Researcher self-care in organizational ethnography: lessons from overcoming compassion fatigue

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer practical researcher self-care strategies to prepare for and manage the emotions involved in doing organizational ethnographic research. Institutional ethics policies or research training programmes may not provide guidance, yet emotions are an integral part of research, particularly for ethnographers immersed in the field or those working with sensitive topics or vulnerable or marginalised people.Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork over nine months with a voluntary organization in the UK, Yarl’s Wood Befrienders, to explore the experiences and activities of volunteer visitors who offer emotional support to women detained indefinitely in an immigration removal centre. The author is a “complete member researcher”, or “at-home ethnographer”, a volunteer visitor and a former detainee.Findings – The author describes the emotional impact the research personally had on her and shares learning from overcoming “compassion fatigue”. Self-care strategies based on the literature are recommended, such as a researcher self-assessment, identification of the emotional risks of the research, and self-care plan formulated during project planning. Suggested resources and activities to support the well-being of researchers are explored.Practical implications – This paper provides practical resources for researchers to prepare for and cope with emotional and mental health risks throughout the research process. It builds awareness of safeguarding researchers and supporting them with handling emotional disruptions. Without adequate support, they may be psychologically harmed and lose the potential to critically engage with emotions as data.Originality/value – The literature on emotions in doing research rarely discusses self-care strategies. This paper offers an actionable plan for researchers to instil emotional and mental well-being into the research design to navigate emotional challenges in the field and build resilience

Inside International Development Organisations: Socially Constructing Judgement in-the-Moment

This exploratory study aimed, first, to build new knowledge on how senior managers of international development organisations defined judgement and how they made sense of it in the context of their leadership roles and work environments. A secondary aim was to explore methodologies and methods, specifically unstructured interviews and observations, to be used in the PhD phase to study the social phenomenon of judgement. Using an ethnographic and reflexive approach, this study addressed the question: How do managers understand their use of judgement ‘in-the-moment’ in practice? Results from the two participating organisations suggest that there are diverse interpretations of the meaning of ‘judgement’; it is a socially constructed process; used in uncertain situations; and influenced by time and space. These findings contribute to our understanding of how judgement in-the-moment is perceived inside an understudied area: the everyday context of small international development organisations. Theoretically, this study complements the existing literature with a social constructionist perspective and draws linkages to judgement as a constitutive element of sensemaking. Methodologically, the reflexive approach taken builds awareness of examining the ‘multiple selves’ and how researchers influence their research and are influenced by it as subject and object. The validity, methodological issues, limitations and implications for future research are also discussed

Organizational Ethnography and the Art of Judgment in-the-Moment

This paper responds to the conveners’ call on exploring and advancing Organizational Ethnography (OE) as a paradigm for the organizational sciences. This sub-theme is linked through my empirical study of senior managers in international development organizations and how they make sense of using their judgment ‘in-the-moment’ in the context of their leadership roles and work environments. I adopt an “ethnographic orientation” (Watson, 2011, p.216) and emphasize the need for a highly reflexive approach in an ethnographer’s role as making judgments throughout the challenging processes of doing “fieldwork, headwork and textwork” (Van Maanen, 2011, p.218). Theoretically, this study contributes to the existing judgment and decision making literature from a social constructionist perspective by drawing linkages to judgment as a co-constructed phenomenon. How senior managers understand their judgment-making in situations ‘in-the-moment’ is an understudied area thus far and even scarcer in the context of international development organizations. Methodologically, the ethnographic and radically reflexive approach taken addresses a gap in the literature, builds awareness and raises in importance examining the ‘multiple selves’ (Reinharz, 1997) of the ethnographer. How I influenced my research and was influenced by it as both subject and object were key to my findings. In addition to the sub-theme call, this paper also links to the overarching Colloquium theme, ‘Bridging Continents, Cultures and Worldviews’, by connecting the cultures and co- constructed views of the researcher and practitioners. The collaborative, ethnographic approach taken was a unique way to get ‘up close and personal’ in understanding what judgment meant to senior leaders in the two participating UK-headquartered organizations. With international development missions in African nations, the senior leaders continuously constructed their own bridges across borders in their financing, operations and communications between their team members and external stakeholders located in multiple countries, reliant on virtual offices and mobile and Internet technology to stay connected. My judgment as an ethnographer was necessary to determine how to best embrace this way of ‘working’ during fieldwork and become another type of stakeholder to them. I will begin with a brief theoretical and methodological background of my exploratory study, identifying the gap in the literature and how my study fills it. Then I will outline the methodology, methods, data collection and analysis and findings. Finally, I will conclude with the challenges of ‘doing organizational ethnography’ inside small international development organizations and the contributions made to advance OE as a unique way to study the social phenomenon of judgment ‘in-the moment’

What is action ethnography?

This extended abstract is for the Faculty of Business and Law Research Day 2022

Art as resistance: a story from immigration detention

This illustrated story stems from a collaboration between Sarah Turnbull (Birkbeck, University of London) and Joanne Vincett (The Open University) with artist Gabi Froden (gabifroden.com) drawing on separate ethnographic research undertaken by Sarah and Joanne at Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre. The story focuses on the practice of origami (paper folding) as one way that those who are detained indefinitely cope with and resist detention. Generously supported by the Research Innovation Fund and from alumni and friends of Birkbeck, University of London

I befriend women detained at Yarl’s Wood: Their life in immigration limbo is excruciating

“Why am I still here?” This is the question I’m most frequently asked by detained women who I’ve befriended at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire. The centre is mainly for women, but also holds families with children over 18-years-old and has a short-term holding facility for men. For nearly two years, I’ve been researching and volunteering as a “befriender” and trustee with Yarl’s Wood Befrienders, a charitable volunteer visitors’ group that offers emotional and practical support to women migrants and asylum seekers detained in Yarl’s Wood. Detainees are allocated a befriender who visits them weekly until they leave the centre. But most of them don’t know when that will be, as detention is indefinite under current UK immigration policy. On February 21, a group of women at Yarl’s Wood began a hunger strike against these conditions, boycotting the dining services at scheduled meal times. Befrienders have also reported that some women are boycotting other services and activities in the centre, such as the library and IT room. Some women have been told by the Home Office that they may be removed more quickly because they are refusing food

Three days is still too long to hold pregnant women in immigration detention

It’s been two years since a coalition of lobbying groups in the UK successfully challenged Home Office policy on the immigration detention of pregnant women. Under the new policy, enforced in mid-July 2016, pregnant women can now only be detained for a maximum of 72 hours (three days), or up to one week with the agreement of a minister. Yet around 50 pregnant women are still detained annually for administrative immigration purposes, not on criminal grounds. They are rarely removed from the UK, but the experience of immigration detention puts them under avoidable maternal health risk

Supporting migrants and asylum seekers in and beyond immigration detention in the UK

At the peak of the migration crisis in Europe in 2015, the United Kingdom (UK) received 32,733 asylum seeker applications, its highest number of applications since 2004; it has the ninth highest number of applications in the EU (Home Office 2016b). People seeking asylum in the UK may be detained (and re-detained) at any point in the process of their claims. But asylum seekers are not the only people in detention. Anyone subject to UK immigration control can be detained for administrative reasons, with no forewarning or permission to collect one’s personal belongings, if already residing in the country, and no time limit in detention. Ensuing removal orders to one’s country of origin can also be enforced with advanced notice anywhere between three months and a few hours prior to being escorted to the airport. Migrants caught in this system of penal power live precarious lives of waiting and uncertainty causing negative impact on their mental health and personal relationships (Turnbull 2016). Detainees may be separated from their family members and/or children, who may be placed into the care system; or they may have arrived in the UK as an unaccompanied minor and, after turning 18 years old, risk being sent back to a country with which they no longer identify. Although social workers and other frontline service workers may support people who have been detained or are at risk of being detained, or their family members, little is discussed in social work practice about how both supporters and those being supported may be affected by the detention regime. From an inter-disciplinary perspective, this chapter aims to enhance our understanding of how migrants and asylum seekers may be impacted by immigration detention and possible activities to support them in and beyond detention. It provides an overview of the characteristics of immigration detention in the UK and inter-connected web of supporting and monitoring actors and relations inherent to the regime. This chapter also aims to be person-centred and offer constructive, practical guidance for human service workers, whether social work practitioners, managers or academics, while challenging them to maintain a critical stance from the institutional structures and practices that may bound their thinking. This chapter is organised as follows. In the first section, I provide an overview of who, why, how and where people may be detained. I emphasise the negative impact of detention on the emotional and mental well-being of detainees, particularly vulnerable people such as asylum seekers, women, people already suffering physical or mental health issues prior to detention (Bosworth and Kellezi 2015), and ‘adults at risk’ (Home Office 2016a, section 11). In the second section, I describe how the support services each facility offers detainees differs depending upon the contractor for custodial care and operations tendered by the Home Office. I draw upon my three-year doctoral research with Yarl’s Wood Befrienders (YWB), a voluntary organisation that provides emotional support through a volunteer visiting scheme for detainees in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre (hereafter ‘Yarl’s Wood’). YWB is highlighted as an example of complementary voluntary sector support services that fills gaps in services offered by the centre to help detainees better cope with detention and decrease isolation (Vincett 2017). In the final section, I discuss factors to consider for frontline service providers (practitioners and managers), social workers, and academics/students working with people who are at risk of being detained, currently in detention, about to be removed from the UK, or recently released in the British community. I argue that ‘going the extra mile’ requires empathy, resilience and safeguarding of those coping with the challenges of detention, but also self-care of the supporter. I conclude with key practical lessons to take away from this chapter

Compassion in Volunteer Work: An Ethnography of a Befriending Organization

This empirical paper offers an organizational ethnography of Yarl’s Wood Befrienders, a voluntary organization that provides emotional support to migrants and asylum seekers in a British immigration removal center through one-to-one social visits. With a complete membership approach, the ethnographer engaged in the field as a volunteer visitor, known as “befriender”, a trustee and former detainee to uncover rich insights on our guiding questions; “what do befrienders ‘do’? And, in what ways do befrienders practice compassion?” Through this approach we turn a critical lens upon volunteer work and highlight the neglected aspect of compassion. We derive and explicate three aspects of compassion in volunteer work: extreme uncertainty, emotion management and courage. Our main contribution to volunteer work theory is through articulating an enhanced understanding of compassion, which we discerned in an emotionally charged setting saturated with extreme uncertainty. We find that volunteering necessitating practices of compassion to alleviate the pain and suffering of others demands courage and emotion management. Our study illustrates how compassionate organizing can support the vulnerable and marginalized groups hidden in our society and how organizational research can engage in addressing social issues