scholarly journals “Do you want to help or go to war?”: Ethical challenges of critical research in immigration detention in Canada

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 644-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Kronick ◽  
Janet Cleveland ◽  
Cécile Rousseau
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Critical Research ◽  
Immigration Detention ◽  
Detention Centre ◽  
Pivotal Moments ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
Mass Displacement

In a time of mass displacement, countries across the globe are seeking to protect borders through coercive methods of deterrence such as immigration detention. In Canada, migrants—including children—may be detained in penal facilities having neither been charged nor convicted of crimes. In this paper we examine how we dealt with the series of ethical dilemmas that emerged while doing research in immigration detention centres in Canada. Using a critical ethnographic approach, we examine the process of our research in the field, seeking to understand what our emotional responses and those of the staff could tell us about detention itself, but also about what is at stake when researchers are faced with the suffering of participants in these spaces of confinement. The findings suggest that field work in immigration detention centres is an emotionally demanding process and that there were several pivotal moments in which our sense of moral and clinical obligations toward distressed detainees, especially children, were in conflict with our role as researchers. We also grapple with how the disciplinary gaze of the detention centre affects researchers entering the space. Given these tensions, we argue, spaces of critical reflection that can consider and contain the strongly evoked emotions are crucial, both for researchers, and perhaps more challengingly, for detention centre employees and gatekeepers as well.

scholarly journals Psychotherapy Ethics in Twentieth-Century Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Magdalena Elsner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Informed Consent ◽  
Therapeutic Relationship ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Twentieth Century Literature ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Century Literature

Ethical issues arising in the practice of psychotherapy, such as confidentiality, boundaries in the therapeutic relationship, and informed consent, figure prominently in a range of twentieth-century literary texts that portray psychotherapy. This chapter analyzes the portrayal of these conflicts, but also stresses that they are often marginal to the overall plot structures of these narratives and that literary depictions of psychotherapy are often vague or even inaccurate concerning key characteristics of psychotherapeutic practice. Focusing on examples that either illustrate professionalism and the absence of ethical challenges in psychotherapy, or take up the ethical reservations that fueled anti-Freudianism or the anti-psychiatry movement, the chapter proposes that selected literary depictions of psychotherapy can play a key role in sensitizing therapists to the complex make-up of ethical dilemmas as well as illustrating the cultural and historical contexts of these dilemmas.

scholarly journals Pushing poverty off limits: quality improvement and the architecture of healthcare values

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Polly Mitchell ◽  
Alan Cribb ◽  
Vikki Entwistle ◽  
Guddi Singh
Keyword(s):  
Quality Improvement ◽  
Social Determinants Of Health ◽  
Social Determinants ◽  
Social Deprivation ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Determinants Of Health ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
The Social ◽  
Significant Burden ◽  
Health Related

Abstract Background Poverty and social deprivation have adverse effects on health outcomes and place a significant burden on healthcare systems. There are some actions that can be taken to tackle them from within healthcare institutions, but clinicians who seek to make frontline services more responsive to the social determinants of health and the social context of people’s lives can face a range of ethical challenges. We summarise and consider a case in which clinicians introduced a poverty screening initiative (PSI) into paediatric practice using the discourse and methodology of healthcare quality improvement (QI). Discussion Whilst suggesting that interventions like the PSI are a potentially valuable extension of clinical roles, which take advantage of the unique affordances of clinical settings, we argue that there is a tendency for such settings to continuously reproduce a narrower set of norms. We illustrate how the framing of an initiative as QI can help legitimate and secure funding for practical efforts to help address social ends from within clinical service, but also how it can constrain and disguise the value of this work. A combination of methodological emphases within QI and managerialism within healthcare institutions leads to the prioritisation, often implicitly, of a limited set of aims and governing values for healthcare. This can act as an obstacle to a genuine broadening of the clinical agenda, reinforcing norms of clinical practice that effectively push poverty ‘off limits.’ We set out the ethical dilemmas facing clinicians who seek to navigate this landscape in order to address poverty and the social determinants of health. Conclusions We suggest that reclaiming QI as a more deliberative tool that is sensitive to these ethical dilemmas can enable managers, clinicians and patients to pursue health-related values and ends, broadly conceived, as part of an expansive range of social and personal goods.

Ethical dilemmas and challenges in ethnographic migration research

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-291
Author(s):  
Martha Montero-Sieburth
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Migration Research ◽  
The Us

PurposeArgued is the need for: (1) a clearer interpretation of procedural ethics guidelines; (2) the identification and development of ethical field case study models which can be incorporated into university ethics teaching; (3) an understanding of the vulnerabilities of researchers and participants as reflected in the researchers' positionality and reflexivity and (4) ethnographic monitoring as a participant-friendly and participatory ethics methodology.Design/methodology/approachThis article, drawn from the author's four-decade trajectory of collective ethnographic research, addresses the ethical challenges and dilemmas encountered by researchers when conducting ethnographic research, particularly with vulnerable migrant women and youth.FindingsThe author addresses dilemmas in field research resulting from different interpretations of ethics and emphasizes the need for researchers to be critically aware of their own vulnerabilities and those of migrants to avoid unethical practices in validating the context(s), language(s), culture and political landscape of their study.Research limitations/implicationsThe author presents case studies from the US and the Netherlands, underlining her positionality and reflexivity and revisits Dell Hymes' ethnographic monitoring approach as a participant-friendly, bottom-up methodology which enables researchers to co-construct knowledge with participants and leads to participatory ethics.Practical implicationsShe presents case studies from the US and the Netherlands underlining her positionality and reflexivity and revisits Dell Hymes’ ethnographic monitoring approach as a participant-friendly, bottom up methodology which enables researchers to co-construct knowledge with participants and engage in participatory ethics.Social implicationsFinally, she proposes guidelines for the ethical conduct of research with migrant populations that contribute to the broader methodological debates currently taking place in qualitative migration research.Originality/valueExpected from this reading is the legacy that as a qualitative migration researcher one can after 4 decades of research leave behind as caveats and considerations in working with vulnerable migrants and the ethical dilemmas and challenges that need to be overcome.

scholarly journals Ethical dilemmas in studying family consumption

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ratna Khanijou ◽  
Daniela Pirani
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Family Meals ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Emotional Challenges ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Family ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Family Consumption

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the types of ethical challenges and dilemmas researchers face when engaging in family consumption research. Design/methodology/approach Drawing from the concept of micro-ethics to bridge reflexivity with ethics in practice, the paper provides a reflexive account of the various ethical dilemmas encountered by two family consumption scholars during their fieldwork. Both researchers conducted qualitative research on family meals. Findings The paper reveals five types of ethical tensions that can arise when doing research on family consumption. These tensions are addressed as display, positioning, emotional, practical and consent dilemmas, all of which have ethical implications. The findings unpack these dilemmas, showing empirical and reflexive accounts of the researchers as they engage in ethics in practice. Solutions and practical strategies for dealing with these ethical tensions are provided. Originality/value Despite the growing interest in interpretive family research, there is less attention on the ethical and emotional challenges researchers face when entering the family consumption scape. As researching families involves entering an intimate area of participants’ lives, the field may be replete with tensions that may affect the researcher. This paper brings the concept of micro-ethics to family marketing literature, showing how researchers can do ethics in practice. The paper draws on reflexive accounts of two researchers’ personal experiences, showing their emotional, practical, positioning and display challenges. It also provides practical strategies for researchers to deal with dilemmas in the field.

Developing a Code of Ethics amongst Social Workers in Supported Employment: Exploring the Socio-ecological Model

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 1834-1853 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orly Shapira-Lishchinsky ◽  
Miri Ben-Amram
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Supported Employment ◽  
Ecological Model ◽  
Code Of Ethics ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Ethical Codes ◽  
The Social ◽  
One Year

Abstract This study reveals the ethical dilemmas encountered by social workers who mentor workers with intellectual and developmental disabilities that work in the free labour market through supported employment frameworks. The aim of the study is to examine the social workers' ethical dilemmas, while extracting rules of conduct and ethical codes that are unique to supported employment frameworks, through team simulation training. The study included forty-eight social workers who attended nine sessions in the course of one year. The findings, which were analysed using a qualitative methodology, revealed that the dilemmas, rules of ethical conduct and the derived ethical codes ranged from flexible solutions to setting firm boundaries. It emerged that the ethical dilemmas were associated with interactions that take place on all layers of the socio-ecological model. The contribution of the study is in developing an ecological approach to coping with the multidimensional dilemmas that arise in the context of supported employment. The findings will help develop a systemic approach amongst social workers towards coping with the ethical challenges involved in this type of employment.

Confidentiality in participatory research

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 442-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elmira Petrova ◽  
Jan Dewing ◽  
Michelle Camilleri
Keyword(s):  
Research Ethics ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Ethics Committee ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Ethical Guidelines ◽  
Case Study Methodology ◽  
Research Ethics Committee ◽  
Practice Development

Aim: This article presents key ethical challenges that were encountered when conducting a participatory qualitative research project with a very specific, small group of nurses, in this case with practice development nurses in Malta. Background: With the small number of nurses employed in practice development roles in Malta, there are numerous difficulties of maintaining confidentiality. Poorly constructed interventions by the researcher could have resulted in detrimental effects to research participants and the overall trustworthiness of the research. Generally, ethical guidelines for research exist to reinforce validity of research; however, there is not an established consensus on how these strategies can be utilised in some types of qualitative field work. Research design: The researcher used an exploratory case study methodology. The sample consisted of 10 participants who were interviewed twice using face-to-face interviews, over a period of 2 months. Ethical considerations: The study was ethically reviewed by the University Research Ethics Committee and the Faculty Research Ethics Committee, University of Malta. The participants referred to in this article have been given adequate information about the study and their consent has been obtained. Discussion: Numerous strategies for ensuring confidentiality during recruitment of the participants, during data collection, during transcription and data analysis and during dissemination of research results assisted the researcher in responding to potential and actual ethical issues. Conclusion: This article emphasises the main strategies that can be used to respond to ethical challenges when researching with a small easily identifiable group. The learning discussed here may be relevant to or even transferable to other similar research studies or research contexts. These methods fostered a greater credibility throughout the research process and predisposed the participants to greater trust, and thus, they disclosed their experiences and speak more freely, thus enhancing the quality of the study.

Subjectivity and identity in detention: Punishment and society in a global age

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Bosworth
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Foreign National ◽  
Immigration Detention ◽  
Detention Centre ◽  
Global Age

This article draws on ethnographic research that I conducted in five British immigration removal centres from November 2009 to June 2011, and considers the challenges these institutions pose to our understanding of penal power. These centres contain a complex mix of foreign national citizens including former and current asylum seekers, those without visas, visa over-stayers and post-sentence foreign national prisoners. For many non-British offenders, a period of confinement in an immigration detention centre is now, effectively, part of their punishment. What are the implications of this dual confinement and (how) can we understand it within the intellectual framework of punishment and society?

scholarly journals Ethics in Fieldwork: Reflections on the Unexpected

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Palmer ◽  
Dena Fam ◽  
Tanzi Smith ◽  
Sarina Kilham
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Approval Process ◽  
Ethical Decisions ◽  
Institutional Ethics ◽  
Research Outcomes ◽  
New Information ◽  
Personal Challenges

Research involving fieldwork can present the researcher with ethical dilemmas not anticipated in institutional ethics approval processes, and which offer profound personal and methodological challenges. The authors' experiences of conducting qualitative fieldwork in four distinctly different contexts are used to illustrate some of these unexpected consequences and ethical dilemmas. Issues encountered included: compromised relationships with informants which develop in unforeseen ways; engagement with traumatized informants which lead to unexpected roles for the researcher such as confidante, dealing with new information that is critical to informants' futures but could undermine the research project, and the implications of ethical decisions for research design and analysis. In our shared reflection on the four case studies in this paper, we examine anticipatory rather than reactive ways of dealing with such ethical dilemmas. Preparation and critical reflection are found to be key tools in relating to field informants, dealing with the personal challenges of undertaking field work, and developing useful research outcomes after returning home. We conclude by suggesting some issues for field researchers to consider in addition to the concerns addressed in a standard university ethics approval process.

scholarly journals Geometry Concept on the Motifs of Woven Fabric in Kefamenanu Community

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-30
Author(s):  
Yohanis Ndapa Deda ◽  
Stanislaus Amsikan
Keyword(s):  
High Schools ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Junior High ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Mathematical Concept ◽  
Junior High Schools ◽  
Woven Fabric ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
Ethnographic Approach

For the Kefamenanu community, the motif serves as the identity of the person who wears it. Nevertheless, the woven fabric must be present at cultural occasions, welcoming guests, and death ceremonies. The motifs of traditional woven fabric have not been developed by teachers to discuss the link between mathematics and local wisdom. The purpose of this research is to define and describe the mathematical concept of the motifs woven fabric to the students of primary and junior high schools. The present study uses a descriptive qualitative method to explain the geometry concept on the motifs of woven fabric. The ethnographic approach is also employed as an empirical and theoretical approach to provide description and analysis about a culture based on intensive field work. Collecting data were conducted using interviews and documentation. Interviews were conducted with several informants selected based on the consideration of researcher and suggestion by previous informant. Documentation was done using video recordings and photos. The results show the geometry concept of the motifs of woven fabric, such as reflection, rotation, translation, repetition, triangle and quadrilateral. The motifs of woven fabric owned by the Kefamenanu community contain particular local wisdom and are potentially used to convey the geometry concept in mathematics for primary and junior high schools. 

Ethics Issues Regarding Supervision and Consultation in Private Practice

2017 ◽  
pp. 443-458
Author(s):  
Rodney K. Goodyear ◽  
Carol A. Falender ◽  
Tony Rousmaniere
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Private Practice ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Multiple Relationships ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Supervision And Training ◽  
And Training

This chapter describes key ethical challenges confronting mental health professionals who provide supervision and consultation in private practice settings. Essential features of supervision and consultation are explained. The value and content of a supervision or consultation contract are discussed. Demands and challenges of the gatekeeping role for supervisors are considered. Types of competence and implications for supervision and consultation are presented. Guidance is provided in managing multiple relationships in supervision and consultation and in avoiding conflicts of interest. Competence, security, and confidentiality in using technology for supervision and training are considered. The chapter concludes with a discussion of nine common ethical dilemmas for supervisors and consultants in private practice settings.

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