Building a refugee-led research agenda - positionality, ethics and accountability - MS 2023

The Voices of Refugee Youth project aims to address evidence gaps in refugee education, integrate refugees into research, improve access to higher education for refugee youth, and create employment pathways for them. It focuses on a refugee youth-centered methodological approach.

Jigsaw applies standard ethical research principles, focusing on informed consent, thorough risk assessments, and ensuring research benefits the displaced community. They also emphasize considering research team positionality, sharing findings with participants, avoiding generalizations, and adopting participatory approaches.

The RLRH, an initiative of the Refugee Study Center at the University of Oxford, aims to support individuals with lived experience to lead research in forced displacement studies. Its main mission is to shift power and ensure scholars with displacement backgrounds are included in knowledge production.

Refugee researchers often face superficial engagement in research, a lack of involvement in decision-making processes, and unclear pathways to becoming independent researchers. Their qualifications are sometimes overshadowed by their identity, impacting access to information and interviews.

The RLRH addresses power imbalances by ensuring refugee researchers lead the research process, with non-refugee colleagues providing support and guidance. They implement a consultative, collective decision-making process involving both groups, emphasizing knowledge sharing and navigating ethical issues collaboratively.

Lebanon's protracted crises, including civil war, waves of refugees, and severe economic depression, create a challenging environment for refugee research. Issues like a lack of legal status for refugees, hate speech, and the absence of national census since 1932 complicate research and policy efforts.

Refugee-led research, according to Funny Joyce, involves refugees leading the research from start to finish, with the power to decide priorities. Participatory research, while involving refugees, often means they participate at different extents without full decision-making power, focusing on trust-building and involving partners at all stages.

Missing voices in refugee research include minority groups such as the elderly, persons with disabilities, and the LGBTQI+ community. Additionally, smaller groups of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and host community members are often underrepresented, leading to less inclusive and impactful research.

Training empowers refugees with the necessary research skills and confidence to lead research agendas. Creating viable employment pathways, like Jigsaw's research assistant roles, provides refugees with a roadmap to become fully-fledged researchers, integrating them into the professional research landscape and enabling them to use their contextual knowledge effectively.