Solicited diary methods with urban refugee women: Ethical and practical considerations

Urban refugee women are a challenging research population to contact as they typically prefer to remain discreet and anonymous in their host cities due to concerns over their status and security. Building trust and rapport can be challenging and researchers need to balance issues such as negotiating gatekeepers and time scales alongside ethical demands to do no harm and avoid extractive and exploitative research. As a result, refugee women’s individual and quotidian experiences are rarely examined and foregrounded and their emotional responses to their host cities and host communities are overlooked. In light of this, considered methods, such as solicited diaries, which allow refugees the space and time to reflect on their emotional experiences and these associations with space and place, could be beneficial. However, there has been little written on the use of this method with refugee participants in deeply marginalised circumstances. Alongside some practical and ethical considerations of using solicited diary methods with urban refugee women, this paper considers two main issues. First, the practical role that instructions play in guiding participant responses and engagement in the diary process, and second the ways in which diaries can illuminate the relationship between emotion and spatiality. Diaries were found to have much to offer in advocating refugees as knowledge holders, whereby written excerpts act as “evidence” of their experiences. Analysed alongside other qualitative methods, and if used appropriately and considerately with refugee participants, diaries have the potential to be insightful, empowering, and cathartic.