Nothing about us without us: rethinking positionality and power in refugee research

Abstract

Participatory and reflexive approaches in migration research are often presented as ethical alternatives to extractive forms of knowledge production. Yet participation and insider proximity do not automatically dissolve power asymmetries. This methodological reflection examines the ethical, emotional, and epistemic consequences of researching one's own displaced community. The article draws on relational ethnographic fieldwork and reflexive autoethnographic analysis with Syrian refugee families in Germany. It is grounded in sustained engagement with Syrian refugee adolescents and families between 2022 and 2024, as well as earlier community-based educational work that became a critical entry point into the field. The analysis brings feminist situated knowledge, autoethnography, ethics of care, debates on migration knowledge production, and literature on secondary traumatic stress into dialogue with ethnographic vignettes. The article shows that refugee positionality can open forms of trust, shared language, and affective recognition through which otherwise hidden or fragmented narratives become speakable. At the same time, insider proximity produces unstable boundaries between researcher, teacher, community member, mother, and trusted listener. Insider positionality is therefore conceptualized not as an automatic epistemic advantage, but as a liquid, relational, and power-laden condition that enables access while also creating blind spots, expectations of care, and forms of double exposure to trauma. The article contributes to debates on “Nothing About Us Without Us” by showing that refugee-led research requires more than inclusion or representational proximity. It demands critical attention to authority, vulnerability, institutional power, emotional labour, and the costs of producing knowledge from within displacement.