Beyond Tokenism: Strategies to Co-Disseminate With Migrant Co-Researchers and Expand Their Roles in Neoliberal Academia

Abstract

Academic researchers face significant challenges in achieving genuine participation during the dissemination phase when co-researching with forced migrants due to mobility restrictions, anonymity and security concerns, and limited time or resources. Co-dissemination often becomes tokenistic, perpetuating extractivist dynamics within neocolonial academic practice. Drawing on four initiatives in Spain, Belgium, and Australia that involve forced migrants as co-researchers, our contribution highlights the gap between participatory ideals and their practical implementation. We propose a participatory framework grounded in principles of Presence, Accountability, Reach, and Return to re-imagine ethical research practices that expand co-researchers’ roles and prioritize meaningful and transformative co-dissemination.

Keywords

participation co-dissemination knowledge-sharing forced migration ethics

Introduction

Amid escalating anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe, Australia, and the United States, we grapple with the challenge of shaping participatory research (PR) practices with forced migrants as co-researchers to counter such discourses through an account of firsthand experiences of displacement in ethical and transformative ways. The “participatory turn” in forced migration research, which involves using participatory methods as a primary or complementary approach to exploring transnational migration practices (Torres & Carte, 2014), gained traction about a decade ago. Academic researchers who privilege these methods prioritize collaborating with migrants, asylum seekers and refugee-background individuals and communities as active contributors and experts who co-produce or co-create knowledge through collaborative, participatory, and ethical processes (Lenette, 2019).

Participatory methods have been widely adopted in forced migration research to challenge outdated migration and border epistemologies from the grassroots level, often as an effort to democratize and decolonize scholarship (see Kia-Keating & Juang, 2022; Nasser-Eddin & Abu-Assab, 2020). For instance, various participatory creative (Lenette, 2019; Moralli, 2024), visual (Nikielska-Sekula & Desille, 2021; Smets, 2024; Vecchio et al., 2020), embodied (Sidra Idrees & Hannes, 2024; Vacchelli, 2018/2019), sensuous (Ocadiz Arriaga & Dyer-Williams, 2024) and multisensory (Desille & Nikielska-Sekuła, 2024) methods have been employed to amplify the voices of forced migrants. These approaches focus on reshaping ordinary experiences of mobility and propose alternative forms of citizenship in opposition to nation-state border control regimes.

Achieving genuine and meaningful participation of co-researchers at any stage of the research process is challenging (see Freedman et al., 2024; Ghorashi & Rast, 2024) but involving them in data analysis and dissemination¹ poses even greater difficulties (Rix et al., 2022). As Birger and Shoham (2024) note, there is a significant gap in the literature regarding the collaborative or participatory co-dissemination of research findings with refugee-background participants. When addressed, the focus is often limited to conventional dissemination methods such as co-authoring scientific publications or co-presenting at conferences, that have minimal impact on the lives of affected communities. There is a common assumption that participatory data collection naturally extends to the dissemination phase. Furthermore, refugee-background participants can not only be questioned as knowledge producers but also as knowledge disseminators (Birger and Shoham, 2024). Their involvement in knowledge sharing is often neglected in research that claims to be participatory. Practical barriers including limited time and resources and disengagement from later research stages are common (Lenette et al., 2015). In addition, personal circumstances such as detention, relocation, containment, legal limbo, or economic precariousness can disrupt ongoing involvement. Concerns about consent and tensions about anonymity and ownership may further discourage co-researchers, who might fear exposure to problematic audiences when sharing personal stories and findings (Blomfield & Lenette, 2018).

In neoliberal academia, institutions and funding bodies often encourage researchers to adopt participatory methods to achieve greater impact and visibility within and beyond academia. However, bureaucratic pressures, funding models, and time constraints associated with neocolonial “publish or perish” models conflict with the longer timelines and sustained commitment that PR requires (Malone, 2020). For example, seminal literature in development studies highlights cases where PR has been used superficially and in name only to conduct extractive, hierarchical, and sometimes harmful research (Chambers, 1997). Participation then becomes a tyranny (Cooke & Kothari, 2001), even when well-intentioned and seemingly well implemented. This situation leads to a “one-sided approach to participation” (Lenette, 2022, p. 48) or the institutionalization of participation—an issue that becomes particularly critical at the knowledge-sharing stage if there has been no prior planning to allocate resources for this step. PR, therefore, is not emancipatory in and of itself and risks becoming a superficial buzzword if assumptions about genuine participation are not critically examined (Harding, 2020).

Our contribution highlights the gap between participatory ideals and their practical implementation when working with forced migrants as co-researchers, focusing on the knowledge-sharing stage. It draws on our diverse positionalities as academic researchers, co-researchers, artists, and practitioners in four initiatives in Spain, Belgium and Australia. First, we propose a participatory knowledge-sharing framework grounded in the principles of Presence, Accountability, Reach, and Return (PARR). Second, we offer creative strategies for sharing knowledge with refugee-background participants. In doing so, we creatively re-imagine ethical research practices to expand their role as co-researchers and prioritize meaningful and transformative co-dissemination by disrupting power hierarchies.

Participation in Forced Migration Research

The roots of PR can be found in the emancipatory views of Brazilian pedagogist Paulo Freire in the 1950s–60s and Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda in the 1980s–90s. Since then, PR has been undertaken mainly by women (see Lenette, 2022) and applied not only as a set of methods but also as a politics of research based on ethics and epistemological justice. Some of these methods include community-based participatory research (CBPR), Participatory Action Research (PAR), Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), Participatory Integrated Assessment (PIA) and participatory arts-based or creative methods such as participatory photography, photovoice, photowalks, theater, performance, or filmmaking. To be truly participatory, these methods require time to allow for meaningful engagement of co-researchers, partners and collaborators; resources; a high degree of reflexivity, humility, openness and transparency in the process of co-learning when discussing power, privilege and intersectionality; and flexibility for their messy nature, as they involve building relationships and research processes often in complex circumstances on a daily basis (Mahn et al., 2021).

Genuine participation means complete control in the decision-making process (Lenette, 2022). However, many projects claiming to use participatory methods in social science research often settle for tokenistic approaches, such as merely informing, consulting, or placating groups or communities, rather than building genuine partnerships or delegating power. Academic researchers often do this on the pretext of working with “hard-to-reach” populations (Lenette, 2022, p. 44). Forced migration research initiatives are not exempt from this power imbalance, even when co-researchers with lived experience are at the heart of participatory projects whose designs allow for more equitable distributions of power and negotiation in decision-making, as some scholars have noted (see Canefe, 2023; Clark-Kazak, 2017; Doná, 2007; Green & Kloos, 2009). For example, terms such as participation and empowerment can be used as uncritical and depoliticized buzzwords (Doná, 2007), in line with “red-washing” political and power discourses. To avoid superficial participatory approaches, scholars co-researching with forced migrants recommend rooting PR in decolonial, anti-colonial, feminist and Indigenous frameworks (Canefe, 2023; Lenette, 2022); emphasizing the relational nature of research and prioritizing concrete action toward a more equitable distribution of power among all participants, including target audiences.

These critical frameworks encourage researchers to interrogate foundational questions about knowledge production and dissemination: what it is, who produces it, and for whom it is intended. Feminist perspectives in forced migration studies, for instance, emphasize the importance of emotions, positionality, and care within the research process (Almenara-Niebla, 2025; Clark-Kazak, 2023; Moralli, 2024). These standpoints address the intersections of power, difference, and mobility and advocate for transnational and transcultural approaches beyond citizenship (Ball, 2022) to challenge universalist, heteronormative, and western²-/Euro-/state-centric paradigms. Similarly, Indigenous perspectives critique the extractive tendencies of colonial knowledge production and dissemination, which exploit participants to perpetuate hegemonic interests (Smith, 1999/2012). Anti-colonial methodologies (Lenette, 2022, 2025) stress the importance of centering the voices and contributions of Indigenous and majority-world scholars. Without this focus, there is a risk of replicating existing structures of privilege, where white, western academics dominate the “decolonizing knowledge” agenda, relegating Indigenous scholars, anti-colonial thinkers, and activists to marginal roles—or excluding them entirely (Canefe, 2023; Moosavi, 2020).

These critical perspectives on PR in forced migration align with insights from the special issue edited by Mata-Codesal et al. (2020), titled Strengths, Risks, and Limits of Doing Participatory Research in Migration Studies. The contributors advocate for research grounded in alternative epistemologies and promotes horizontal relationships between academic researchers and co-researchers. They highlight the potential of PR to pursue social justice within and beyond the research process. Furthermore, they argue that PR becomes particularly powerful when integrated with embodied, creative, or arts-based methods (Mata-Codesal et al., 2020), as these methods can deepen engagement and foster new ways of knowing and sharing knowledge.

Our diverse experiences of using arts-based methods in projects involving forced migrants as co-researchers are consistent with this approach, as we demonstrate below. However, our counter-argument centers on the ethical and methodological challenges we have encountered in fostering meaningful and transformative participation during the process of co-disseminating knowledge when using these methods. We propose strategies to overcome these challenges, focusing on knowledge-sharing practices that promote decoloniality and equity. These reflections underscore the transformative potential of participatory and creative approaches in forced migration research, especially when they prioritize the voices and lived experiences of forced migrants and address wider power imbalances in knowledge production and dissemination.

A Framework to Overcome Tokenism in Mobilizing Knowledge With Forced Migrants

Building on foundational texts in decolonial methodologies (Smith, 1999/2012), the PAR framework (Kindon et al., 2007; Lenette, 2022; McIntyre, 2007), and activist approaches to scholarship (Joseph-Salisbury & Connelly, 2021), we propose a trauma-informed conceptual framework for knowledge mobilization in PR that aims for epistemic justice. This framework includes four essential conditions: Presence, Accountability, Reach, and Return (PARR):

Presence (who): Limited co-authorship with people from refugee backgrounds in forced migration literature perpetuates epistemic injustice (Higgins & Lenette, 2024). Academic researchers—often outsiders to lived experiences—are typically privileged over forced migrants in the knowledge-sharing phase. Co-researchers should be at the forefront of any knowledge-sharing initiative with a social justice intent. Their presence is not just the first requirement but also a vital catalyst for exercising ownership by sharing their experience-led knowledge in the ways and contexts they decide. Moreover, given the precarious legal conditions and systemic marginalization many forced migrants face, their participation in a social justice-oriented PR should avoid defaulting to an “empowerment” paradigm, which can inadvertently reinforce hierarchies. Minimizing risk and harm is equally critical, particularly for people who have likely experienced multiple traumas (Birger & Shoham, 2024). This includes mentorship on leading with the media when needed and avoiding exposure to problematic dissemination processes and audiences that could lead to re-traumatization and re-victimization dynamics.

Accountability (how): Are we truly accountable in our research, and to whom? Accountability is critical to avoid strategies of knowledge-sharing in PR rooted in exploitative designs that often limit co-researchers’ agency to merely give consent to participate in projects where they hold little or no decision-making power. Drawing on “relational accountability” (Wilson, 2008), which prioritizes process over outcomes, we examine relationship dynamics to identify who holds responsibility at the dissemination stage while fostering meaningful, equal engagement for all collaborators, including their communities (Reich et al., 2017). A safe route to implementing relational accountability in our research is adopting “consent as a process” (Birger & Shoham, 2024, p. 347), which makes informed consent ongoing, revisiting it explicitly during data collection and dissemination. Relational accountability requires not only involving but actively supporting co-researchers in the knowledge-sharing phase, providing mentorship to equip team members with the skills needed for effective co-dissemination strategies across diverse formats (e.g., oral, visual, written, performative) and settings.

Reach (where and when): Is our work accessible, and if so, to whom? Are our knowledge-sharing efforts in the service of communities of resistance (Sivanandan, 2019) as a counter-hegemonic principle, or are we merely performing a politics of representation? As scholars and practitioners, we must critically assess whether we are tokenizing co-researchers’ participation during the dissemination stage to advance personal agendas while perpetuating institutional co-optation and marketization of scholar-activism (Choudry, 2020). Answering this question requires a deep examination of the accessibility and reach of our research. Achieving meaningful reach at the dissemination stage often demands collaborative actions beyond academia. This work frequently involves fostering relationships with movements, organizations, and activist groups—efforts that are time-consuming, undervalued, and often unrewarded within academic systems dominated by funding imperatives and evaluation pressures (Choudry, 2020).

Return (why): What are we giving in return, and to whom? In PR, the ethics of reciprocity—“I take, I give”—should underpin knowledge mobilization and sharing strategies. Indigenous methodologies, for example, place oral dissemination at the center of knowledge sharing, followed by visual, and textual formats, because of the centrality of oratory and oracy within Indigenous culture, methodologies, and scholarship. This approach underscores that knowledge mobilization is not merely about dissemination but about capacity building (Kovach, 2021). When aligned with this principle, knowledge sharing becomes a transformative process of discovery, shaping policies and practices to benefit structurally marginalized communities (Kovach, 2021). Closely tied to Accountability, this principle emphasizes “making theory useful in resistance struggles” (Joseph-Salisbury & Connelly, 2021, p. 75).

Below we present four vignettes that outline our strategies for co-disseminating findings with forced migrants as co-researchers, and address some of the difficulties we encountered in applying this conceptual framework to participatory arts-based research. We cannot stress enough the importance of genuinely involving co-researchers at this stage of the research, in the formats and settings they deem relevant, as this helps to uphold their expertise, de-center the production of knowledge and mobilize knowledge in academia and beyond. When co-researchers share findings through media and events that are meaningful to them, the research process becomes a site of epistemic collaboration beyond fieldwork and a site of transformation for all involved. Given the limited theoretical and practical guidance on co-dissemination with forced migrants (Birger & Shoham, 2024), we hope that these vignettes can shed some light on this topic.

Case Studies: Vignettes

Grounded in research in communication, film studies and forced migration studies, we synthesize empirical evidence from four research projects in Belgium, Spain and Australia: Reel Borders, Cinematic Cartographies of Mobility in the Hispanic Atlantic, Mouth of the Shark, and South Sudanese perspectives on suicide. Empirical examples are discussed using a decolonial lens that critically examines the nuances of co-disseminating in PR with forced migrants, to illustrate how the PARR framework can provide strategies and solutions to avoid tokenistic approaches. We begin by reflecting on our positionalities, perspectives and roles in the research:

Irene: I am a white settler born and raised in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on unceed Amazigh land in North African, currently living and working in Belgium. I was privileged to receive Spanish visa and scholarships that allowed me to complete a degree in Communication Studies and an MA in Documentary Film, opening up opportunities for international experience as a filmmaker. My academic journey began as a funded PhD candidate, organizing and facilitating participatory filmmaking workshops with forced migrants, asylum seekers, cross-border workers, and film students. Over the years, I have become aware that the same power hierarchies in documentary film also exist in academia—hierarchies that persist even in participatory approaches. I am learning to address these dynamics by embracing feminist and anti-colonial perspectives, centering care and ethics in both research and filmmaking and leveraging film as a medium for self-expression and emancipation.

Caroline: I am an uninvited first-generation migrant-settler living and working on unceded Aboriginal land since 2005. I am a woman with brown skin, with English as a second language, living in a white-majority country. My lived experiences are far removed from that of people who have experienced forced migration, who I collaborate with using participatory methods. I have visa privileges as an Australian citizen, with ease of access to any country or event I wish to attend. For many years, I was complicit in perpetuating harmful research approaches that reinforced colonial agendas. I adopted individualistic and transactional practices, until I became more aware of my privileges and responsibilities as a researcher, and the need to position my research as anti-colonial praxis.

Alseny: I was born in Guinea Conakry, a country that has half the world’s bauxite reserves and large quantities of gold and diamonds. But like many of my compatriots, I was forced to emigrate to make a living. I lived through a long, hellish period during which only my family and I were aware of the ordeal I was going through, which was nothing more than embracing death every day. Did I live through a war? No. But I was living in a place with very little hope of realizing my dreams. I studied up to university level, but I couldn’t complete or realize my projects. I fled in the hope that I could finish my studies, become a journalist and help my loved ones. After much suffering, I arrived in Europe. I was poorly supported by an association that only covered my basic needs for a limited time and pushed me toward social exclusion. Almost seven years after my arrival and after several rejections of my asylum applications and subsequent appeals, I am still in a situation of administrative and social precariousness.

Isobel: I am a white queer settler living and working on the unceded lands of the Gadigal people. My background and experiences as an Australian citizen afford me privileges, including the freedom to work, study, and freely share my story, privileges that are not always available to those who have experienced forced migration. Through volunteering at Villawood Immigration Detention Centre providing social support to refugees and asylum seekers, working in refugee law, and in my collaboration with Aasiya on the short film Mouth of a Shark, I have come to critically reflect on my position of privilege. I am increasingly aware of the ethical complexities involved in storytelling and the power dynamics that shape this work. This ongoing reflection has led me to prioritize ethical collaboration and avoid reinforcing stereotypes, while continuing to critically reassess my role as a filmmaker and researcher who does not have lived experience of refugeehood or displacement.

Kevin: As a white, senior academic in a Belgian university, I am fully aware of the many privileges I accumulate, both institutionally and in terms of the mobility and access to networks of power. At the same time, I have been very aware of how contingent and ambiguous some of these privileges can be, being a gay man who is the first in my family to access higher education. Important for the research experiences shared in this paper is the fact that I am the PI of a large grant, which gave me a sense of scientific independence, but also put me in the position to make important decisions about research priorities and staff.

Vignette 1

The Commodification and Containment of Co-Researchers Into Academic and Funding Agendas: A Critical Appraisal, by Irene & Kevin

This vignette illustrates a lesson learnt about how PR inadvertently reinforces the status quo when co-researchers are commodified in dissemination settings that align with academic or funder agendas. An example of this is an event organized by the Reel Borders team at the European Parliament in October 2023. During this event, we showcased stories from a participatory filmmaking workshop featuring people who are trapped in Ceuta due to the reinforcement of the Moroccan-Spanish border following the COVID-19 pandemic (Gutiérrez-Torres, 2024b). The 13 co-researchers agreed to participate in the workshop to share their experiences of forced immobility, as it provided a platform to elevate their activism. They had been campaigning for mobility rights by forming a 300-member union and organizing weekly protests in Ceuta for three years. As Lakbirah, one of the co-researchers, emphasized, their stories captured in the workshop films needed to reach “European politicians because the Moroccans and Spaniards refuse to act.”

As an EU-funded project at a Belgian university just minutes from the European Parliament, we felt compelled to support the co-researchers’ demand for accountability. With additional funding from the Spanish Cultural Office in Belgium for travel, accommodation, and work compensation, we organized this event to address lawmakers about the inhumane conditions on the Ceuta border. Lakbirah and Faty would represent the group, as their legal status enabled them to travel, while others preferred to stay anonymous or lacked passports at that time.

After contacting different parliamentary groups—not easy in a year leading up to European elections—we finally secured the interest of MPs from three groups (Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, Green/Free European Alliance, Renew Europe Group) who were willing to meet the co-researchers and watch a selection of their films. To provide additional policy context, we also secured the participation of civil society representatives (European Network of Migrant Women and European Federation of Food, Agriculture, and Tourism Trade Unions). We obtained sufficient space for co-researchers to tell their stories, arranged simultaneous translation, and started travel arrangements well in advance, knowing that getting a visa for someone with a Moroccan passport would not be easy.

However, after months of paperwork and appeals, Lakbirah’s visa was denied despite efforts from the university’s international relations office to intervene. Meanwhile, Faty, with Spanish residency, could travel, even if it would be very intimidating to be the sole representative in this elite setting. However, a bit before the event, she called to explain that she had started a new job at a laundry and was in her trial period. She could not afford to miss 2 days of work and really needed that job. Offering extra compensation was not the solution—we had to accept, frustrated, that their circumstances made participation in this research phase impossible. Alternative formats, such as online or video participation, were suggested but either conflicted with work schedules or were deemed unsuitable by the co-researchers for sharing their stories effectively.

Finally, we realized that the event, which was supposed to be an opportunity for co-researchers to talk about their lived experiences of forced immobility to EU policymakers, turned into an elite event for politicians, policymakers and academics. We informed politicians about the situation of the co-researchers, arguing that their situation was representative of that of around 2000 cross-border workers in the Ceuta and Melilla exclaves alone. As we presented context, figures, and a few of the videos made in the filmmaking workshop, we felt that we were again commodifying and speaking “on behalf of” during an event that would ultimately count as an important dissemination activity for our project. We wanted a response from politicians by creating a face-to-face and humane dialogue, but instead, we got an informative, note-taking session. This experience recalled Ferguson’s (2012, p. 6) notion of “adaptive hegemony,” a process through which the state, capital and the academy intertwine to produce an adaptive hegemony in which the inclusion of individuals or groups who are marginalized is reproduced to reorient insurgency toward normativity. In response, we reinforced alternative approaches, including launching an online petition supported by different NGOs and research projects that shifted the agency to the public, enabling broader support for co-researchers’ claims.

Although we included a QR code for the campaign in every screening afterward, neither the online campaign nor the mediated films can replace the active presence of Lakbirah and Faty at the Parliament event. Their involvement in sharing their experiences of forced and prolonged immobility would have shifted the tone and format of the event toward genuine co-dissemination, breaking down some of the boundaries between academia, politics, and activism. Most importantly, this opportunity would have demonstrated how to meet the demands of co-researchers as established during initial negotiations for participation. This serves as a valuable lesson: co-disseminating with forced migrants involves significant challenges that persist even when there is sufficient funding, planning, and institutional support in place.

Vignette 2

An Anti-Colonial Disruption to Academic Publishing: The Potential of Collaborative Poetic Inquiry, by Caroline

I create spaces in the academy for lived experience-led research. My focus on PR models with refugee-background co-researchers is one way to use my privileges as a senior academic who has benefited from structures of colonial violence, to rectify the legacy of epistemic injustice. I was faithful to these structures for many years, as I did not think I could do anything to change the practices I knew reinforced the coloniality of knowledge production and impoverished society, research, and methodologies. I now pay close attention to how my use of participatory, creative methodologies actively dismantle the stronghold of colonialism in research. A key way to achieve this aim is by co-publishing (peer-reviewed) articles with co-researchers with lived experience to reclaim academic spaces that perpetuate colonialist norms.

I collaborate with a group of South Sudanese young people concerned about the rise in suicide deaths and suicide attempts in their communities in Australia. The discipline of critical suicide studies expands and problematizes conventional biomedical approaches by engaging with lived experience and the histories that frame knowledge on suicidality. This discipline currently lacks perspectives from (forced) migrants, which speaks to the importance of participatory, creative work such as this collaboration with South Sudanese young people. However, it is difficult to get funding for suicide research that does not follow “traditional” positivist pathways and relies on pre-determined responses, and instead prioritizes sociocultural perspectives co-constructed using PR and creative methodologies. There is an additional hurdle, which is to get ethics clearance to conduct empirical research on this topic, because I am not a clinician. In general, ethics committees do not handle participatory projects very well (let alone when they explore suicide). It can be exhausting to educate them on the potential of PR and the value of co-producing knowledge. In this instance, I abandoned the idea of a small interview-based research and instead focused on co-writing a paper that centered on the strength of one of the co-researchers, Achol, who is a poet. To complement a reflexive discussion with other co-authors, Achol wrote a poem on the experiences of young people who have suicidal thoughts but do not get the support they need from their families and communities.

Fortunately, Achol and I had already co-published work based on her poems and we knew that this excellent journal would be open to supporting collaborative poetic inquiry as a methodology for disseminating themes from the reflexive discussion (the paper was published in November 2024 following excellent feedback from reviewers). We are aware that not all journals value such a creative approach. When I have co-published with co-researchers in the past, I tended to be more directive in outlining the co-writing model—often because I had more experience with the machinery and intricacies of academic publishing, but mostly because I had more time than co-researchers to immerse myself in writing. This experience was different, first because Achol’s poems are the heart of collaborative writing and guided the rest of the paper, and second, all co-authors were paid for their time. Indeed, this approach to co-dissemination requires sufficient funding to compensate co-researchers for their time and efforts. The rate is determined using guidelines for research assistance or minimum wage (rather than gift vouchers) because of the value of the work each co-researcher brings, from conceptualizing to finalizing a publication. Dissemination cannot be participatory if co-researchers work for free; we would merely be reproducing a colonialist trope. Conversely, an ethical tension arises in terms of whether co-researchers should be excluded from co-writing opportunities simply because there are no funds to support their participation at this stage.

Vignette 3

Everybody Has Their Own Vision: Dismantling Flagship Dissemination Policies, by Alseny

Participation without considering the personal histories of each co-researcher, or the structures of oppression we face, often ends up justifying the exclusion of underrepresented communities. My participatory filmmaking journey began in 2018, shortly after arriving in Ceuta from Morocco on a pneumatic raft. I was sent to the CETI (Centro de Estancia Temporal de Inmigrantes de Ceuta) where I had to wait—without clear timeframes—for the possibility of being transferred to mainland Spain. During this waiting period, my friends Richard, Cherif and Habib and I took part in a two-week participatory smartphone filmmaking workshop at the local NGO San Antonio Immigrant Centre. We were all from Guinea Conakry and in our early twenties. Irene was the trainer (see Gutiérrez-Torres, 2024a).

For the workshop, we filmed in the CETI because we wanted people to know about our situation there. But it was forbidden to film inside the CETI. It was a risky job: there were guards and security cameras everywhere. Finally, we managed to film some videos without them noticing, and made a short documentary titled “The Life of the Immigrant.”

The NGO organized a screening for about 40 people, including other CETI residents and a large group of students, which was covered by the local press. But things changed when it came to a big screening in Madrid in a well-known cinema as part of the film festival “Home” for about 50 people. Only Habib and I, who were finally allowed to leave after 11 months in CETI, were able to attend the festival and present our film. The original plan, agreed during the workshop, was that four of us would take part in the dissemination phase.

At CETI, we tried to explain the situation to the people in charge. No way. Richard and Cherif could not even connect to the internet: they did not have the necessary documents to buy a SIM card, and there was no internet access in the CETI. So, they could neither participate in person nor remotely. We debated whether it was right for just two of us to be there, if the four of us could not attend. In the end, Richard and Cherif generously allowed us to stand in for them, but situations like this create tension within the group.

The Madrid screening was an exciting but bittersweet experience. Although we were there representing our friends, it did not seem fair to them. During the question-and-answer session, I realized that our answers were our own. Each of us has our own perspective and vision, and we missed their voices in those moments. The direct interaction with the audience made for a rich encounter where people could chat with us, share their opinions and suggest new ideas for future films. However, the limitations of mobility created an uncomfortable situation for all of us. They remind us that participation is fragile and becomes even more biased and unequal when it comes to co-disseminating knowledge.

We tried our best by participating in this academic research, but it is not easy. There are many obstacles, such as security risks, language barriers, technological limitations, mobility restrictions and visa prejudices, to name but a few. Moreover, we must not forget what we really represent when we present the outputs: we are not just four young people from Guinea Conakry who made a short film about our migration experience to Europe during our stay in a retention center in Ceuta; we are a miracle—the mere fact of arriving in Ceuta was a miracle.

There must be safe and legal ways for people to get to Europe. No one should risk their lives by crossing dangerous seas, climbing fences or taking other life-threatening routes. I have been there; I know how terrifying it is to cross by sea. The visa process at embassies should be made easier, and systems should be put in place to help migrants settle more quickly. We should be able to work or study in our chosen fields without waiting years to start living a normal life. Most importantly, no one should be deprived of their freedom or treated unfairly just because they are trying to build a better future. Solving these problems would create a fairer and more humane environment in which migrants could contribute to the creation, analysis and dissemination of knowledge, whether about migration or anything else, with dignity and purpose. Then, and only then, would we feel that the power dynamic is balanced and that we can engage in research and academic projects on an equal footing.

Vignette 4

Ethical Responsibilities in Art: Centering Refugee Perspectives Through Collaborative Storytelling, by Isobel

Over four years, I visited Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, providing social support to refugees and asylum seekers during the often-lengthy processing of their protection claims. These interactions shaped my understanding of how individuals from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds navigate systems that frequently silence or exploit their stories. Yet, I also observed how representation can disrupt such systems, increase agency, and more broadly influence public perceptions of refugees and asylum seekers. During this time, I met Aasiya (pseudonym), a Somali asylum seeker who expressed a desire to share her story to humanize refugees. Together, we undertook the collaborative creation of a short film, Mouth of the Shark, to represent Aasiya’s experiences while ensuring her anonymity and mitigating potential risks of persecution should she be required to return to Somalia. Through this process, I grappled with the broader question of how artists can fulfill their ethical responsibilities to convey the perspectives of individuals from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds as a core value underpinning their collaborative artistic endeavors.

As a filmmaker and researcher without lived experience of refugeehood or displacement, I was acutely aware of my own privilege throughout this process and approached the project through a lens of participatory storytelling informed by decolonial thought. Central to this approach was ensuring that Aasiya’s voice guided the storytelling, allowing her to determine what aspects of her story to include. The filmmaking and editing process itself was iterative and required time, spanning over a year of discussions, filming, and revision to craft the short film. Aasiya’s involvement at every step of the process underscored the principle that consent is a continuous process, not a one-time agreement. This process also demanded reflexivity. As a filmmaker, I had to confront how my positionality and motives shaped the project, continuously recalibrating my role to ensure that Aasiya’s agency and perspective remained central. While filmmaking is inevitably impacted by subjectivity and motive through abstraction and emphasis, the trust built over our pre-existing relationship enabled open-ended conversations and time. This provided Aasiya with space and flexibility to discuss many aspects of her experience, fostering a collaborative process that captured her unique personality and interests, situating her voice at the center of the narrative.

At the outset, we recognized the importance of countering hegemonic narratives about refugees and asylum seekers and promoting more nuanced stories of diverse refugee experiences. Refugees have been framed through deficit-based tropes that perpetuate stereotypes and obscure agency. One of the primary challenges we faced was maintaining anonymity while ensuring Aasiya’s story remained authentic. In our initial master interview, we employed a silhouetting technique to obscure Aasiya’s identity. However, this standard anonymization technique, obscuring her face, risked reducing her to a faceless, dehumanized figure, reinforcing the very narratives the project sought to counter. We re-positioned the visual narrative to protect her identity while incorporating unidentifiable B-roll footage of Aasiya engaging in everyday activities, such as documenting her love of cooking, attending an African cultural festival, and her connection to the water. One particularly intimate scene portrayed Aasiya preparing canjeero, a staple Somali flatbread, alongside another young woman. Close-up shots of their hands collaborating in the kitchen invited viewers into the shared, informal space of cooking and conversation, emphasizing Aasiya’s humanity and individuality beyond reductive refugee stereotypes. Openness in allowing Aasiya to direct the focus of the film toward important aspects of her life and day-to-day events allowed the project to stray from stereotypical portrayals. These intimate moments highlighted Aasiya’s individuality, countering reductive tropes and presenting a multifaceted narrative that extended far beyond her identity as an asylum seeker.

Ultimately, no definitive checklist exists for ethical and collaborative storytelling. This project highlights just some of the complexities of participatory filmmaking and storytelling in the context of refugee and asylum seeker narratives. In depicting stories, artists must ensure that it is the protagonist’s agenda that drives the project at all times and that collaboration occurs through an understanding of the broader political and societal frameworks surrounding forced migration, to develop more nuanced art that prioritizes individuals’ histories, cultures and backgrounds.

Discussion

Our decision to write this paper stems from a collective concern about what constitutes ethical and socially just co-dissemination when co-researching with forced migrants using arts-based participatory methods. It is often difficult to translate aspirations into practical outcomes. As we highlighted in the introduction, meaningful engagement of co-researchers in the knowledge-sharing stage is of particular relevance to PR but receives close to no attention in the literature (Birger & Shoham, 2024). We reflected on our research experiences with perspectives grounded in our positionalities and privileges because “without sufficient examples of how participatory dissemination is practised, the ethical issues associated with this method cannot be addressed” (Birger & Shoham, 2024, p. 343). As moments of discomfort and messiness are common in qualitative research, including when sharing new knowledge from projects (The Critical Methodologies Collective, 2022), such discussions deserve more attention in the literature so that they become sites of knowledge production. Using the Presence, Accountability, Reach, and Return (PARR) framework, we summarize what we have learned from our PR experiences in co-disseminating with forced migrants and identify issues that must be addressed to promote ethical and genuine participation in the knowledge-sharing phase.

The potential of co-dissemination: We approached co-dissemination in different ways, through written material (co-publications and poems) in traditional academic outlets and via audio-visual means (short documentary films and collaborative editing) for public and media use. We engaged in co-dissemination across forced migration contexts, sometimes with groups, sometimes with individuals, for different reasons. For Alseny, the only author with lived experience of forced migration, the motivation was to share firsthand stories, so that others (within the processing center and the general public) would know what it was like to be entangled in visa processing systems and live with prolonged uncertainty. Co-sharing stories as a small group of forced migrants spoke to their hardships and hopes for the future, in a way that has a much more profound impact compared to secondhand retelling of stories. For researcher-filmmakers (Irene, Kevin and Isobel), co-dissemination was used to deconstruct dominant tropes about migration and seeking asylum, in ways that challenge silencing practices and stereotypical representations, increase protagonists’ agency, and influence public perceptions by humanizing people at the center of stories. Researchers can also disrupt research and writing norms (Caroline) by co-publishing data and new ideas.

In alignment with the principles of Presence and Accountability, co-researchers bring their unique insider knowledge and community connections to the research, which can significantly enhance accessibility of outputs for their communities and beyond. In Vignette 1, Lakbirah leveraged her expertise and network to organize local media interviews in Ceuta and Morocco, which were then uploaded to an independent journalist’s YouTube channel. Her efforts were instrumental in engaging Arabic-speaking audiences, revealing language biases in the co-dissemination design of the project and underscoring the transformative potential of this phase when co-researchers are active designers.

Ensuring accessibility also demands diversifying research outputs to reach communities involved. While co-researchers may contribute as co-authors in academic publications or co-presenters at conferences, as in Vignette 2, these formats often fail to connect with broader community members. Similarly, while producing an open access webdoc as in Vignette 1 is commendable, some co-researchers’ relatives required videos on external drives due to lack of internet access. In reviewing possible biases in co-dissemination, we need to ask who our audiences are and on whose behalf we work. If our efforts fail to reach and be meaningful to communities of resistance, as Sivanandan (2019) has argued, we risk commodifying participation to conform to the “fast and clean” modus operandi of neoliberal academia based on the politics of representation.

Two ethical approaches to addressing the challenges of co-dissemination are to implement the ethics of relationship and the ethics of witnessing and documenting living experiences (Atem & Higgins, 2024). The ethics of relationship requires moving beyond researchers’ self-reflexive and harm-avoidance paradigms to instead center the worldviews and expertise of co-researchers from refugee backgrounds. It involves (re-)affirming their expertise and agency (Atem & Higgins, 2024) as critical to knowledge sharing. For instance, co-researchers engaged in activist activities may have more media experience than academic researchers, which can challenge and shift existing hierarchies (Birger & Shoham, 2024).

The ethics of witnessing and documenting emphasizes upholding refugee agency and fostering genuine collaboration through reflexive dialogue (Atem & Higgins, 2024). It means going beyond informed consent and returning power to those with lived experience regarding how their stories are elaborated, interpreted, and shared. This approach advocates for a paradigm shift in academia, whereby mediated accounts of lived experiences should be the exception rather than the norm. Indeed, there is a plea among anti-colonial scholars to stop mediating accounts of lived experiences in research and, instead, start including co-researchers’ names as leads on grants, publications, or other knowledge-sharing formats in favor of epistemic justice (Lenette, 2022). If pseudonymization is necessary for safety reasons, an alternative approach could involve providing a statement that outlines the ethical rationale for this choice, accompanied by a declaration of truthfulness. Vignette 4 illustrated alternative ethical strategies to address these challenges in visual research with forced migrants. Thus, co-researchers’ presence in the knowledge-sharing phase is not enough if traditional hierarchies between academic and lived-experience co-researchers are still in place. Under such circumstances, the presence of co-researchers can become tokenistic, serving only the agenda of academic researchers, rather than reflecting the unique voices and experiences of each co-researcher, as explored in Vignette 3.

Un/Resolved ethical dilemmas: We faced numerous ethical challenges. For example, we could sometimes remunerate lived experience experts for their time, but not always—academic funding structures still favor data collection without attention to community-engaged processes of reciprocity, especially at the dissemination stage (Birger & Shoham, 2024). Even when financial compensation was possible, it was not always enough to support ethical participation when this created a risk for co-researchers (e.g., losing employment). Access to funds alone cannot guarantee an ethical co-dissemination model.

In the case of Alseny, being one of two film protagonists who were able to attend a public screening while the other two could neither leave the processing center nor join remotely, was conflicting—Vignette 1 recounts a similar dilemma for two protagonists who, in the end, could not participate at all in an event that included decision-makers. Such situations challenge the very idea of representation, as one experience of forced migration and asylum seeking does not reflect the diverse experiences of others in similar circumstances. These moments were bittersweet, underscored by multiple challenges such as security risks, language barriers, technological limitations, and, most notably, visa biases that co-researchers faced when they wanted to actively share new knowledge. Their lack of mobility and visa privileges—which may have seemed benign during the data collection and analysis stages—became insurmountable barriers in ensuring their presence at the dissemination stage.

Concurrently, filmmakers considered how to prioritize protagonists’ perspectives and agendas, so that they could exercise agency in leading the filming and editing process. This at times involved upholding safety through anonymity—and doing so ethically to avoid further depersonalizing their experiences. But at the dissemination stage, researchers could still find themselves speaking to elite audiences on behalf of co-researchers who could not attend because they were denied access to these events. This means that hierarchical, academic, elitist and other formal spaces remained intact. More fundamentally, there is an entrenched assumption that researchers’ presence in co-sharing is a way to “validate” the knowledge of co-researchers, the former still being positioned at the “experts” (Birger & Shoham, 2024). Like Moran (2024), we find the delineations between lived-experience experts and nonlived-experience researchers rather unhelpful to progress discussions and ask questions on ethical PR and dissemination (see also Voronka, 2016, on “essentializing” lived experience). But despite academic researchers’ strong commitments to PR principles and a willingness to cede power and be agile and adaptable in the face of the most constraining circumstances, their presence at events and publications are often deemed sufficient to share findings. Concurrently, we refuse to expose co-researchers to “unacceptable risks of invalidation and re-traumatisation” (Moran, 2024, p. 46), noting that not all academic and formal spaces are safe for anyone with limited privileges or with multiple experiences of marginalization.

Isobel and Caroline faced a similar dilemma when co-publishing on the work described in Vignette 4, when they could not include the protagonist’s name on the article to avoid compromising their visa application, while there were no such risks to the researchers (see Blomfield & Lenette, 2019). This further reinforced the need to reflect on the question, “What does it mean to write about the lives of others?” when we argue for representation in knowledge sharing (The Critical Methodologies Collective, 2022). These examples represent missed opportunities for PR in forced migration research to generate ethical and viable co-dissemination pathways that would have more profound impacts on audiences including policymakers and on academia. As García-Peña (2022) argues, it is difficult to dismantle academia’s power, which resides precisely in structures that perpetuate exclusion.

What is of particular concern is the emotional labor involved in co-sharing findings publicly and the toll it can take on co-researchers (we note the personal and professional costs to academic researchers too). Referring to mental health research, Faulkner and Thompson (2021) argue that the emotional implications of bringing subjective or lived experiences into research contexts involves careful negotiation of identity, recognizing the emotional work of using and embodying lived experience, and the existence of appropriate work environments (see also Voronka, 2016). Our reflections suggest that (a) academic and other research contexts are largely unprepared for the complexities of experiences that co-researchers bring to the PR collaboration; and (b) the expectation on co-researchers to bring subjective experiences into hierarchical, academic, elitist and other formal contexts can sometimes do more harm than good.

Conclusion

We accept that there are many paradoxes in PR that become even more apparent when considering the dissemination stage. While we have not resolved most of the ethical dilemmas we faced, and still wonder what we could have done differently, our candid sharing of past experiences of this oft-neglected topic aims to encourage other participatory researchers in and beyond forced migration studies to carefully consider the implications of co-sharing knowledge. While the potential for change and the impact on audiences can be profound, it is crucial to remain sensitive to contexts (e.g., precarious visa or employment situations) and respect the wishes of co-researchers. One question we must constantly ask ourselves to remain ethical in PR is whether it is beneficial from co-researchers’ perspectives to be involved in co-dissemination, to ensure that it is their agendas, not ours, that drive the initiative.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the co-researchers who contributed to this research. Without their engagement, expertise, and the lived experiences they brought as situated knowledge, this publication would not have been possible.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the “Reel Borders” European Research Council Starting Grant #948278 and the “Institutional documentary and amateur cinema in the colonial era: Analysis and uses” research project PID2021-123567NB-I00, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

Ethical Approval

All discussed research obtained ethical approvals.

ORCID iDs

Irene Gutiérrez-Torres

Caroline Lenette

Notes

Author Biographies

Irene Gutiérrez-Torres is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and a PhD fellow at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) and University Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M). Her films and research address themes of im/mobility, migration, and self-representation through participatory filmmaking. She is part of the research projects Reel Borders (European Research Council Starting Grant #948278) and Institutional documentary and amateur cinema in the colonial era: Analysis and uses (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, PID2021-123567NB-I00).

Caroline Lenette is Professor of Anti-Colonial Research, School of Social Sciences, and Deputy Director, Big Anxiety Research Centre, at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. She is an arts-based researcher exploring the links among art, health and well-being, ethics and policy. Caroline favors participatory research and co-production to challenge and decolonize established research norms. She is the author of Arts-Based Methods in Refugee Research: Creating Sanctuary (Springer, 2019), Participatory Action Research: Ethics and Decolonization (Oxford University Press, 2022), co-editor of Disrupting the Academy with Lived Experience-Led Knowledge (Policy Press, 2024) and editor of Anti-Colonial Research Praxis: Methods for Knowledge Justice (Manchester University Press, 2025).

Isobel Blomfield is a lawyer focused on strategic class actions to enhance legal accessibility. She led the legal section of Supporting Asylum Seekers Sydney, arranging regular visits to the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in Australia and has a background in refugee law helping individuals with protection visa applications. As co-creator of “Humans of Detention,” which seeks to rehumanise asylum seekers in Australia, Isobel documents the lived experiences of asylum seekers through firsthand narratives as a filmmaker and storyteller.

Alhouseine Diallo is a Guinean filmmaker and writer who arrived in Spain by boat in 2017. He has co-directed the short films “The Life of the Immigrant” (2018), “The Way it Goes” (2019), and “Occident (Fiction and Reality),” and he is the author of the autobiographical book ‘To me, Living Invisibly’ (2022). He currently lives in Madrid, where he continues to work toward regularizing his status and pursuing his artistic and professional aspirations.

Kevin Smets is associate professor of media and culture at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). He is co-director of ECHO: Research group on media, culture & politics. He conducts research on media, migration and the social and political dimensions of film and visual culture. At VUB, he teaches an introductory course on film history. He is the principal investigator of the European Research Council project “Reel Borders.”

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