Forced migration is a global issue. About 34 million of the world's inhabitants were identified in 2010 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as either refugees, internally displaced persons, asylum seekers or stateless people. Systematic inquiries are urgently needed to understand and improve the circumstances in which these people live, and to guide national and international policies and programmes.
However, there are many ethical complications in conducting research with uprooted people, who have often been exposed to persecution and marginalisation in conflict situations, refugee camps, immigration detention settings, and following resettlement. This book brings together for the first time key scholars across a range of disciplines including anthropology, bioethics, public health, criminology, psychology, socio-linguistics, philosophy, psychiatry, social policy and social work to discuss the ethical dimensions, challenges and tensions of such research.
It encompasses the theoretical, conceptual, practical, and applied aspects of research ethics, while integrating different disciplinary perspectives. It is intended as a resource not only for researchers, students and practitioners but also for those conducting cross-cultural research more broadly. Many of its arguments, examples and concerns are pertinent to research with other vulnerable or marginalised populations.
Author Biography
Karen Block is a research fellow in the Jack Brockhoff Child Health and Wellbeing Program, McCaughey VicHealth Centre, Melbourne School of Population Health, University of Melbourne, USA. Karen has a background spanning clinical sciences, history, languages and the sociology of health with an interest in research methodologies and ethics. Her research is focused on understanding the social determinants of health and wellbeing for refugee-background young people in the settlement context. Recent publication topics include work on ethical strategies for engaging refugee youth in research (Journal of Refugee Studies) and the social and learning environment in schools (Health Education & Behavior).
Elisha Riggs is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Australia. With a background in public health and health promotion, she completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne. She has considerable research experience in refugee and migrant child health inequalities, social determinants of health, ethics, partnerships, mixed methods intervention implementation and evaluation. Her research utilises participatory and culturally competent methodologies in partnership with culturally diverse communities. She has published on topics including refugee access and engagement with health services (BMC Health Services Research, Global Health Promotion), cultural competence in public health research (Encyclopaedia of Public Health) and ethical considerations in qualitative research (Monash Bioethics Review).
Nick Haslam is Professor of Psychology at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He received his PhD in social and clinical psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, USA and then taught for several years at the New School for Social Research. His research has addressed social perception, dehumanisation, prejudice, and psychiatric classification. His six previous books include the title Introduction to Personality and Intelligence and Yearning to Breathe Free: Seeking Asylum in Australia (with Dean Lusher). His meta-analytic research on refugee mental health with Matt Porter was been published in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association.
