Should we pay research participants? Feminist political economy for ethical practices in precarious times

Abstract

Questions of paying research participants have taken on a new urgency as contemporary geographies of precarity, inequality and austerity affect both potential participants and, to varying extents, early-career researchers, while universities place greater emphasis on public engagement and research impact. Here, we offer reflections and recommendations that come from our experiences as PhD students in London, as precarious researchers researching precarious lives. We make a case for paying participants based on ethics of care and readings of precarity informed by feminist political economy. We discuss how and how much to pay. We recommend changes to institutional norms that have treated payments with suspicion, to research design and funding, and to ethical approval procedures and publishing practices.