Abstract
This intervention consists in a conversation between an activist-scholar engaging in research questioning the conditions facing refugees and asylum seekers in Greece and an activist leading an ngo supporting displaced people. We reflect on our own positionality working in this area and on the role of academia and the humanitarian sector more generally. We explore different approaches to knowledge production that challenge the exploitative practices associated with both academic research and humanitarianism.
Introduction
This project started as a conversation on the Greek island of Samos. Liska’s ngo Glocal Roots ran a centre supporting refugee women on the island and Gemma was engaging in research questioning the conditions facing refugees in the Reception and Identification Centre (RIC; closed as of September 2021) that neighbours the town of Vathy. We had first met a few months previously when Gemma had last visited Samos and asked to interview Liska about her experience in solidarity work in Samos, Lesvos and Athens. As such our relationship started as a conversation between a researcher and an interlocutor. Looking back on our first interactions they were not initially positioned as collaborations but as knowledge transfer. Yet through ongoing dialogue between the two authors, it has become clear that ‘we live in a “world of many worlds” but that constitutes the bedrock or our working together in solidarity, the possibility, through the partial identification of common ground, of a performative unity between scholar-activists and activists’ (Routledge & Driscoll Derickson, 2015: 392). By activists and scholar-activists we mean individuals who forefront social change and solidarity in their work, both ‘on the ground’ and in writing and advocacy. Through collaboration, as well as individual and joint reflection, we have come to a position where we are able to start to offer an alternative approach to understanding our relationship and our way of thinking about both the academic and the humanitarian sectors in which we are situated. We believe that the experiences that brought us to this place of dialogue and collaboration may be different, but that the similarities and differences we share enable us to work together to challenge our own positionality, which is key to thinking through these topics, and to consider broader questions of solidarity, support, activism and scholarship against a backdrop of ‘crisis’.
This intervention then was not planned, in the sense that it did not evolve from back-and-forth meetings about gatekeeping and access. Although these terms and ideas are points that we will come back to as our conversation unfolds below. It did not come out of a specific funding call or a particular plan of outputs provided to funders to justify the importance of being in ‘the field’. It is ‘messier’ (Jemielniak & Kostera, 2010; Harrowel et al, 2018) than that, a balancing act between the planned and the unplanned (Cerwonka & Malkki, 2007; Goffman, 2014). It evolved from ideas of shared interest, of similar approaches to thinking about the situation in which we found ourselves, of an interest in sharing and discussing readings, and, importantly for us, of solidarity, the notion of standing with others rather than speaking for them, of understanding the ‘difference between proposing and imposing’ (Inayatullah, 2008: 346). This conversation, then, is just one intervention in what will hopefully be an ongoing dialogue in which the authors are able to push one another to think more deeply about what it means to be an activist and an activist-scholar and how this plays out in a challenging context such as Samos. This will, we are sure, continue to be a non-linear, messy process, an act of learning and reflecting on our own limitations, privileges, struggles and inconsistencies.
In sharing our conversation, we hope to play a small role in challenging ‘the limited perspective on what counts as research (a perspective that leads to) limited forms of writing-academic essays and books, leaden with jargon, perpetually citing the same authorities, speaking to a restricted audience’ (Alonso Bejarano et al, 2019: 39), often citing ‘the malestream’ (Duresmith, 2020), and not always to genuine knowledge production. We also recognise that we are engaging in a conversation embedded in critical scholarship, an approach that supported us in guiding our thinking and reflection, but also helped us to start thinking through alternative approaches to writing and thinking together. This conversation, then, is not an end point for rethinking how we engage outside of academic circles but rather a starting point. Academic scholarship can become exclusionary, with some voices and experiences excluded from ‘academic institutions, from education generally’ (Tulke et al, 2020: 128), but the critical scholarship we have engaged with here has pushed us to think differently. Knowledge is not simply the purview of the academy (and should not be treated as such), nor are people’s lives something to be turned into an object of study from which scholars can build a career and ‘enjoy a comfortable middle-class Western lifestyle’ (Alonso Bejarano et al, 2019: 29), in the same way that the ‘aid industry’ must be challenged in its approach to assumed vulnerability (Bird, 2022).
What unfolds below then is a conversation, between an activist and an activist-scholar, one that encompasses our experiences, our emotions and our reflections. We chose to present this piece as it came about, through a back-and-forth dialogue brought about by reading and thinking together and not as a coherent scholarly narrative or a completely informal dialogue. Like Tilley (2017: 40), we recognise that ‘breaking the stale journal article mould’ and documenting discussions and exchanges can better enable interventions grounded in different standpoints and experiences. Interventions like these can also challenge the notion of what knowledge should look like, who should produce it, and how it should be presented. In breaking with the form of the standard academic article, it provides one, admittedly small, way of challenging the traditional rules of knowledge collection, extraction, and dissemination. It is, therefore, a start but not a conclusion in further adapting writing styles beyond academic prose. Conversing with one another, though remotely and online, rather than interviewing one another, enables a starting point of dialogue and learning, rather than collecting and extracting. A recognition that to ‘work alongside one another despite, through and thanks to our differences’ (Vradis et al., 2019: x) provides valuable insights into the worlds in which we intervene, and an approach to challenging extractive forms of knowledge production.
Through this conversation we ask questions about the role of the ngo sector and academia in presenting the lives of people, sometimes objectifying and silencing them in the process. We do this whilst also recognising that ‘while solidarity humanitarianism may be rife with contradictions and uneasy compromises, it nonetheless holds the potential for more fluid and human responses’ (Stavinoha and Ramakrishnan 2020: 183). We recognise the potential, if sometimes limited, role for solidarity in rethinking power structures (Bird and Schmid, 2021). Like scholars before us (Inayatulla, 2008; Tilley, 2017; Kothari et al, 2019) we advocate for the need for radical change in the way we think about and devise humanitarian and research projects in spaces like Samos. In having this conversation then we make three key interventions. To challenge the concept of ‘the field’ itself; to ask questions about how we think about issues of access and storytelling; and to support a model of interaction and engagement premised on solidarity. We do this by theming our conversation into four sections which focus on: our place in ‘the field’, whose voices are heard, telling stories, and questioning how and why we engage. We do all of this with the knowledge of our own limitations, recognising our own backgrounds as white, educated women with privileged passports and the time and resource to engage in this way. This, then, is just one conversation, a starting point for further thinking around these questions.
Part 1- Our place in ‘the field’
In which we start by talking about how we see our own roles in these conversations and spaces.
Gemma
Imposter syndrome is something that we whisper about in academia, yet it is also rare that ‘we openly share the stories that leave us feeling genuinely inadequate, unprofessional, or out of our depth’ (Harrowell et al, 2018). To be quite honest, I think we should talk about it more openly. I feel it often, but I think I feel it the most when in ‘the field’. Partly, it is a case of meeting expectations, how do I balance my role as activist and academic, is this entirely possible? Partly it is about not feeling I have the right background to deliver on this, but honestly, I think we are all learning as we go because it really does not matter how well trained we are, the reality will always be messier. At the same time the feeling comes from the institutional settings in which I have found myself that present the notion of an ‘ideal academic’. It raises questions about where these expectations come from, are they in fact a product of not thinking critically enough about my own positionality, of falling into the trap of seeing myself as having a responsibility to ‘share...knowledge and thereby improve others lives’ (Inayatullah, 2008: 345)? If we challenge this, recognise the gifts of knowledge others will inevitably bestow on us (Inayatullah, 2008), do these expectations change, or do we remain conditioned by the institutions we are situated within to feel the burden of expectation bearing down on us?
Alongside this is sometimes a feeling that I am not doing the most helpful thing for the people I am engaging with, that external involvement, regardless of how well intentioned it is, might not be what is desired (Rutazibwa, 2019). That academic articles and research are not very helpful, and that the people I am asking questions of are sceptical about the fact I am here for a few weeks/ a month/ 3 months, and that I am not committed to being present long-term and to overcoming the structural failures they face. Yet when I was on Samos recently, I was talking to people about this and they reminded me that my role is to document, to get the word out about the situation here and to make people listen when they otherwise might not, to advocate. Similarly, though, I was also pushed to think about the difference in priorities of people coming into the situation to offer support and people living within it. One person I interviewed made this quite clear when they talked to me about pushbacks and the focus of journalists, academics, and activists to raise awareness of them. This person said to me that, as someone who had previously lived in the camp this wasn’t their priority, their priority was the conditions faced by the people already on the island and the fact that these didn’t get forgotten as the focus was on pushbacks. That pushed me to reflect, and like Heathershaw and Kaczmarska (2020) discuss, question being an intervener, whose intervention might not in fact be welcome, or which might not be right for everyone. I definitely do not think it is for me to decide what people need, but rather to listen and to learn what role the people I am engaging with see for researchers, if any. The problem being, however, how this translates into a system that expects us to carry out grant proposals and research ethics long before entering ‘the field’. So really, I suspect academia is set up in a way that places expectations on us but prohibits in many ways our ability to listen and design projects with, rather than for, people. I wonder, are some of these questions about the role we play something you also think about?
Liska
I know this feeling very well. The constant (self-)questioning of what I’m doing and if it is the most helpful thing for the people I am engaging with. I struggle with the fact that I am not always addressing the structural reasons of why we find ourselves in this situation in the first place. It is important and necessary to change structures which are systematically failing to respect human rights and allow governments to neglect the obligations to uphold and implement the humanitarian and refugee laws, which they have signed up to. Compared to my social activism in my home country, where it felt so easy and right to bang the drum hard, here (in Greece) everything is so much messier and more unclear because it is difficult to know which battles to pick when people’s well-being and basic needs are at stake. The toss-up between short term direct needs and long-term structural change is not an easy one.
Gemma
I absolutely agree. That point about messiness and lack of clarity when it comes to knowing which battles to pick I think also applies to how we go about crafting knowledge or ‘doing research’. There is not just one way to do ethical research, it depends on the approaches and institutions we are situated in, as well as our own personal beliefs about research’s role. As just one example, I see academia as one way in which I can be an activist, in which I can challenge the power structures of international politics and the inequalities that stem from them. I also recognise that some scholars feel that this should not be our role, that our role is documentation (Bliesemann de Guevara & Bøås, 2020b). The approaches we take to thinking about what ethical research looks like, then, differ greatly. Yet I think Michelle Fine sets some good parameters for this, focusing on the recognition of privilege, divergent standpoints, and the fact that ‘research is most valid and “of use” [sic] when designed by/alongside and in the interest of social justice movements’ (2016: 358).
Liska
Institutional frameworks always have a huge impact on the approaches we implement, and they can dictate the way we work to a certain extent. Even if you manage to successfully secure grants (whether for research or humanitarian projects), you are still often limited in how you implement the project because of norms that are created through funding mechanisms. Reward structures influence the performance and evaluation of projects. The humanitarian sector, for example, has long affirmed that the people we support must be at the centre of the response, and have meaningful input on the decisions that affect their lives. Yet, the current architecture of large-scale ‘traditional’ humanitarian organizations is based on decision-making and funding structures that lead to bureaucratization of assistance and hierarchical systems that are based on tales of white Western innocence, superiority, and exceptionalism (Konyndyk, 2019; Rutazibwa, 2019). It reproduces Western-led initiatives that perpetuate unequal power relations instead of challenging them.
Like you, I often wonder if the approaches forced upon us by the humanitarian system’s incentive structures and power dynamics prevent us from truly achieving the aspiration of shifting power to local actors or intended targets of humanitarian aid. In light of this we can, and should, question the role and place of liberal humanitarianism in the world today (Rutazibwa 2019). I have often asked myself if we (re)produce injustices and human suffering by working in a system that inherently reproduces colonial structures. Depending on one’s positionality in the colonial matrix of power, these questions can be uncomfortable but hopefully can impact our actions towards creating a more equal distribution and use of power. Personally, such questions have pushed me to leave the traditional humanitarian sector (large ingo s) and focus my solidarity work as a European citizen to European countries. However, inner battles and on-going negotiations with myself over my positionality in this field will continue to accompany and influence my work as long as I am active in this field. It is a path full of contradictions, complicities, and mistakes. Decolonial approaches to humanitarianism, such as the one Rutazibwa (2019) suggests can help foreground the perpetuation of racial/colonial power relations in our activities rather than focusing solely on operational implementation or the technical capabilities of humanitarians. It encourages us to radically challenge conventional power structures, privileges, and dominations in our work.
Part 2- whose voices are heard?
In which we focus on the question of who gets platformed, our role in gatekeeping and the challenges and dilemmas within that.
Gemma
The question of vulnerability, and the role academia, journalism, and the ngo sector play in potentially silencing a group or an individual by declaring them as vulnerable, is one that I think is important in thinking about these concerns, and one I have reflected on a lot in having this conversation. The idea, though, that it is the situation rather than the people that should be understood as vulnerable is one that has really stuck with me (Poopuu, 2020; Bird, 2022). It seems to me that the separation of the individual from the situation can change how we think about ethics, how we think about story-sharing, how we think about activism, how we stand in solidarity, whose voices and stories get heard or platformed, and would potentially provide a better foundation for listening and dialogue.
Academic ethics committees that follow a ‘procedural approach’ to ethics may limit who they feel a researcher should be talking to, who will be traumatised by research, but they make the decisions not knowing the people involved. Trauma is a genuine and fundamental concern in all ethics decisions, one that should always be considered, but by making these decisions at arms-length is there a risk that research becomes a one-way process of sensemaking and as a result, in fact, more exploitative. Taking instead a ‘vocational approach’, one that recognises that ‘research ethics in practice is about negotiating dilemmas not following rules’ (Heathershaw & Mullojonov, 2020: 109), but that also centres solidarity, may be one way to rethink these questions. To ensure that research does not fall into a trap where being in ‘the field’ stops being about collaboration and instead becomes about the individual researcher and their intentions, rather than being about who wants to speak to them, and what they want to say.
Through open dialogue rather than distanced assumptions maybe we avoid ‘falling into the trap of making the “right” [sic] decision from a privileged position’ (Esin & Lounasmaa, 2020: 393), instead opening dialogues about what works for different people. I know you have had lots of experience with researchers coming to you to ask questions so I would be really interested to hear more about your thoughts on this? As well as how you view your own position?
Liska
Since joining the grassroots response to the ‘European Refugee Crisis’1 in 2015, I have given countless interviews to journalists, researchers, politicians and advocacy groups. Sometimes I was the informant, sometimes the research subject. As a manager of a community centre for refugees, I was also turned into a gatekeeper on some occasions. The ethics, practicalities and responsibilities of these positions are something I frequently struggle with.
To understand this struggle, it is important to take a closer look at the underlying approach of the grassroots solidarity movement. At the start our efforts were largely informal, and the essence and motivation of our work was grounded in the principle of solidarity. There is no single normative understanding of solidarity.
For me, solidarity in the European refugee context is in the first instance based on an understanding of refugees as fellow human beings. Solidarity with refugees therefore seeks to reclaim our shared humanity and extends beyond the offer of immediate help towards a reconstruction of society along the lines of autonomy, equality and justice. This can only happen through ongoing dialogue and reciprocity. For me, solidarity therefore means standing shoulder to shoulder, supporting each other in times of need, learning from each other and working together to build community. It means sharing experience, skills, knowledge, and ideas, without perpetuating relationships based on power. Socialising, and making everyone feel valued and equal can then be seen as a method of supporting structural change and reducing inequality, something as simple as a day at the beach together.
This understanding of solidarity stands in opposition to dehumanising narratives of mainstream media and European authorities and it stands in opposition to traditional humanitarianism, which can be understood as an ideology and practice grounded in unequal relationships between ‘gift-givers’ and ‘beneficiaries’ within the context of ‘humanitarian aid’ (see: King, 2016; Rouzakou 2016, 2017). Ultimately, traditional humanitarianism is a top-down system that often creates notions of ‘otherness’ and images of vulnerability.
Gemma
I completely agree that solidarity should mean standing side by side in the ways in which you describe, but what does that mean in practice for an organisation like yours?
Liska
Grassroots solidarity initiatives often try to challenge the humanitarian logic that is seeking to govern and control the everyday lives of refugees. Such initiatives are frequently run by groups, in which many group members are directly affected by the same things that the initiatives try to address. Decision-making structures are usually far more horizontal than in the traditional humanitarian sector. Most of our team, for example, are female refugee volunteers. Alongside a few external volunteers, they host workshops, share their skills with other women, they translate, teach computer classes, support others, and build friendships. In self-identifying as volunteers, female refugees not only challenge the perception that refugee women are only vulnerable and in need, they also reconfigure the underlying principle driving their understanding of humanitarianism, it has to be based on solidarity.
This is not to say that paternalistic attitudes do not exist among actors that base their actions on notions of solidarity. They certainly do, and moments that reproduce boundaries of inclusion/exclusion usually exist alongside a mode of solidarity, but there are ways to challenge this.
Gemma
I think this point about solidarity and grassroots responses is so important and so regularly overlooked. For me, your work is really important for pushing these conversations forward, as well as initiatives like City Plaza, Pikpa and The Other Human (Serntedakis, 2017; de Koning & de Jong, 2017; Lafazani, 2018; Maniatis, 2018) which are grounded in community and in ideas of ‘commoning’ in which ‘collectives (are formed)...based on autonomous decision-making via face-to-face relations and economic exchange directed at meeting basic needs through self-reliance’ (Kothari et al, 2019: xxxiii). Such movements have brought Greece to the forefront as a ‘site for the resurgence of solidarity’ (de Koning & de Jong, 2018: 15). Your point about who makes up the volunteer team of an organisation and how volunteers from different organisations interact with one another seems to be particularly important.
Liska
When giving presentations at universities, or interviews to researchers, journalists, or advocacy teams, I often share my experiences as an activist in the ‘European Refugee Crisis’ in the hope of raising awareness about the situation in Greece. I explain how grassroots groups developed, organized, and changed over time, as well as their approaches, and the practical solutions they implement. I sometimes also talk about the conditions in camps and informal settlements, and the struggles refugee communities face. Often, refugees and migrants are given limited opportunities to openly speak of their experience and suffering. Most often they are spoken about and represented as silent actors and victims through the use of images. Female refugee and migrant voices are hardly ever heard. My voice, on the other hand – the voice of a privileged, white, European woman - is frequently platformed. There is no need for a white woman to take the stage as the supposed ‘voice of the voiceless’. I also find it deeply problematic that myself and other activists and volunteers in privileged positions are frequently portrayed as heroes. This narrative takes away the public spotlight from the refugee communities and it creates the illusion that some people are unique or different. It is important that we are aware of this imbalance and don’t centre ourselves as experts on other people’s experiences.
Gemma
This is something that really resonates with me, the notion that working in this field is in some way heroic is frustrating. It centres the wrong people in the discourse and recreates this idea of activists and scholars as being experts in other people’s lived experience, as well as being ‘saviours’. I agree, it is always important to challenge this both when it is stated by others and in cases where we fall into a trap of not fully reflecting on our own position.
Liska
As one of the managers of a community centre for female refugees, I am also frequently put in the position of ‘gatekeeper’ for those seeking access to individuals considered to be ‘vulnerable’ and ‘hard to reach’. As gatekeepers, we are expected to shelter the users of our community centre from research or journalism that might be insensitive, intrusive, and potentially distressing. It is critical that refugees and the institutions that work closely with them are cognisant of the potential risks of sharing painful details of refugee stories. The general agreement within our organisation is that women who visit our community centre should not feel like they have to engage with researchers or journalists, unless they want to. They should not feel that they have to take part in interviews in order to spend time at the centre and/or receive support. However, I often have the feeling that many refugees feel obliged to accept requests of their supporters, and it is crucial to be aware of the power imbalance. Yet, assuming that entire communities need to be ‘protected’ because they are ‘vulnerable’ victimizes them and silences their voices completely. As gatekeepers we need to be careful not to be paternalistic and tokenistic, preventing potential participants from speaking for themselves or exercising agency. Rather, we need to respect their right to determine if, how and when they share their stories.
An approach based on solidarity that focuses on restoring dignity and humanity to every individual can be helpful in achieving this as you are constantly negotiating the parameters of your relationships and do not assume vulnerabilities of an entire group. On-going dialogue between equals is crucial in allowing people to make informed decisions and give informed consent about deliberate, voluntary participation in any project.
Gemma
Absolutely, I think there needs to be a constant process of ‘self-reflexivity...abouts one’s positionality in the field’ (Poets, 2020: 102) and the role one plays in consciously or unconsciously contributing to said hierarchies. For example, in deciding what stories should be shared, that in and of itself is an expression of decision-making power, and we need to think about how this plays out. The examples you have spoken to, such as respecting a person’s decision to share or not share their own story is a good example of challenging these hierarchies. If we fail to challenge them though I worry that these dichotomies end up doing more harm when the intention was originally to protect. I think your approach to thinking through these questions starts to challenge this concern and offers an alternative.
Liska
Yes, I absolutely agree. The way that refugees are often expected to share and curate their stories can also do more harm than good. Even if refugees are free to choose the content of their stories, there is often an unspoken expectation that the story should ‘move the audience’ and inspire sympathy. This curated form of storytelling prevalent nowadays tends to marginalise or oversimplify the complex context surrounding these stories. When we represent refugees as vulnerable, we victimise them and limit their experiences to one type of experience, as passive and depoliticised victims; they are turned into a group without a voice or agency. Many organisations that work with refugees and asylum seekers also fall into this trap. Partly because a narrative logic that evokes sympathy and tears is believed to lead to more funding. Partly because it takes a lot more time and reflection to apply an approach that does not categorise and victimise. Even after working in the field for several years, I sometimes remain complicit in reducing people’s stories and lived experiences when giving interviews or presentations. Unfortunately, the norm in most fields (whether in journalism, the ngo sector or academia) is to draw one-dimensional images of refugees’ realities. We tell the myth of a single story.
After speaking to a researcher, a member of our community once said to me: ‘I had the feeling they wanted me to make the story simpler than it was. They only asked me about how I got from Turkey to Greece, and they were not interested to hear how it must have been for me, how it is for me to live in this camp now or where I want to go. At some point they said they had enough information now and the interview was over’. Another of our team members, who has received asylum and has residency in Greece, said ‘for some I will forever be a traumatized refugee’.
What we need to be asking ourselves is, ‘how can we tell stories that catch the complexity and messiness of people’s experiences as refugees?’ ‘How can we leave space for peoples’ voices?’ ‘How can we tell stories without essentializing identitixes?’
Part 3- Telling Stories
In which we think about the importance and pitfalls of storytelling, the importance of listening and how to recognise when some stories just shouldn’t be told.
Gemma
This for me is such an important point. I always try to end my research conversations by asking people if there is anything I haven’t asked them up to now that they think I should have. It’s a small thing but I’ve been really surprised by how many times people have responded that this doesn’t always happen.
How do you think we can tell stories in a way that really does catch that complexity and messiness you mention?
Liska
Interactions that are dialogic (Poopuu, 2020), relational (Fujii 2018), or grounded in solidarity are based on the logic of co-being and co-knowing. These approaches take the multifaceted and dynamic nature and complexity of human experience into account and make room for peoples’ voices. In my experience working in a refugee context, a solidarity approach to storytelling and research is very time intensive and often requires the development of relationships, a sense of community, and trust.
Several months ago, my organization set up an advocacy project, the main aim of which is to collect and give a platform to the voices of female refugees living in camp settings in Greece. To ensure the agency of participants in the narration of their experiences, we decided to offer a wide variety of options for women to tell and later showcase their stories. Whenever possible, women from our team, who speak the same language, live in similar contexts, and have a similar background to the potential participant, extensively explain the project idea to the participants and support them to share their stories in a way that works for them. As Poets (2019) points out, inequalities implied in the intersecting differences that make up our positionalities cannot be done away in the field, including in collaborative and solidarity work. Over 50 female refugee women living in the camp on Samos collectively decided on the three topics for the project. Participants choose which of those topics they want to speak about and whether they will share their experiences through a one-on-one dialogue, by sending written texts, audio recordings with their thoughts or video recordings that show and explain their daily experiences. However, each option is preceded by conversations and with support of a team member who lives or has lived in a similar context as the participant. Participants also decide whether they show their faces, their voices, or if they want to be completely anonymous. Admittedly, our approach to making space for people to share their experience is extremely time consuming and people intensive. It often takes several meetings to explain the concept, the options, help participants to develop ideas about stories and how they could be shared through dialogue, and to ensure that every participant feels comfortable, supported, and listened to when sharing their story in their chosen format. This is the case even though the community, relationships, and trust often already exist between our community centre team and potential participants. Since our approach does not focus on extracting information and achieving a particular outcome, but rather on providing space for people to share their experience that is always multifaceted, relational, contextual, and continually moving, our project will regularly be re-imagined as we learn from new encounters. It will also be crucial to be transparent and reflective about our positionality in the field - which is very diverse in the team involved in this project - and how these positionalities affect the processes and outcomes. Our focus on human solidarity and the collaborative methods we apply cannot undo the structural positions and the asymmetry of our collaborations (Poets 2019). For this reason, we must repeatedly reflect on our positionality and utilise our efforts to dismantle systems that enable privileges and dominations.
Gemma
I think this approach is so important and offers so much potential learning. The risk of essentialising refugee voices (Cabot, 2019) is inherent in a lot of the work we do, and it does lead to questions about the role of the ‘volunteer’ and the ‘researcher’ in these spaces. Building relationships is, I agree, so important. I have mentioned already that the structures of academia don’t always facilitate it, but I do wonder if this provides a good opportunity to reimagine what taking time actually means. It involves building ongoing dialogues that last far beyond the time spent in the same space, committing to repeated visits (Gökçe et al., 2020) and expanding what is understood as ‘the field’ beyond geographical space. I guess in some ways like what we are doing here. The point you raise about your community member being cut off when they were sharing something so personal because the ‘required quote’ has already been given is so troubling to me.
Liska
Is this common in academia though, to focus on only one part of the story? What changes are needed to ground fieldwork in solidarity?
Gemma
It’s not that it is necessarily common but rather that the restrictions placed on how we work can push people towards more focused, specific projects that prevent a more holistic and nuanced understanding. As Bliesemann de Guevara & Bøås highlight, ‘due to changes in how universities work and research is financed, fieldwork is often much more business-like’ (2020b: 272) with less opportunities to discover what is important and interesting simply through being in the place (Richardson, 2003). I think it is probably worth noting here that people choose a career in research for different reasons and that what we think of as the right reason to embark on research differs as well. So, whilst I want to advocate here for a model of research that is developed in symbiosis with the people whom it affects, research that can be used to agitate and to effect change, to stand in solidarity, this is not a universally held sentiment. For me, when we meet people, we should simply be listening, but the constraints pushed upon scholars force us in some cases to be thinking about when the next meeting will be or how much can be achieved before leaving. The messy reality between ‘field’ and ‘home’ gets lost and with it so do some stories.
This is something that I feel needs to be pushed back on and I think your point about trust and relationships is important here. One thing academia often talks about when trying to answer the question of non-exploitative research is how to ‘give back’ (although even the idea of ‘giving back’ is embedded in an inherent power structure that assumes you have something to give, that you are a ‘donor’ (Inayatullah, 2008)). Often approaches involve ‘facilitating knowledge exchange with academic and non-academic audiences, providing reports, and organising workshops among volunteer organisations to share reflections on best practices for researchers’ (Jordan & Moser, 2020: 5). But I do wonder how much of this is helpful on the ground or whether there are other approaches you think would be more helpful for academics to work with you on?
Liska
I had one particularly great experience with a researcher, who developed her research protocol after working in our centre and with other ngo groups over a period of several months. She did this in dialogue with her research subjects (who consisted of community and external volunteers). Through the collective identification of a common set of problems and gaps in existing knowledge, she created research objectives that our team (the people in question) considered to be important. She then included the active participants (both refugees and external volunteers from our team) in the data collection and analysis. This approach increased the response rate and helped to provide a deeper understanding of the data (Aldridge, 2014). By implementing a collective approach from the start, she broke down the rigid dichotomy between ‘they,’ the providers of data, and ‘us,’ the researchers. This chimes with the goals of critical participatory action research that makes a case for working with the community from the start (Chatterton et al, 2007). Consequently, in our case, both the team and the researcher cared about the research findings as they addressed problems that we all deeply cared about resolving. Her approach managed to create a feeling of ‘shared ownership’ over the research results which in turn, helped us to apply the findings in a way that was useful to our centre’s purpose and values. Working with a community from the start can be very beneficial for both the community and the researcher as it produces useful content for all.
Part 4- Questioning how and why we engage?
In which we think about questions of ‘access’ and ‘data’, what they mean, and how to avoid them becoming the priority.
Gemma
That sounds like such a positive experience, and one that would also lead to rich and valuable findings. For me the notion of solidarity and reciprocity, remains so important in this, and not just when thinking about volunteering and activism (Serntedakis, 2017; de Koning & de Jong, 2017; Lafazani, 2018; Maniatis, 2018) but also when we talk about the idea of scholars being in ‘the field’. We often talk about access and gatekeeping, and you have already mentioned what it feels like to be turned into a gatekeeper, but we are often less keen on thinking deeply about the justifications behind our choices. In their interesting discussion of ‘volunteer-researchers’ in transit camps on the ‘Balkan Route’, Jordan and Moser (2020) discuss their views on short term visits to a space and the value of longer-term visits to a region combined with volunteering, but they have these conversations partly through a lens of access. The focus, then, becomes on accessing sites, on accessing voices and less on the importance of solidarity and working with people rather than for them (although I read into their work that they think about this as well, but that it does not frame it in the same way). As such I don’t read the focus on access as being intentional in their work, but rather see it as a symptom of academia and the questions it forces us to ask about how we access the ‘data’ we need to be able to write the most convincing argument.
I just don’t feel that access should be fronted when thinking about the reasons to volunteer, rather the more important points of reciprocity and solidarity should be brought to the fore, like they were in the example you just mentioned. That volunteering should be seen as a tool to gain access to difficult ‘fieldworks sites’ and to gain legitimacy I find troubling. Rather, if volunteering is a part of the research process, I would suggest that solidarity and reciprocity should be the priority regardless of what this might mean for ‘findings’. I also think we need to be far more open to approaches that don’t prioritise ‘findings’ at all. Approaches that tell the stories that people want to tell and are open to being flexible and non-linear. To accept that messiness and collaboration drives the research process and thus it is impossible to predict exactly what you will find out and that is a good thing. For example, I was talking to one person who had recently been given asylum in Greece about their views on border policies. They told me that they firmly believe that states have a right to close their borders. This conversation pushed me to challenge some of my own assumptions about the relationship between political stance and lived experience and wasn’t predictable based on previous conversations I’d had around this topic. It was by being flexible, reflective, and non-linear that this new and important avenue of discussion came up.
Beyond this I also think it is important to recognise that some stories we learn just should not be told, that they are things that occur in ‘the field’ but not ‘data’ to be used elsewhere. This alternative approach comes through very clearly in your experience but also in the discussion of decolonising ethnography by Bejarano et al. (2019). They focus primarily on ‘assisting Casa Hometown (their ‘field’ site), part of the activist dimension of the project’ and secondly, on recognising that ‘it also provided an opportunity for meeting more people in town and creating new opportunities for ethnographic interviewing’ (2019: 75). This question of focus seems to then link to the example you gave of the member of your community who was cut off whilst telling her story, that the neoliberal parameters in which academia sets the rules for ‘good research’ push researchers to prioritise certain things like access, or telling a particular story, and limit deeper thinking about why we are involved in this type of work in the first place. What Bejarano et al. (2019) were able to do, and what the researcher working with you was also able to do with the support of you and your community, was to challenge that. It is a lesson I think we should all focus on as it would be of benefit to academia as a whole for us all to talk more about these questions.
Liska
The point you are making about access is very true. Once, a PhD student joined our project for 10 months as a part-time volunteer. Initially she was transparent about her research motive and explained that she wanted to do something ‘hands-on’ next to her research, in order to support our centre and to gain a better understanding of female refugee experience. However, after a few weeks it became clear that she only planned to use our centre to meet female refugees for her research. She neglected her responsibilities as a volunteer and spent the majority of her time chatting to visitors in order to build trust and find good research subjects that she would then interview. In the end, we terminated our volunteer contract with this researcher. From the perspective of the team - both staff from the refugee community and external volunteers - it felt very exploitative and harmed the functioning of the centre’s activities.
Gemma
This point about when research becomes exploitative raises so many important questions. Scholars have argued that longer stays in ‘the field’ or including volunteering within research can challenge the ‘outsider status’ (Johnson et al., 2016: 114), overcoming ‘resentment towards non-working, non-participating visitors’ (Jordan & Moser, 2020: 4). There seems to be an assumption underlying these arguments that this in some way provides legitimacy. Yet, the reality can be very different as you have shown. Genuinely working from a foundation of solidarity cannot only rely on the amount of time spent in a space, it needs to be an ongoing dialogue and a long-term relationship that exists outside of geographical restrictions on collaboration. I think conversations like the one we are having here are very important for facilitating this. I also agree with Poets that ‘collaborative and activist work in the field (out there) equally fails if it is not continued in efforts to address the colonial, racial and heteropatriarchal designs of the academic industrial complex and academic knowledge production (here)’ (Poets, 2020: 111). Also, if we only focus on length of stay, who is then understood as a ‘good’ or ‘legitimate’ researcher? As Gökçe, Varma and Watanabe (2020) point out, ‘family obligations, precarity, other hidden stigmatised, or unspoken factors – and covid-19 – have made long-term, in-person fieldwork difficult, if not impossible, for many scholars’ but this does not mean that these scholars have not come up with innovative approaches to ensuring that their work remains rich, personal and political in the way that it is carried out (see González, 2019). So, I guess what I am trying to say here is that long-term stays can absolutely be a useful way of carrying out research grounded in solidarity, but that as your example shows, it is not always enough and nor does it ensure some form of ‘legitimacy’. Nor is it, in and of itself, the only way to partake in rich, solidarity driven research. How you work with and engage with people, as well as how you continue to develop and support relationships long term is what is key.
Liska
In my experience, positive working relations that we have had with researchers have occurred when they don’t solely perceive our community centre as an entry point to research subjects and/or an access point to data. Rather, their research objective was driven by an ethical-political conviction like the one underlying our projects. Furthermore, their research was ‘use-oriented’ with a genuine desire to create change. Usually, this research is not only about data acquisition, cataloguing, and then publishing information on groups to help them, but also about achieving social change and promoting solidarity (Chatterton et. Al, 2007), like in the example given earlier.
Conclusions
Through the sharing of this conversation, we have looked to intervene in the growing discourse about struggles and failures within ir fieldwork (Kušić & Záhora, 2020; Bliesemann de Guevara & Bøås, 2020a), recognising that ‘being reflective and speaking openly about problems makes research more fruitful and its outputs more valuable’ (Heathershaw & Kaczmarska, 2020). We enter this conversation from two perspectives, that of the activist and that of the activist-scholar. In doing so we raise a number of key challenges: first, with regards to the concept of ‘the field’ itself; second, in regard to questions of access and storytelling; and third, in support of a model of interaction and engagement premised on solidarity. In establishing these challenges, we hope that we have been able to highlight the messy and interchangeable positions that we both embody within ‘the field’. That positionality is not something that is fixed, nor something that should be fixed, but rather something that ebbs and flows as an increasing amount of time is spent in certain spaces and places, that should be constantly reflected on and challenged as experiences alter, spaces change, and we learn from conversations with people from different backgrounds and experience.
In some of the encounters discussed by Liska she has been positioned by people ‘coming in’ as an insider, as a gatekeeper, or as someone to be researched. Similarly, when giving talks and presentations she is presented as an expert, and in writing this paper as a producer of knowledge. Similarly, on initial arrival on Samos, Gemma was thought of as an outsider, a researcher, someone who will have limited interactions in the space and will make use of the conversations to produce outputs, a person whose ‘first and foremost role is to document’ (Bliesemann de Guevara & Bøås, 2020b: 276). Yet these assumptions made sometimes by us and often by others are not fixed, nor do they define our approach. Unlike Bliesemann de Guevara & Bøås (2020b) we do not suggest that academics are not social activists. In fact, we have shown through this paper the importance of social activism and solidarity as an underpinning set of values for carrying out research in places like Samos. This is not to suggest that all researchers (or all humanitarians) have to be social activists, but rather than they can be, and that this can be positive when engaging with, supporting, and standing in solidarity with the people whose lives are being discussed in research or supported by activists and ngo s.
Solidarity work in Greece, either as scholars or as activists, has, in the last two years, been made more challenging due both to a more hostile political environment towards refugees and those that work with them, and to covid-19. Whilst this is not the focus of our conversation here it is important to recognise, as Milan (2020) discusses in relation to Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, that challenges arise when the possibility of being in the same place is limited. That this will have implications for both authors’ activities going forward, and the effect on their approaches to working together and with others cannot and should not be ignored.
Transforming the practices of academia and the humanitarian sector are not things that can occur in a bubble, nor things that will happen quickly. In stating this we agree with Linda Tuhiwai Smith when she states that ‘systematic change requires capability, leadership, support, time, courage, reflexivity, determination and compassion’ (Smith, 2012 [1999]: xiii). Change is a slow process that needs to take place locally, nationally, and internationally (Dueholm Rasch & Tamimi Arab, 2017). Solidarity is something that has been and can be co-opted, especially in situations driven by neoliberal agendas, such as the need to produce high impact research or meet the needs of funders. Mamoulaki warns that scholars should ‘resist the temptation to interpret them (different forms of solidarity) through the lens of values of political opportunism, economic maximisation and contemporary political interest’ (2017: 51). Solidarity should not become yet another tool of ‘modern liberal sovereignty’ (Pallister- Wilkins, 2018: 3), rather it should be seen as a challenge to how we think about knowledge, what constitutes ‘good’ academic scholarship (Tulke et al, 2020), how the humanitarian sector constructs those it deems to help, and how the stories we all tell, academic and activist alike, present the people whose lived experience we engage with. Entering ‘the field’ then, when ‘the field’ is one like Samos, should not be for the purpose of developing high impact material or to further contribute to the notion of the foreign saviour, rather it should be to stand in solidarity, to stand shoulder to shoulder, to challenge the borders and boundaries on which ‘the field’ is built and to fight to break them down.
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The notion of the ‘European refugee crisis’ is based on a deeply Eurocentric point of view. In fact, the ‘refugee crisis’ is not a new phenomenon and certainly not a European one. One just has to look at the presence of displaced populations in non-European territory. At the same time, the ‘asylum crisis’ in Greece is not new either and it has already been extensively documented (Cabot 2014).