Contribution short abstract:

The proposed contribution focuses on relational ethics in research conducted in England and Brazil, focusing on the experiences of young refugees and Warao Indigenous people. The studies aimed to create an equitable and ethical research process, involving participants' perspectives.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper presents reflections on research ethics beyond the boundaries of procedural requirements. It focuses on a doctoral study investigating how young refugees encountered England’s education system and discusses the relational ethics approach adopted throughout the research. A critical ethnography was conducted using arts-based participatory elements and semi-structured interviews and school-based observations at a secondary school in the south of England. The study’s goals were to amplify participants’ experiences by listening to the young people and their families, building trust with them, setting realistic expectations related to the research and engaging them in discussions about research dissemination plans. The proposed discussion will also draw reflections from a postdoctoral study conducted with the Warao Indigenous people, who have increasingly been displaced in Venezuela and migrated to Brazil. The adopted methodological choices showed that relational ethics is essential to creating an equitable and ethical research process by centring participants’ perspectives rather than the researcher’s. Nevertheless, ethical issues and asymmetric power relations can still cause discomfort within relational research. I aim to reflect on the ethical challenges arising in the relationship between researcher and participants and the challenges encountered to ‘exit the field’.