Ethics, Methods and Moving Standards in Research on Migrant Workers and Forced Labour

Sam Scott, Alistair Geddes

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

    Abstract

    Universities, funders and professional bodies now have well-developed ethics policies and procedures in place to ensure research participants are fully informed and safeguarded and institutional reputational damage is prevented. These codes have coalesced around increasingly standardised core criteria, with the expectation that they will be adhered to by all employed and funded researchers. This chapter argues however that the dominance of standardised ethics frameworks is also problematic. Both qualitative and quantitative investigations inevitably involve researchers making ethics judgements which are relative and context specific as well. These judgements may be complex, and the outcomes they produce do not always align with standardised ethics frameworks. Drawing on six examples selected from our own research on labour migration and workplace exploitation, in particular on forced labour among migrant workers, we discuss the need to identify and reappraise the distinction between achieving ethical research ‘on paper’ (conformance with institutional ethics codes) and actually defining and ensuring ethical research in practice (i.e. allowing space for exercising individual ethics judgments).
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationETHICAL CONCERNS IN RESEARCH ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING
    Pages117-135
    Number of pages19
    Volume13
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 9 Dec 2015

    Publication series

    NameStudies of Organized Crime

    Keywords

    • Community Research
    • Ethics
    • Exploitation
    • Forced Labour
    • Interview
    • Migration
    • Peer Research
    • Qualitative
    • Research

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