 2013; Moran, 2013; Parr & Stevenson, 2014; Williams, Cloke, May, & Goodwin, 2016). Participation has been increasingly valued as part of a qualitative approach where participant empowerment is viewed by researchers as a necessary, and beneficial, part of the research process (e.g. Askins & Pain, 2011; Cahill, 2007; Kindon, 2003). There is now a large literature that has employed qualitative and participatory research to highlight the experiences of diverse groups including those who may be considered vulnerable in a research encounter due to their age, status, education, impairments and other factors, (Kesby, Kindon, & Pain, 2005; Pain, 2004; Pain & Francis, 2003). Within this literature research that involves participants as decision-makers, and even researchers themselves, is widely understood to be the gold standard. Rigorous discussion and detailed explanation addresses all stages of conducting participatory research with marginalised people, from recruitment to research methods to analysis and dissemination.

Whilst there is no doubt that there exists a wealth of published discussion on the topic, this has not translated into straightforward practice in research with vulnerable groups throughout the academy. Despite a generalised willingness to do research alongside, rather than ‘to’, populations who have suffered discrimination or whose voices are less-well represented, human geographers are consistently faced with challenges to this endeavour. These challenges are explored in detail, in a variety of forms, within the papers contained in this special edition. Distinct from other special issues dealing with marginalised or vulnerable groups and research methodology, the papers here address a wide variety of different groups, in geographically diverse locations. However, the methodological and ethical challenges are unifying. These papers starkly indicate that the perception of inherent vulnerability, on the part of the people and the institutions that care for or contain them, the research institutions and the researchers themselves, puts strain on the research relationship, forcing researchers to compromise principles of ‘bottom-up’ working in order to work within limits imposed by institutions. Focused on a wide variety of international locations and contexts, this collection of papers shares an over-arching narrative: that research with people who experience vulnerability, or are perceived to be vulnerable, is complicated by issues concerning researcher–participant relations, and the responsibilities of the researcher, which are less fraught, and less contested, when researching our socio-economic peers.

This special edition acknowledges that conducting research with people who are considered vulnerable involves a more complex network of actors than is often the case in other research situations. Specifically, researchers intending to involve ‘vulnerable’ people as participants will need to engage with processes that may not allow for the specific tailored needs of the group being researched. For example, university ethics committees, who have power to permit or prevent research, are likely to put particular requirements on research practices (Baillie Smith and Jenkins, 2017; Dyer & Demeritt, 2009). Sometimes their procedures can be restrictive of the development of new ways of researching ethically with groups who do not fit the traditional model of research participants, or new ways of viewing participants as more than research subjects (Blake, 2007). Once permission is gained, most researchers will be confronted with other gatekeepers, usually in the form of host institutions, who may also put parameters on the practice of the research in order to ensure the protection of participants. Finally, researchers may be able to access the participants themselves, who may or may not be in a position to offer their own informed consent.

Through exploring the complexity of the research process we highlight how procedural issues of access and ethics in research with groups perceived to be vulnerable, elucidates further vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities may, in turn interrupt or distort the way research is able to be carried out. Below we draw out three key foci that repeatedly emerge in this special issue and warrant further reflection from researchers: participant vulnerability; institutional vulnerability and researcher vulnerability. We discuss each of these in turn before exploring how the papers in this special issue bring these areas together in a call for more critical engagement in the research process and ethics. This critical engagement must be one that considers carefully the research relationships and responsibilities of all agential parties in the research process. As notions of vulnerability translate into risk, the perception of research with vulnerable people as a risky endeavour can significantly impact research.

Exploring ‘vulnerability’ in social and cultural geography research

Participant vulnerability

By and large minority, marginalised, and excluded populations are considered in social, political and economic terms as vulnerable. The notion of vulnerability reflects a socially constructed perception, and sometimes a reality, of a lack of social, political and economic capital held by such groups when compared to the societal norm. The groups explored in 2017: prisoners (Mitchelson), refugees and asylum seekers (Maillet, Mountz and Williams), indigenous peoples (Eggleton, Kearns and Neuwalt) disabled children (von Benzon), the homeless (Lancione), and drug addicts (Williams), share a common experience, where the societies in which they live perceive them to have reduced social and economic capital, which is seen to impede their capacity to act independently. Baillie Smith and Jenkins’ participant group, of NGO activists in South India, presents an interesting contrast. In this case, the participant activists are not typically considered vulnerable people in their community context, but are relationally vulnerable in the context of government and intergovernmental development discourse and planning and their labour relations within this framework. Indeed, Baillie Smith and Jenkins’ acknowledge that their participants included those who were wealthy and ‘less vulnerable’ by South Indian standards, but highly vulnerable when their labour situation was compared to that of a UK employee in a similar organisation. This underlines a key theme of this Special Issue, that vulnerability is not only material, but also relational.

Research already carried out with marginalised participant groups demonstrates that despite economic hardships or reduced social networks, new ways of developing social and economic capital emerge. For example, in discussing prisoners’ experiences Moran (2013) highlights how the prison visiting room becomes a space where social networks from the outside can be re-engaged. Similarly, Johnsen, May, and Cloke (2008) discuss how auto-photography with homeless people facilitated an understanding of their everyday lives as similar to societal norms, in terms of activities carried out and social networks engaged with, albeit in different settings. Yet, the perceived lack of independence renders marginalised groups as reliant on others; whether they be carers, family members, adults, social workers, volunteers, health professionals or guards. This reliance on others, despite being a form of social capital in itself, creates the perception of vulnerability, and indeed materially generates socio-economic frailty, as individuals do not have control over their own assets, independent social networks, or relevant training and skills. This results in an institutional or policy perception of decreased social capital, and therefore decreased power, on the part of the ‘vulnerable’ adult or child.

This can be seen in everyday contexts in the UK, for example, through legislation such as that preventing children engaging in activities perceived as ‘dangerous’ that are permissible to adults, such as drinking or smoking, or the ability of medical professionals to incarcerate the mentally ill, or the ‘rules’ imposed on hospital wards that don’t apply outside (see for example, Williams, 2017). This paternalism is well discussed and debated within disability studies, and to a lesser extent, geography of disability, where it is argued to be an unreasonable justification for the oppression of disabled people, and limitations to their rights. The argument is made eloquently in Wolpert’s seminal paper ‘The Dignity of Risk’ where he argues that a paternalistic approach to disabled people, that prioritizes safeguarding over the rights of individuals to independent decision-making, is a limitation to personal freedom (Wolpert [1980]; see also work such as Tregaskis [2004]).

The same paternalistic desire to protect vulnerable people often extends to institutional policies that inhibit interaction between vulnerable clients and researchers (Carter, 2009). Mitchelson (2017) discusses the way in which historic abuses of prisoners through biomedical and psychological experimentation have led to a widespread culture of institutional resistance to research participation from prisons. Mitchelson suggests that little distinction is made between the motivations of psycho-medical research and social science research, with institutions often on the offensive, presuming participants will be reduced to objectified subjects in academic discourse. Von Benzon (2017) in her research with learning disabled children, discusses similar frustrations illustrated through an exceedingly low response rate from families and from schools, apparently reticent to engage with any research process, prior even to having any knowledge of what the research might entail. Where institutions or individuals prevent researchers from accessing marginalised people, as a means of protecting the marginalised from harm, they prevent those in their care from contributing to a research agenda. In turn, this silences the voices of those who lack the independence to engage without ‘permission’ from gatekeepers. This lack of engagement limits the capacity of marginalised people to have either a direct or indirect influence on academic, and subsequently sociopolitical, understanding of their lived experience (Kramer-Roy, 2015).

This approach is completely at odds with a ‘right-based’ approach, or the concern of much of a new, critical approach in geography and the broa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Research relationships and responsibilities: ‘Doing’ research with ‘vulnerable’ participants: introduction to the special edition
• 2 Relational vulnerability and the research process with former prisoners in Athens, Georgia (USA)
• 3 Researching migration and enforcement in obscured places: practical, ethical and methodological challenges to fieldwork
• 4 Civil society activists and vulnerability in South India: the relational politics of life history methods and development research
• 5 Being patient, being vulnerable: exploring experiences of general practice waiting rooms through elicited drawings
• 6 The ethnographic novel as activist mode of existence: translating the field with homeless people and beyond
• 7 Residential ethnography, mixed loyalties, and religious power: ethical dilemmas in faith-based addiction treatment
• 8 Confessions of an inadequate researcher: space and supervision in research with learning disabled children
• Index