Section 3: Qualitative studies of war and displacement

This third section of the unit explores the complexities of conducting qualitative research in war-torn societies and among displaced populations.

Researchers working in such contexts often contend with security risks and face numerous ethical, emotional, and methodological challenges.

These challenges frequently require them to (re)negotiate their positionalities, social identities, and perceptions of power dynamics during the field work.

We’ll examine the benefits and drawbacks of employing both collective and individual approaches within flexible methodologies.

More flexible qualitative methodologies or ethnographic research do not allow for generalization of the study’s findings to the entire population. However, they help researchers foster an atmosphere of trust, encouraging participants to share their experiences more openly and in greater detail, even when these are deeply personal or psychologically challenging.

Researchers can also make real-time adjustments to their tools during fieldwork, tailoring their approach to align with the respondent’s language, perspective, experiences, and emotional state. However, working with vulnerable groups raises many issues related to the safety of both the researcher and the research participant

3.1 What are the issues around consent?

One fundamental principle of ethical research is obtaining written or verbally informed consent.

However, in wartime conditions or when working with displaced individuals, this is insufficient. Participants are often unaware of the potential risks associated with their involvement. Researchers must go beyond routine bureaucratic procedures and engage participants in detailed discussions about possible consequences, ensuring they are fully informed.

When feasible, researchers should prepare their tools and conduct fieldwork in collaboration with psychologists. They should identify potential sensitive topics, recognize signs of distress, and develop strategies for managing such situations.

Awareness of this asymmetry of power is important for researchers to renegotiate their identities and positionality with their interlocutors and be ready to address questions of power imbalance. It is essential to choose modes of communication in which participants are treated as active actors whose agency is recognized. They define the wording and direction of the conversation.

Axyonova and Lozka (2023) called this ‘reflexive interviewing.’ Returning to the research participants to verify interpretations is another effective technique for reducing power hierarchies.

3.2 How do researchers approach issues of access and sampling?

Researchers should also consider the difficulties associated with working in war-affected areas, including problems related to infrastructure, obtaining permits and access to specific locations.

Research on war has been conducted in areas with destroyed infrastructure, poor roads, and varying degrees of security and control.

Such study requires important permits provided by groups that control the area and perform governmental functions. Acquiring permission may mean that the researcher must compromise the range of questions asked or the groups of respondents that can be accessed. Permission-giving authorities may require the researcher to submit collected data for ‘loyalty control,’ which is ethically unacceptable.

Often, safe movement in those territories requires direct contact with various international organizations who monitor the situation and can provide information on the level of danger.

It is important to acknowledge the challenges in identifying study participants, their availability, and the reasons behind their willingness to participate.

Recruiting respondents through national, cultural, or religious organizations or events can be convenient but also poses challenges. These institutions and events primarily attract individuals who are actively involved in them, leaving out displaced individuals who identify with their community but do not participate due to various reasons, such as work commitments, limited financial resources, geographical distance, or different political views. As a result, such a sampling strategy will systematically exclude them.

A sample for studying displaced populations can also be drawn from local registers of displaced populations, such as those maintained by migration offices or job centers. However, accessing these documents presents significant challenges for researchers.

3.3 Collective vs individual methodology?

When conducting fieldwork, it is important to consider carefully the type of flexible methodologies employed—whether collective or individual.

Collective approaches, such as focus groups or dyadic interviews, can be efficient and provide diverse perspectives, which is particularly useful for quickly gathering information on pressing issues or needs within a group.

However, these methods pose significant challenges in societies affected by occupation or war, especially when addressing sensitive topics that encompass a wide range of issues. In such contexts, participants may fear denunciation, live in environments characterized by distrust, and perceive others in the group as potential threats.

Similarly, collective interviews can be highly sensitive for displaced individuals, as their experiences of war, trauma, and political loyalties may differ significantly. This increases the risk of mutual re-traumatization or conflict within the group. Consequently, the use of collective methods should either be avoided or carefully and thoughtfully planned.

Individual formats of cooperation between researchers and research participants have become much more important as they can create an atmosphere of trust and allow participants to speak more openly and in detail about their experiences, which are often personal or psychologically difficult.

3.4 How does the researcher deal with sensitive issues or questions?

Even when interviews are carefully planned to avoid provoking traumatic memories and scholars are practicing ‘reflexive interviewing,’ certain questions might inadvertently trigger painful associations or reactions.

Researchers must also be aware that there are many topics considered non-sensitive by participants—normalized as part of their war or displacement experiences—may be deeply affecting for the researcher due to their own positionality (e.g., gender, social identity).

Additionally, interviewers should be prepared for situations where participants realize their need to share traumatic experiences that they are unwilling or unable to discuss with their close social networks, sometimes years after the event. The researcher, as both a distant stranger and a trusted listener during the interview process, may be seen as a safe outlet for these disclosures.

This dual role requires researchers to navigate such interactions with care and sensitivity. It’s essential to remember that scholars who are not professionally trained as psychologists should avoid taking on that role. They should carefully navigate away from such situations and be prepared to suggest appropriate professional mental health assistance for their interlocutors or turn to the professional themselves.

3.5 How should the collected data be safeguarded?

When addressing threats and risks to research participants, it is also essential to consider the challenges of storing and safeguarding the collected data.

Recordings often capture the identifiable voices of respondents, and their narratives frequently include personal details that could reveal their identities.

These considerations underscore the importance of collaborating with experts in information technology and data management to develop locally specific protocols for data preservation during fieldwork.

Additionally, researchers must plan for future challenges related to data archiving, access, and publication, carefully considering potential consequences and limitations, remembering that their target audience are vulnerable groups.

3.6. What role do new digital research approaches have in migration studies?

In recent years digital research methods (such as social media and social platforms analytics, big data and AI-driven analytical models and predictions) have entered migration research.

This has expanded its scope and started to reshape it by providing:

• real-time, large-scale insights;
• broader data coverage;
• predictive capabilities beyond the scope of traditional methods.

The main approaches are:

Digital footprints (e.g., mobile phone data, social media activity) provide insights into undocumented migrants or displaced populations who may not participate in traditional surveys or are not included in official statistics due to absence of official registration.

Big Data and AI-driven models can help predict future migration trends by processing complex models based on a wide variety of factors including historical migration data, climate change patterns, potential conflicts, and economic conditions.

They can also analyze vast datasets to detect patterns in integration, labor market participation, or remittances.

Social media and social platforms analytics allow researchers to track migration patterns in real-time or identify emerging crises by detecting early indicators of migration crises, such as increased social media discussions about leaving a country, economic downturns, or conflict escalation.

They can also study the situation in receiving communities by assessing public discourse and xenophobia through analysis of trends in online discussions, or uncover unofficial migrants’ solidarity networks.

Natural language processing (NLP) helps analyze public sentiment toward migration by processing social media posts, news articles, and political speeches. This provides insights into shifting attitudes, xenophobia, or pro-migrant solidarity movements.

The main aims of these approaches are:

• building new border controls and more efficient migration surveillance technologies based on real-time monitoring;
• real-time monitoring and early warning systems, and risk assessment for more efficient policy and humanitarian responses and resource allocation for governments and international NGOs;
• predictions of future migration flows, policy implications, or potential social conflicts; access to hard-to-reach populations;
• understanding migration narratives, misinformation, and media influence on migration attitudes.
• designing better social cohesion policies based on predictions of integration or employment outcomes for migrants based on education, skills, labor market trends, and other factors.

However, these advances also introduce methodological and ethical concerns, and interpretative challenges.

They also raise privacy risks and questions of discrimination as these technologies may become a powerful tool in reinforcing surveillance, exclusion, and racial profiling.

3.7 What are the challenges and ethical concerns of using digital methods?

Unlike traditional surveys where participants give consent, digital research often relies on passive data collection (e.g., tracking social media or mobile phone use), raising questions about privacy and informed consent.

Digital data open access to hard-to-reach groups. However, they may be prone to access and representation bias by excluding migrants with limited access to internet or digital technologies, or by creating biases toward younger, more digitally literate and connected populations.

AI models and big data are very helpful in data scraping and processing, but have issues with interpretation and contextualisation. They can recognise patterns and provide correlations, but lack context and have difficulties capturing migrants’ experiences, agency, and lived realities.

Moreover, AI models often rely on historical data, which may reflect past biases in migration policies, racial profiling, or unequal treatment of migrant groups as well as normativity of categorization systems and false beliefs in value‐free studies produced in the Global North and conceptualised as universal knowledge.

Many AI models lack transparency, making it difficult to understand how predictions are made and whether they reinforce biases.

Internet and social media can be manipulated by bots, be sources of propaganda or misinformation. This makes it difficult for AI models to separate genuine migration trends or migration phenomena from politically driven narratives and misinformation campaigns.

There is a risk that the findings of digital research could be utilized by governments or certain social groups to reinforce discrimination. This may include:

• their application in border surveillance;
• the development of restrictive immigration policies;
• racial profiling;
• unequal treatment of migrants;
• deportation strategies;
• other practices that infringe on human rights.

To conclude, digital methods are expanding the scope of migration research, providing real-time, large-scale insights that complement traditional approaches.

However, a mixed-methods approach (combining big data with qualitative research, incorporating diverse data sources to avoid biases and being transparent about them) is essential to ensure ethical, contextual, and inclusive analysis of migration dynamics.

Review

We have now come to the end of the three main sections in the unit. Look over Section 3 and do the following exercise.