Transnational Migration and Research Ethics

In conducting critical participatory inquiries with youth across the Canada-U.S. border, we – Karamjeet Dhillon and Kaitlin Popielarz, along with Jasmine Ulmer – have encountered ethical complexities in research involving migration. Here, we discuss the ethical complexities in two cases, each from a participatory dissertation. In the first case, which involves youth with refugee status in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, several participants in Dhillon’s study requested to be identified by name so that others could know who they are, what they have experienced, and what they can contribute. By way of response, the research team co-created with participants in different ways to honor their identities. In the second case, Popielarz also contended with issues of anonymity, albeit of a different sort. What became an action research project with youth organizers in Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A., had initially been conceptualized in a different setting with different participants; however, when officers from the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) positioned themselves outside schools in Southwest Detroit – an area in which many immigrant students and their families reside – changes were made to maintain the privacy, confidentiality, and safety of community members without documentation. Together, these cases indicate the need to navigate macroethics and microethics when conducting critical participatory inquiries with transnational populations, particularly around issues of anonymization, confidentiality, and consent. Further, these cases illustrate the importance of attending to how participants self-identify. When individuals are treated as generic policy labels, they are given much less than they are owed with respect to their individuality.

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