Empowerment or exposure? Ethical dilemmas of visual methods with vulnerable migrants

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present a typology of the treatment of ethical issues in recent studies using visual participatory methods with immigrants and refugees and provide insights for researchers into how these issues can be more adequately addressed.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper presents the results of a scoping study as a typology of ethical considerations, from standard IRB approval to complete ethical guidelines/frameworks for research with refugee/migrant populations.

Findings

The review reveals that there is a broad spectrum of ethical considerations in the use of visual participatory methods with migrants, with the majority only giving cursory or minimal attention to the particular vulnerabilities of these populations.

Originality/value

This paper encourages university-based researchers conducting participatory inquiry with migrant populations to engage in deeper critical reflection on the ethical implications of these methods in keeping with PAR's ethico-onto-epistemological roots, to make intentional methodological choices that are congruent with those roots and to be explicit in their description of how they did this as they disseminate their work.

Citation

Hauber-Özer, M. and Call-Cummings, M. (2020), "Empowerment or exposure? Ethical dilemmas of visual methods with vulnerable migrants", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. 20 No. 3, pp. 329-340. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-10-2019-0075