(Un-)Informed Consent? Regulating and Managing Fieldwork Encounters in Practice

Abstract

Interactive methods of qualitative social research such as interviews bear the possibility that the mere fact of researchers visibly conducting research may influence the behaviour e.g. of respondents. This empirically proven aspect of interviews, group discussions and observations leads to problems for the current practice of procedural ethics that call for a specific form of informed consent. We, in contrast, illuminate the complex relationships researchers and respondents engage in. Based on these insights, we highlight the need for consciously managing one’s identity in the course of fieldwork. Using examples from our own empirical work, we elaborate on the delicate balance between this essential impression management and the need to avoid deception which would compromise our research from an ethical point of view.

Biographical Note

Prof. Dr. Judith Miggelbrink (SFB 1199 & Technical University Dresden)

Judith Miggelbrink, born 1966, holds the chair of human geography at TU Dresden. She leads the DFG funded project »(In-)Security issues at the Schengen border. Security practices of state and non-state actors at the German-Polish border« and is member of the collaborative research centre 1199 »Spatialization under the Global Condition«. Her research focuses, inter alia, on peripherialization, security and borders as well as on globalized medical practices.

Dorit Happ (Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin)

Dorit Happ is a political scientist focusing on Eastern European affairs. Since 2018 she has been working on the project entitled “INTAA: work and training as an integration field for refugees – opportunities, obstacles, and perspectives for action” at FÖPS Berlin. Previously, she conducted research at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Studies on security policy discourse and EU practices in Eastern Europe. She is currently completing her doctorate on the subject of external migration and asylum policy and the integration of refugees in Belarus and Ukraine at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. In Berlin she also works as a lecturer at the Institute of Geography.