Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ethical, methodological, and practical implications of incorporating 'community researchers' in a research project on irregular migration. It examines the benefits of participatory research, including 'experiential advantage' and 'para-ethnographic consciousness'.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the ethical, methodological, and practical implications of incorporating ‘community researchers’ in the I-CLAIM project, which investigates the living and labor conditions of migrants with precarious or no legal status. The study employs participatory research methodologies, engaging community members as co-researchers in ethnographic fieldwork.

This approach is founded on the belief that knowledge is shaped by lived experiences and that everyone can contribute to its generation. This participatory model offers two key advantages: the ‘experiential advantage’, where community researchers share similar identities with participants, providing deeper insights, and ‘para-ethnographic consciousness’, which grants them expertise through experience. These factors create an ‘epistemic advantage’ that can uncover blind spots and challenge biased interpretations, enriching the research process.

However, including community researchers presents complexities. Their involvement may reveal power imbalances within the researched community and pose challenges in addressing the ‘positionality problem’. Additionally, the creation of community researcher roles may inadvertently reproduce structural inequalities, as they are often hired on temporary contracts with low wages, handling the most emotionally taxing aspects of fieldwork. Furthermore, while community researchers facilitate access to hard-to-reach populations, their involvement also risks becoming an extractive practice, depending on their status and the roles of senior researchers in the project.

To address these concerns, this paper aims to reflect upon strategies, concepts, and protocols that balance the benefits of community involvement with the need to address potential ethical and methodological pitfalls.