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Paper short abstract

This article examines enumerators’ experiences during Gen Z protests in Nairobi and Kampala, showing how they were outsourced to do emotional labour and to manage risk, while negotiating a tension between physical and emotional safety, the demands of high-quality data, and financial security.

Paper long abstract

In 2024, we accompanied forty-five enumerators in Kampala and Nairobi as they were hired to collect data for a quantitative survey study, commissioned through European funding and conducted in collaboration with East African research institutions. As it so happened, the entire period of four weeks of data collection coincided with the rise of the Gen Z protests in Kenya and, to a lesser extent, Uganda. The survey team initially suspended data collection, monitored the situation as it unfolded, and eventually decided to partially and conditionally resume data collection. In practice, while formal oversight of the project remained with the survey organizing team, under emergency conditions authority and responsibility for assessing risk and determining when work could proceed was outsourced to local enumerator groups on a day to day basis. Based on ethnographic fieldwork involving accompanying the enumerators in the field and follow-up conversations with them, this presentation will explore their lived experiences and unpack the often-invisible emotional labour and risk assessment during fieldwork. Enumerators were constantly negotiating a persistent tension: choosing between physical and emotional safety, the demands of high-quality data collection, and financial security. Because their primary mandate was to complete interviews, cancellations often meant starting the process anew, while a day out of the field could result in a day without pay. As a result, enumerators navigated precarious labour conditions while regulating both their own emotions and those of the participants in an effort to balance institutional demands with the lived realities of the communities they work in.