Ethical considerations

Several ethical principles guided the study. First, all interviews were conducted under conditions of confidentiality and anonymity. Attention was given to inform each respondent about the study’ aims and conditions, and to stress that they were free to end their participation at any moment and that they could choose not to answer on particular questions. Further, during the interviews with the migrants, we stressed the interviewer’s independence from migration authorities, including that their participation in the study would not influence (negatively or positively) their immigration case (in the case of study 5 with migrants in detention) or impact (decrease or increase) the support they were receiving (in the case of migrants returning with AVRR support in study 1 and study 3), in order to prevent the creation of unrealistic expectations of the research (Leaning,

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2001) or distrust towards the researcher (Black et al., 2006). Only after receiving the interviewees’ oral informed consent, the interview started and, when consented to, was audiotaped. The choice was made to work with an oral informed consent (Gordon, 2003), since the request to sign an ‘official form’ often creates suspicion, about the true anonymous nature of the participation, or, because it can relate to negative experiences with ‘officials’ in country of origin or during the immigration trajectory (Gordon, 2003; Liamputtong, 2008).

In the longitudinal study, the respondents were asked to reconfirm their willingness to continue their participation after the first and second interview, in order to obtain and maintain informed consent during the longitudinal follow-up (Hugman, Bartolomei, & Pittaway, 2011). After the first interview, the respondents were asked to provide the researcher with an address and phone number in order to be contacted again after return. Also the contact information of the researcher was given, to enable the respondent to contact the researcher as well. Within the first and second year after return, the respondents were contacted by telephone to plan the second and third interview. Due to language barriers and practical challenges to trace the respondents after their return to the country of origin (e.g., since several respondents changed their mobile phone number), it was the social worker who contacted the respondents by phone to plan the meeting between the researcher and the respondent.

However, we were confronted with several ethical challenges during the research.

First, we acknowledge that our interviews with detainees and migrants returning with AVRR support might have revived hard feelings related to earlier interview experiences in the course of respondents’ immigration trajectory, (Klein &

Williams, 2012). To minimize this risk, we never focused on precise legal facts, but primarily on migrants’ own lived experiences, and participants could also decline any question they do not feel comfortable with. Still, we recognize that ‘doing no harm’ in this context, as in similar research contexts, is difficult to anticipate or control (Jacobsen & Landau, 2003; Leaning, 2001). It seemed extremely important therefore to act as an ‘ethical researcher’ (Vandekinderen, Roets, & Van Hove, 2014), meaning that the researcher sometimes reacted to appeals from respondents (Mackenzie, McDowell, & Pittaway, 2007; Vervliet et al., 2015), when this action might in some way make a difference to their wellbeing (Leaning, 2001). Concretely, in the case of study 5 in the detention centres, this involved, when invoked, that we passed respondents’ worries or need for information to social workers in the detention centre or offered help when possible (see chapter 10). In the case of study 1 and 3 with migrants returning with AVRR support, this meant that we informed, with the consent of the participant, his/her social worker about difficulties and struggles. We also gave information to the participants ourselves (mainly about the legal consequences of their return through AVRR, and

41 the future possibilities to return to Belgium) or created contacts with people or institutions in Belgium when participants desired or needed this (e.g., to obtain a birth certificate of the Belgian municipality needed to subscribe a child for kindergarten). However, we could not react to each appeal, and we declined requests when this created expectations that would not be able to sustain on a longer term, or when in se, the action was impossible to take for all participants (Vervliet et al., 2015).

A second ethical challenge is the function of the social workers in the country of origin as important ‘gate keepers’ to the research field. In this research project, the social workers in the country of origin facilitated the contacts between researcher and respondents after their return. This approach considerable increased our success of realizing a longitudinal follow-up of the returnees, yet we were well aware of the existing power relation between the social workers and the respondents (Hopkins, 2010). As the social worker was the person who provided, or had provided, reintegration support to the respondents, their participation to the research could be induced by their hope to receive additional support or by feelings of loyalty or gratitude towards the social workers (Hughman et al., 2011). Furthermore, the social worker was often present during the interview, and in some cases, took the role of interpreter. Although the use of an interpreter and the specific profile of the interpreter always influence the research data (Edwards, 1998; Jacobsen & Landau, 2003), this influence might be enlarged when translations were done by the social worker who had a professional relationship with the respondent. However, at the same time, the social worker’s presence and his/her trustful relationship with the respondent, also facilitated the trust and cooperation in the participant-researcher relationship (Edwards, 1998; Vervliet et al., 2015). In a similar vein, also the positionality of the researcher, as a young, female, Belgian researcher, closely connected to Caritas Belgium, may have influenced the interviewer-respondent relationship and the respondents answers (Hugman et al., 2011). For the respondents, the visits of the Belgian researcher, and the narration of their story to the researcher could revive hope to receive additional support or to attract public and/or policy attention to their difficult living conditions after their return from Belgium (Black et al., 2006; Silove, Steel, & Watters, 2000). This might have evoked them to presenting a more negative picture of their post-return situation.

In contrast, feelings of loyalty evoked by the support they received ‘from Belgium’

or ‘from Caritas’ may have prevented the respondents to express (particular) critiques they had about the programme to the researcher. Further, the Belgian nationality of the researcher might have influenced respondents’ answers relating to the reasons for their migration and return, for example whether to narrate the same stories as they already told throughout their migration trajectory, and might

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also have influenced the answers about their views on Belgium and their transnational ties with the host country (chapter 6).

To minimize these constraints, we explicitly stressed that the interview would not influence the support they were receiving, we underlined our interest in their personal opinions about and experiences of (positive or negative) elements of the AVRR support, and applied the above mentioned iterative informed consent (Hugman et al., 2011; Mackenzie et al., 2007). Moreover, our longitudinal follow-up of the respondents, which included several interviews over a long period, enhanced the relationship of trust between the respondents and the researcher, which created an atmosphere of openness in expressing opinions and views (Vervliet et al., 2015). However, following Edwards (1998), we believe it is impossible to totally erase the potential influence of interpreter’s and/or interviewer’s profiles, and therefore, one should not try to make them ‘invisible’, but encompass a reflexive evaluation of these aspects when analysing the data. To that end, questions and answers were re-translated afterwards when hesitations or emotions were noticed in the interpreter, interviewer or respondent during the interview. Furthermore, we tried to make this impact visible during the data analysis and reporting.