Book Review: Values and Vulnerabilities: The Ethics of Research with Refugees and Asylum Seekers

Abstract

the absence of contributions from researchers working in majority world countries, which host the largest number of refugees. This is a gap in the overall literature on methodology in forced migration contexts and reflects power inequalities in the pro-duction of knowledge at a global scale, which are raised in the second part of the book. Despite these shortcomings, Values and Vulnerabilities makes an important contri-bution to the field of migration studies. Particularly strong is the nuanced discussion of vulnerability and its relationship to ethical research with refugees and asylum seekers. This edited volume would be especially useful for scholars undertaking their first research project in migration contexts, and as a pedagogical resource in methodology courses in forced migration programmes. Alongside the expansion of institutional entities engaged in the governance of migra-tion, recent years have seen the emergence of a growing literature on the actors and practices influencing transnational mobility. In engaging with ongoing policy pro-cesses, much of this literature has adopted the policy categories coined by states and state-led international organizations. This typically leads to a clear differentiation between policy initiatives aimed at restricting transnational mobility and policy ini-tiatives aimed at facilitating migratory movements. In this new edited volume, Geiger and Peoud build on their earlier collaborative work on international migration governance. They drive forward their critical research agenda by proposing the notion of 'disciplining' as a heuristic framework that allows us to move beyond the binary distinction between the control and the facilitation of human mobility. In line with this, the various contributions to this volume investigate instances of migration management that vary in their degree of coerciveness, yet share the objective of steering migratory flows according to the interests of powerful state and non-state actors. The notion of disciplining thus serves as a conceptual umbrella for gaining an understanding of the interlinkages and synergies between different practices of migration management. In the first two chapters, Geiger and Peoud draw out strategies of disciplining and self-disciplining. The former aims at influencing migratory behaviour through external constraints or incentives, whereas the latter aims at influencing future choices and thereby enlists migrants themselves in the pursuit of 'orderly migration'. In both instances, the goal is not to forestall transnational mobility altogether, but to steer which groups of individuals migrate, and for how long they stay in countries of destination. This points to the inherent ambivalence of migration management Book Reviews 313