Registration by September 23, 2020 (Coming in August)

Keynote speakers: Associate Professor Christina Clark-Kazak (University of Ottawa, Canada) & Professor Anna Lundberg (Linköping University, Sweden)

Keynote abstracts and bios

Conducting research with vulnerable groups such as forced migrants necessitates a critical consideration of the ethical aspects of research. The specific ethical challenges of forced migration research relate, for example, to the unequal power relations embedded in the research context, traumatic experiences and precarious legal statuses of many forced migrants, and the politicization of the context in which the research takes place. While ethical reviews by research ethics committees are becoming more common, the practices and processes are still taking shape, and it is not guaranteed that committees would have members with expertise in forced migration research. Moreover, conducting research with people with traumatic experiences can be difficult for researchers themselves, especially if the researcher has also experienced (forced) migration. Many scholars are also acting both as researchers and as activists, and balancing between these two roles may be ethically challenging. Hence, it is important to create dialogue on ethical questions between researchers of forced migration. The purpose of this event is to discuss the ethical aspects of forced migration research by underlining the researchers’ need to critically reflect on their positionality in research and to recognize the ingrained power relations and vulnerabilities, as well as the agency of research participants.

The webinar consists of a symposium on Wednesday, October 7, featuring two keynote speeches and a Q&A session, and a workshop on Thursday, October 8. The webinar is organized with Zoom. 

Registration

The webinar is open to everyone interested, but registration is needed for receiving the link for online participation. 

The number of workshop participants (on October 8) is limited to 20 to enable discussion. The spots are filled on a first come, first served basis.

Please register for the webinar no later than September 23, 2020 with this e-form: LINK COMING IN AUGUST.

Program

SYMPOSIUM, Wednesday, October 7, 2020

15:00-15:15 Opening remarks: Senior Researcher Marja Tiilikainen (Migration Institute of Finland)

15:15-16:15 Keynote 1: Associate Professor Christina Clark-Kazak (University of Ottawa, Canada): The Ethics of Studying Forced Mobilities: Dilemmas, Lessons Learned and Future Directions

Chair: Senior Researcher Marja Tiilikainen (Migration Institute of Finland)

16:15-16:30 Break

16:30-17:30 Keynote 2: Professor Anna Lundberg (Linköping University, Sweden): The Ethics of Activist Research in Times of Repressive Migration Politics: A Presentation of the Cross-border Solidarity Initiative the Asylum Commission

Chair: Academy Research Fellow Johanna Leinonen (University of Oulu)

17:30-18:00 Discussion

WORKSHOP, Thursday, October 8, 2020 (max. 20 participants)

Are you conducting research on forced migration or with vulnerable research participants? Would you like to discuss ethical questions and challenges you have encountered in your research? 

The workshop on Thursday, October 8 will provide researchers and PhD students a venue to tackle ethical questions arising from their own research. The discussion is led by the keynote speakers and the organizers. The participants are not required to submit a paper for this workshop, the focus will be on discussion. 

The themes for the small group discussions are ethical dilemmas during data collection, secondary trauma, societal impact and activism, and ethical guidelines and reviews. Please indicate in the registration form which theme you are primarily interested in. However, all participants will be able to discuss all these themes in the joint discussion.

Program:

15:00-15:15 Opening of the workshop, guidelines for the small group discussions 

Chair: Professor Magdalena Kmak (Åbo Akademi University)

15:15-16:45 Working in small groups

Chairs: Postdoctoral Researcher Eveliina Lyytinen (Migration Institute of Finland), Academy Research Fellow Johanna Leinonen (University of Oulu) & Senior Researcher Marja Tiilikainen (Migration Institute of Finland)

16:45-17:00 Break

17:00-18:00 Joint discussion and closing of the event

Chair: Professor Magdalena Kmak (Åbo Akademi University)

The webinar is organized by the University of Oulu, the Migration Institute of Finland (MIF), the Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity and the European Narratives (EuroStorie; funded by the Academy of Finland and hosted by the University of Helsinki), and Åbo Akademi University. At the University of Oulu, the organizers are the Academy of Finland projects Refugee Journeys: Narratives of Forced Mobilities (2018–2023) and Postmemory of Family Separation: An Intergenerational Perspective (2019-2023). At the MIF, the organizers are the Academy of Finland projects Family Separation, Migration Status, and Everyday Security: Experiences and Strategies of Vulnerable Migrants (2018‒2021) and Action-Oriented Research on Asylum Seekers’ Deportability (2018‒2021). The event is part of the symposium series “Rethinking (Im)Mobilities of Vulnerable Migrants” at the University of Oulu and MIF (2019–2021). 

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The Migration Institute of Finland is the only institute in Finland specialising in both the research and documentation of migration flows. Our special task involves documenting the life of Finns…
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The Migration Institute of Finland is the only institute in Finland specialising in both the research and documentation of migration flows. Our special task involves documenting the life of Finns…
Read more