Ethical considerations

Research ethics is concerned with moral behaviour in research contexts (Wiles, 2013, p. 4). In this respect, I have tried to be respectful towards the communities and people with whom this research is concerned and to whom it could be potentially connected.

I have also tried to be honest and open about the aims and research steps undertaken.

Indeed, as a researcher I feel that I have a duty to care towards the people that participated in this project (and responsibility for ethical practice towards the university).

During the whole research process, I have been confronted with ethical challenges that have led me to make reflections on this dimension of the research. In the following paragraphs I will explore how I have tackled, in practice, specific concepts that are used in discussions about ethical research practices (Iphophen, 2009; Wiles, 2013; Wiles et al., 2008). These concepts are: harms and benefits, informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality and compensations.

As regards to harms and benefits of the research, during the research the process I have tried to assess the potential risk of harm and to minimise it (Iphophen, 2009).

Notably, to counter potential misperceptions of the research purpose and false expectations of any likely gains to participants. I have tried to always be clear about who I am and about the research purposes. However, this has been specially challenging in origin contexts, notably in Kolda. On the one hand, while contacting and interviewing people in this impoverished remote town, some representatives from local NGOs saw me as a donor or potential person for accessing international donors.

On the other hand, in the small villages in Kolda sometimes the differences between participants’ environment and reference points and my own were enormous. I felt, on some occasions that we were having very different perceptions about the level of my power and the purposes of the visit. Hence, whenever I had the opportunity I repeated the aims and my role as many times as I thought were necessary. A particular piece of evidence on this is that, before visiting one village, I was told by stakeholders in Catalonia (migrant association representative, local donors) that given that I was there I had to explain to them what they were doing wrong about the co-development

process. In that case, I did not do what I was asked. I felt this would entail some degree of scolding. However, during the conversation I tried to explain the expectations that donors had regarding international development projects, and the type of criteria a migrant association had to follow to manage public funds.

At another level, during fieldwork in some cases I have been confronted with very sensitive information such as abuse and discrimination along to different social axes (such as gender relations), or misuse of funds. I have tried to be sensitive towards these people, but to not be judgmental. I have often questioned myself about the purpose (and theme) of the research. I have been very careful to not disclose delicate information and to maintain confidentiality, but I followed some of the issues through the research process when I thought I was a pertinent actor to question it.

Regarding benefits, I would have liked to start the project with more participation from the research participants. Nevertheless, I have disseminated the project and intermediate findings to Senegalese migrant associations and local government organisations. I foresee sending the final dissertation, and disseminating the final results, with actors in Catalonia.

As regards to informed consent, I have always provided participants with clear information about what participating in this research project involved and gave them the opportunity to decide whether or not they wanted to participate. However, the agreement has always been verbal. Before scheduling the interview and before starting the actual interview I explained my aims, the fact that it was my personal academic project, and discussed issues of anonymity and confidentiality. In this regard, identifiable information about individuals collected during the process of research is not disclosed. Besides, specific information provided in the process of this research has not been used at all if the participant made this request. I have not disclosed ‘off the record’ comments, even if in some cases they may have contributed to the interpretation of certain dynamics. Making participants, migrant associations and small villages in Kolda anonymous has been one way to protect research participants from the accidental breaking of confidentiality. Nevertheless, due to the qualitative character of the research, it is problematic to assure confidentiality when, as a researcher, I have to explain processes to justify and contextualise inferences.

The capacity of the communities in villages to offer consent, given how they were planned and the different worldviews, is problematic. However, I have always asked permission first from migrant representatives. In fact, they informed the communities and arranged my meetings with them before my arrival. Once I had arrived to the village, I tried to ask permission, and offer the right for people to withdraw.

Participants have not received monetary recompenses in this research. To the extent to which research dealt with publicly funded projects, principles of transparency and accountability were generally prevalent in the interactions with all the participants who were directly engaged with the co-development processes I studied. There was an exception where one person did want to get paid to contribute. I discussed this with the donor to which this person was related and I also discussed with the person concerned the reasons for not paying. Nevertheless, I have done everything possible so that participation in the research will not actually cost the participants money.

During the visits to villages in Kolda I was accompanied with a driver, and a translator. Thus, translation services, gasoline and food, were all reimbursed.

I have been careful about keeping the entire set of files safe, using internal codes to avoid identification, under password protection. However, the type of data collected has a limited capacity for harm. Permission has always been asked when taking photographs (this was done during the visits to villages in Kolda). Nevertheless, as I have not agreed upon their wider use, the dissemination of these will be limited.

3.4.2 Positionality of the researcher

Attention to reflexivity and awareness of my positionality have been important considerations for me throughout the research process. There is a vast, and increasing, literature regarding how to address the implications of undertaking research among migrants (Nowicka and Ryan, 2015), and also about ways of conducting research in development contexts, when coming from the Global North (Chambers, 2006; Kapoor, 2004). To narrow the exploration of positions occupied across the research, I would say, in a nutshell, that the way I was seen by others doing fieldwork in Catalonia and fieldwork in Senegal had specific challenges.

In Catalonia, I did not share social markers such as gender; linguistic; racial;

religious; or social class attributes with migrant collectives and representatives. In this regard, I have tried to be respectful of social norms where I was aware of them and ask and re-ask on certain matters to avoid miss-interpretations. Being a researcher while I was also the representative of the biggest Catalan federation of NGOs dedicated to international cooperation (2013-2017) preoccupied me, mostly because I was afraid that informants could have prejudices about how I might assess their practices. In general, I did not explain this facet of my activism to migrant representatives (few people outside Barcelona knew what this organisation was). At the same time, it did play out as a source of acceptance and power in some cases, in the sense that it facilitated my access to certain information or made the sharing of experiences or information with informants easier.

In Senegal, the differences in power relations between researched and researcher were more acute. When I was introduced in some villages, by migrant representatives, as connected to donors (or projects being funded by donors) gave me a degree of power. Moreover, being white facilitated my research in communities, as I felt it was generally taken as a surprise or a novelty – and in a friendly manner – in small villages where they were not used to seeing white people. Being a non-French researcher was also an asset, in the sense that I was not associated with the colonial power (I had spoken about this in Dakar). Overall, I was attentive in the professional relations within which I was embedded.

A longer analysis would entail reflecting upon my role as a translator researcher, and as a researcher writing in her non-native language. In this regard, I have been conscious of the idea ‘that researchers translating data are often forced to make significant choices about how to represent their informants in writing’ (Gawlewicz, 2016, p. 38). Thus, I have tried to be faithful in my interpretation of the participants’

message, and sometimes I have had to balance the language competences of my informants, as I have done with my own competences in French and English (in this sense, I am conscious that I need someone to proof read what I write in English).

Finally, I have had been attentive to theoretical concerns in not wishing to rely only on Western-based sources and seeking to not be too biased towards Eurocentric

(Anglo-Saxon) perspectives. Therefore, I have made efforts to ask about, and access, Senegalese-based research created by Senegalese when this was possible and accessible.

PART II. FINDINGS: RESEARCH RESULTS AND