Ethnography of young people in confinement: on subjectivity,positionality and situated ethics in closed space

Introduction

Young people are confined in a range of different institutions that sit in the nexus between criminal justice and child protection. These institutions aim to improve the life chances of young people through treatment, protection and education amidst the punitive materiality of confinement. Various names apply such as secure institutions, compulsory care, reform schools, secure training centres and intensive care, suggesting that young people are not confined for punishment but for ‘betterment’. These institutions are notoriously difficult for researchers to access especially for conducting ethnographic studies (Myers, 2015; Roesch-Marsh et al., 2012). However, research is pivotal for understanding how confinement affects young people and how amalgamates of treatment, protection and punishment produce unique mechanisms of control (Henriksen and Prieur, 2019; Schliehe, 2016). Research can also give a voice to troubled and troubling young people, who are often disbelieved or silenced recipients of welfare services. This article addresses key challenges and ethical dilemmas in doing ethnographic research with confined young people, thus providing guidelines for new scholars in the field.

The importance and challenges of ethnography in prison research have been widely debated. Wacquant (2002) warned against the ‘eclipse of prison research’, arguing that ethnography, in the era of mass imprisonment, has never been more important. Ethnographic fieldwork involves immersion in the penal context to explore institutional and relational dynamics with an affective presence that ‘for a while involves the entire person and life of the field worker, not only living in the field, but with it.’ (Hastrup, 2010: 57). Getting a sense of the field includes understanding how sensory data can be used to explore the field and how emotions shape the research process (Drake and Harvey, 2014; Jewkes, 2012; Liebling and Stanko, 2001; Nielsen, 2010). Fieldwork requires managing a fluid researcher position and reflecting on how field positions and relations shape the production and analysis of data (Rowe, 2014). The ‘messy story’ of penal ethnographies tends to get glossed over because criminology to some extent favours a linear and positivist research design (Jewkes, 2012). This obscures the complexity and potential of ‘messy texts’ (Marcus, 1998) and provides little guidance for new scholars in the field.

Ethnographic studies of youth confinement remain limited, but shed light on important aspects of youth experiences and staff dilemmas in the ambiguous space of providing support for youth considered both at risk and as risk (Henriksen, 2017; Schliehe, 2014; Schliehe and Crowley, 2017; Bengtsson, 2012; Disney, 2015; Enell, 2017; Vogel, 2018). It has been argued that access is often restrained by ethical boards (Myers, 2015) and that time-consuming access procedures make this research particularly difficult to pursue for young scholars (Roesch-Marsch et al., 2012; Watson and van der Meulen, 2019). However, very few papers include detailed reflections on ethics, positionality and issues of representation when working with vulnerable young people confined to care, treatment or protection. We bring together mainly reflexive ethnography (Davies, 1999; Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995; Hastrup, 2010), prison ethnography (Jewkes, 2012; Liebling, 2001; Rowe, 2014; Ugelvik, 2014) and ethical debates related to researching children and vulnerable youth (Burman et al., 2001; Christians, 2000; Te Riele and Brooks, 2013) to provide a guideline for new researchers in the field.

The studies

The article draws on two ethnographic studies with young people in confinement conducted in Denmark and Scotland. The first study was conducted in Danish secure institutions to explore gendered practices and experiences of confinement (Henriksen, 2017, 2018, 2019). The institutions are gender integrated and girls make up about 10% of the confined young people. The aim of the study was to explore how girls experienced being confined in units with a majority of boys and male staff. The study was designed as a multi-sited fieldwork in ten units in four different institutions spending 2–3 days at each unit. Fieldwork included participation in daily activities such as school, meals, cleaning, cooking, playing sports and relaxing. It also included participation in staff meetings and engaging in informal conversations with staff and management. A total of 25 young people (12 girls and 13 boys) and 20 staff were interviewed in the privacy of an office or meeting room to ensure confidentiality.

The second study was based on doctoral research (Schliehe, 2014, 2016), which focussed on young women’s experiences of incarceration in three settings ranging from closed psychiatric units to secure care and prison in Scotland. The study explored young women’s individual stories within wider discourses on securitisation of childhoods and criminalisation of young people (Barry and McNeill, 2009; Goldson, 2002; Muncie, 2008). It focussed on the under-researched social worlds within institutional spaces and how they were carried out into the community upon release. This in-depth qualitative study used ethnographic observation, interviews and file data involving 48 young women aged between 14 years and 21 years of age, as well as 43 staff members and policy actors. Fieldwork practice in the secure unit meant taking part in daily routines like school, meals, free time activities and a lot of ‘hanging out’ with young people including watching TV, painting nails, playing board games and attending formal meetings. This is what Fujii (2015) termed ‘accidental ethnography’ which includes paying attention to the moments that take place outside of structured research time, such as disputes and ruptures of routines in the structured everyday life of confined space.

This article draws on both studies, highlighting similarities regarding research practice, ethical dilemmas, reflections on positionality and research struggles, which are rarely addressed in academic literature on doing research with young people in closed settings.

Negotiating access, consent and participation

The fieldwork process starts with the negotiation of access. There are many difficulties in entering closed settings, as well as when researching with young people (Bengtsson, 2014). Every field site has its own characteristics, safety measures and access negotiations. No fieldwork day is ever the same – there are new encounters, friendly chats and helpful staff, as much as hostile receptions, refusals and open distrust.

Negotiating access to closed settings for young people involves lengthy ethics applications and discussions with institutional officials. For the researcher, it is a fine line to tread between one’s own research interests and the potential interests of the institution, and part of getting access implies negotiating these interests. Closed spaces like secure units are particularly protective of their reputation, which can make negotiations of access difficult. Liebling (2001) refers to Howard Becker in her discussion of how our sympathies shape research outcomes but also our research integrity. This starts with the negotiation of access and how we, as researchers, pitch our research outline and plans. Balancing potentially competing perspectives includes being aware of the political nature and consequences of institutional research (Liebling, 2001; Liebling and Stanko, 2001). The relative distance between the public realm and secure care units as areas of restricted access can exacerbate these. Initial access negotiations are bound to be top-down and from the outside in resting on unit directors before being passed on to managers of individual living spaces and key workers. Researching these environments requires a continued negotiation and re-negotiation throughout the fieldwork period. It can feel like you never quite settle in the field site, but remain in a probation-like position, having to tirelessly renegotiate social interaction and institutional boundaries.

Accessing young people in a closed institutional setting involves gaining consent from the institution (managerial prison staff) as well as from the young persons. Consent is described by Bulmer (2001: 49) as voluntary consent from a human being who has the legal capacity to give consent which is by ‘free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching or any other ulterior form of constraint or conversion,’ but also involving sufficient knowledge of what is entailed in taking part, including potential negative effects. When it comes to young people, especially if they are under the age of 16, their ‘legal’ capacity to consent can be questioned. The right fieldwork preparation can help in this case, for example supplying information sheets and consent forms without ‘jargon’. Particular age-related ethics issues can arise which might mean that the need for staff support increases:

It transpired that I had to seek consent from the young women as well as from their parents and/or social workers. Consent had to be granted individually for each young woman by the main unit manager (. . .). Establishing links with the young women’s parents was considered impossible in many ways (difficult/inexistent contact) which is why we agreed to seek consent from the young women’s social workers, as well as handing out information sheets for the parents who we could contact. This meant that I had to seek three separate signatures to conduct one interview – creating a lot of extra work for the unit staff as they had to phone social workers for me, explain my research and hand the phone over to me. (Schliehe, 2016: 82)

In a closed institutional setting, issues of consent and voluntary participation are further complicated by the geographical setting and social relations in closed spaces where young people have a choice to say yes/no but might be influenced by institutional constraints or relationships. As a ‘captive audience’ (Kendrick et al., 2008), they are subject to institutional constraints as well as encouragement by staff and observation/judgment by other young people. As researchers, we are embedded in – and to some extent feed on – the institutional logics that subordinate children as young welfare clients accustomed to adults making decisions about key aspects of their lives. They are not always used to being asked and they often have a sense of how to accommodate to institutional intentions and agendas. Thus, ensuring voluntary participation requires an in-depth understanding of the context and the power imbalances in which the research sits, to be able to judge if the interviewee can indeed choose ‘freely’ to take part. Furthermore, the research site is the temporary home of the young people, which requires being sensitive to non-verbal signs of disinterest or disapproval of the researcher’s presence and interaction in games, conversations or leisure activities. Good research practice requires awareness of the complexities and sensitivity of a research topic, and these issues are important to recognize, not only when observing but also when interviewing young people on topics relating to personal, emotional and potentially traumatic effects of disclosing experiences of being locked up (Barry and Moodie, 2008; Burman et al., 2001; Goldson, 2002).

Sensing the field

Arriving at a secure institution is a mixed experience of excitement, discomfort and nervous anticipation of being allowed access to a closed space. Standing outside the impermeable walls or looking in through iron fences, makes you acutely aware of entering a space of control and surveillance. It is a sensory experience to be guided through corridors, having doors unlocked and locked as you pass along and metallic sounds echoing through hallways. The sounds, the smells and visual materiality of a penal apparatus makes a sensory impression on the researcher, which tacitly informs the experience of being in a place for confinement, and implicitly shapes the production of data (Jewkes, 2012; Pink, 2015). Experiences of being surrounded by high walls or multiple layers of fences was a reoccurring theme in our fieldnotes and became a theme of inquiry when speaking to young people and staff, as recorded in these notes:

We are walking along a four meter high concrete wall, which surrounds the premises, and I ask the staff member, how he thinks it affects the young people.

Our affective experience of a penal materiality shaped our enquiries into how the young people made sense of high walls, locked doors, a strict daily structure and surveillance. In the interviews, it became clear, that many of the young people had been shocked at arrival, as expressed by one 15-year old girl:

I was picked up by the police and when they locked the door out there, I got scared. The fence out there, really scared me. I thought, “This is bad, I am in prison now”. They went through my things and body searched me. I looked at the bars in front of the windows, and felt really bad. I feel bad, it can’t be right. I don’t want to be here. (Interview with Julie, Study 1)

Fences, barbwire and dangling keys make a strong and lasting impression on the young people (see also Ennel et al., forthcoming). However, the young people also became accustomed to the penal materialities, as suggested by the staff, and the theme is not as prevalent in their narratives of everyday life. Yet, one boy remarks the following: ‘The sound of that lock buzzing every evening that is the worst. We are locked up all the time, but I just sleep badly behind that locked door’ (Interview with Peter, Study 1). Thus, sensing and exploring the field through sight, sound, smells and emotions produce a sensitivity to themes that can be pursued in detail in interviews and presence in the field.

You get a sense of the field by observing and participating in everyday activities, which enables an embodied experience of field activities. This includes preparing and sharing meals, playing games and engaging in sports with the young people. This participatory side of the research changes how we experience the institutional space and social interaction, rendering our own bodies and minds more susceptible to the institutional surrounding and logics. One situation illustrated this very clearly:

The sport session made me wary of being a woman in a masculine setting. My female body being more at display in my running tights and t-shirt, as my lack of skills in contact sports such as football or hockey were also displayed. Observing the young people negotiate a shared sport activity illustrated gendered dynamics. The four boys wanted to play soccer and volleyball, while the girl was not really included in the decision making. The group settled on dodge ball and football, but the dodge ball game was short and quickly replaced by playing football. The girl got cross, silent at first, but then proclaimed, that she would “pass”. “Passing” on a planned event meant that she had to return to her room and stay there until dinner. After the girl had left, I asked the male employee why she had passed on the event, and he explained, “the boys are really hard on her, they throw the ball at her really hard, trying to hit her and often they succeed.” The game begins, and immediately I get a sense of what he means. The ball is being violently kicked around the gym, several times passing close by my head, and I am thankful for my two team mates doing their best to protect me. (Fieldnotes, Study 1)

This incidence provided valuable insights for understanding the gendered experiences of being confined in (or researching) a space with a majority of boys and male staff. It also illustrated the gendered vulnerabilities and marginalization that stem from institutional logics favouring masculine traits, practices and interests (Henriksen, 2017).

Sensing the field also included reading non-verbal communication sensitive to how young people might express their general well-being and mood in how they dress or use make-up, as was evident with one young woman using a lot of make-up on the days she was feeling particularly low (Fieldnotes, Study 2). Getting accustomed to the closed environment means being increasingly able to ‘read the room’ and minor transgressions, for example how young people might use the short period over lunch to try and communicate with their feet under the table, unobserved by staff, when the general rules stated that no direct contact was allowed (Fieldnotes, Study 2).

Ethnographic fieldwork often includes interviews, and there is a performative quality to interviews that makes them valuable also in terms of accessing non-verbal data (Rubow, 2010). The verbal exchange is only a part of what goes on, which requires being present with all your senses to pick up on slight changes in tonality, bodily unrest, (in)assertive voices, the materiality of the room, sounds, disruptions, etc. Interviews are also a space of shared emotionality and affective entrainment with the young people. As evident in this fieldnote from study 1:

She saw me noticing the scars on her arm and commented on it, “they are not new, I don’t have any new ones” she said to suggest that cutting was in the past. She pulled her sleeves to cover her wrist and I smiled to comfort her, while feeling immensely sad for her. “So tell me about the horses, that sounds nice”, I continued to change the subject.

In a positivist epistemology, this emotional engagement would be referred to as a bias, while (inter)subjectivity in a hermeneutic epistemology is an issue of critical reflection, valuable for understanding how emotions shape and even produce data (Jewkes, 2012; Rowe, 2014).

The effect of the research on the researcher’s life can be profound and seep into academic settings (like feeling silly for feeling emotional when recounting fieldwork experiences) to feeling isolated with few people to exchange ideas with, and quite literally taking the experience home:

I have started having nightmares about being confined with no release date, waking up with vivid recollections of chaotic struggles to contact and see my family, staff managing my time and activities, feeling frustrated and sad. (Fieldnotes, Study 1)

This affective immersion in the pains of confinement does not necessarily have to be interpreted as a bias, but rather produces an enhanced sensitivity to how similar experiences are narrated and experienced by young people experiencing indefinite placement, broken social relations and being subjected to institutional order by having their time, spatial movement and activities controlled by someone else.

Due to the security restrictions and having to fit in with staff shifts, unit regimes and other events, closed environments can be restrictive for research practice, for example to observe institutional or community life to the extent that Crang and Cook (2007: 37) describe as ‘deep hanging out’. Negotiating participation can be highly emotional labour as staff and young people can be more or less engaged and inviting. Every encounter matters in some way in order to establish trust and negotiate good and bad days (with both staff and young people). On the whole, both staff and young people seemed very willing to let us ‘in’, to have a chat or just sit quietly and ‘be there’. However, this immersion into the secure care social world also meant a constant negotiation of the every-day. Doing unobtrusive observational research (Lee, 2000) in someone’s living environment (young people) and working environment (staff) and spending a lot of time asking questions and ‘looking’ can create tensions and the complicated social life in each unit can mean that the researcher mis-reads social cues or misunderstands power relations. Mainly focussing on young people, for example, might make you less open to understand that staff might be struggling with their complicated role of balancing care and control. David, one Scottish staff member describes a situation that might be difficult to align with a critical researcher’s view:

So everybody here has the best interest of the young people at heart, although the young people on admission won’t see that. But they do work round to it, and the number of young people that do not want to leave never ceases to amaze me. It’s the safest nurturing environment they’ve known in their lives, and [that] they really don’t want to move on from an environment that they’re locked in, is scary, but humbling as well (Schliehe, 2016: 137)

Throughout the fieldwork period it remains important to make an effort to spend as much time ‘being around’ and approachable for any questions as possible. This, however, can again mean a higher demand on staff time.

Sometimes fieldwork is limited to a few days at a time. While 3 days in a unit does not amount to the deep immersion that fieldworkers often pursue as the golden standard, it does provide a sense of institutional temporality and routine. It gives the researcher an embodied experience of how the days pass in a repetitive temporal pattern, maintained by a timely structure defining specific times for getting up, sharing meals, engaging in activities, staff meetings and shifts. These times are kept with minute precision and contribute to create a sense of order and structure on the inside. Many of the young people do not know how long they will be confined, and for them the structure contributes to break down infinite time to a manageable time. Staying overnight also provides insights on the number of staff passing through a unit. After a whole day of research at a closed institution, it is difficult not to get tired of engaging with new people and situations. This form of fieldwork fatigue, instead of worrying about one’s own research skills, can help to reflect on how this also applies to and impacts on the relational dynamics between staff and youth. With three shifts of different staff members a day, coupled with various administrative staff, teachers and therapists, the young people have to relate or adapt to many different adults in their (temporary) home environment. This may explain why they sometimes withdraw to their rooms avoiding adult contact. Thus, reflecting on your own response to demanding fieldwork, might enable identifying important elements in the relational dynamics in closed environments.

Sometimes sensing the field can produce fear, discomfort and lack of sympathy with interlocutors. Warnings from staff about the potential dangerousness of the young people and their constant vigilance and quick reaction to situations can easily be transferred onto the researcher. Timing can also play a big part, like when staff pull you aside like just before this interview:

“We didn’t quite know whether to say this, because we know that you don’t want us to tell you things about the young people. But this one is dangerous. He raped a pedagogue at his previous institution, held her confined for hours. He is very strong, so don’t take any chances. We are right outside, maybe you should keep the door open?” Hearing this just before commencing the interview was very disturbing. It resulted in a discomfort to enter the enclosure of the small meeting room and struggles to engage in the interview in an empathetic way, intuitively wanting to stay disconnected from him. The interview was short and I feel ashamed of my feelings and unprofessionalism (Fieldnotes, Study 1)

However, many researchers experience mixed emotions about relations in the field, while we rarely speak openly about them, how they affect us and ultimately shape data and findings (Diamond, 2009; Lee-Treweek and Linkogle, 2000). Similarly, encountering physical struggles between staff and young people like restraints, lock-downs and violent behaviour can be difficult to witness, but in hindsight ‘the quieter forms of distress, disclosures of personal tragedies and numbly withdrawn behaviour can be at least as challenging’ (Schliehe, 2016: 76).

Negotiating positionality

Being a researcher in a closed unit for young people involves being in a liminal position between the staff and the young people. As in prisons, staff and youth are polarized groups, due to the extensive control that staff have over young people. Thus, a researcher’s position needs to be carved out in the institutional space, which enables some fluidity or even invisibility for the researcher (Lee, 2000; Rowe, 2014). Fielding (2001: 148) suggests that ethnographic ways of working involve ‘becoming part of the ‘natural setting’’, choosing a role which is not too distant to make the encounter superficial nor too close to ‘become part of the group’ entirely. It raises issues of marginality – ‘the idea that the ethnographer is in this social world, but not of it’ (Ibid: 151). Bridging this marginality is rather challenging in the secure care field even when trying to blend in as much as possible.

A researcher’s position is not something managed by the researcher alone but needs to be negotiated in the field and in different field relations. Age, gender and class are always relevant to consider in relation to researcher positionality; however, in secure institutions carrying keys or an alarm, and having access to staff areas contributes to position the researcher in proximity to staff. Being positioned too close to staff can be negotiated by being ‘atypical’ (Corsaro, 2005), by not administering rules or taking on staff responsibilities such as unlocking doors and telling the young people what to do. In our studies, ‘atypical’ positions meant for example, that we consciously did not comply with the strict rules about language (using an occasional swear word), or by letting an interview continue into lunch, thus failing to comply with the strict management of time. This humoured the young people and slightly annoyed the staff, but contributed to the management of a fluid position between staff and young people. Critical reflections on positioning are pivotal because our experience of the field is closely related to how we live our ‘part in the social drama of the field’ (Hastrup, 2004). Thus, it remains important to explore not only ‘who are they’ but also to carefully reflect on ‘who am I to them’ (Tedlock, 2000: 467) in a reflexive account of field dynamics.

Taking part in eating and drinking, playing games, watching TV, helping with homework or arts and crafts provides essential field insights and relations, but is also tricky in that it implies a constant negotiation of position through mundane acts like how and where to sit. Sitting in the right place could determine who would be willing to speak: sitting in the staff office for too long, for example, could mean a difficulty in recovering the position with the young people. Negotiating the social fabric in a unit could be determined by subtle every-day politics but also by age-related (teenage) behaviour:

Even who said ‘hello’ to me when I arrived determined my success with interviews or even just having a chat. Some days I was ignored and not given the time of day, while other days I was literally taken by the hand to be shown around, invited into cells (. . .) (Schliehe, 2016: 85)

Similarly, the researcher’s position in relation to security and safety can be ‘betwixt and between’, negotiated through staff’s concern and young people’s views. Not carrying keys means being a continuous burden to staff having to be escorted everywhere from the entrance to units or even to the loo. Equally, not carrying keys can help a great deal in order to engage with young people and unsettle the researcher’s ‘positioning’. On a personal level, spending long hours ‘locked up’, not knowing when staff would find the time to let you out, can teach the researcher in small ways about the effects of confinement – the often unspoken and mundane realities of being extremely dependent on others. With regards to security, the negotiation of positionality in the field is also continuously adapting and changing – continually renegotiated between staff, inmates, researcher and the fieldwork environment.

In closed environments like secure care units, the researcher faces a (continually changing) dilemma of dividing ‘appreciative’ understanding between the institution, the ‘locked-up’ and those who manage them. Some argue that ethnographers tend to side with the oppressed producing subjective and politicised accounts of penal cultures. Liebling (2001) however argues that it remains important to explore the dynamic interplay of staff and inmates and that it can be productive to include both sides in a single study. To balance these competing ‘appreciations’ is a continual challenge which can only be addressed in imperfect ways, often with ‘high emotional drainage along the way’ (Liebling, 2001: 480).

Fieldwork is an intersubjective endeavour, where the researcher affects the field and is affected by the field. In secure institutions, staff repeatedly mentioned how the young people behaved better due to researcher presence. ‘“See how the boys behave well at the table, and Tina is chatting and making fun”, staff commented to each other one late evening after the young people had been sent to bed’ (Fieldnotes, study 1). The young people also commented that the staff behaved differently. ‘As one of the boys said towards the end of a stay in a unit “Please stay longer, the staff are so nice, when you are here”’ (Fieldnotes, study 1). Thus, we shape the field as we enter it, playing the ‘part’ we are allotted or negotiate, and experiencing the field from this perspective.

The liminal position and the elusive nature of ethnographic data results in many situations of waiting for something to happen and feeling restless, as is evident in this extract of fieldnotes:

There is never any music or just some magazines to read or be entertained. It is so quiet and I get so restless. Waiting for something useful to happen. Only one of the young people came out after “quiet hour”. I don’t know if I should approach him. I feel more comfortable going to speak with the staff and going to the staff room to write. I am trying to avoid the boredom, resisting that inner voice saying, “you can just get up and leave”. (Fieldnotes, study 1)

Boredom and restlessness is not just a fieldworker’s experience, but a key dimension of young people’s experience of confinement (Bengtsson, 2012). Fieldwork can be hard, awkward, boring and discomforting. Sometimes interviews go wrong or awkward situations leave you feeling like a social and academic disaster. Researchers’ experience of being socially excluded or avoided, and feeling powerless is common in institutional settings, where access to space and relations is controlled by others (Scott et al., 2012). While the liminal position can be unpleasant, it provides valuable insights into the power relations and dynamics of the field (McQueeney and Lavelle, 2017).

Panoptic supervision and diagnostic surveillance

Institutions for the confinement of children and young people often apply expansive mechanisms for seeing, assessing and registering the behaviour and development of the young people. In both countries, secure care staff make daily registrations about the young people in a system that all staff can access. These registrations are used for the final assessments, which impact on the interventions set in place after secure placement. Thus, a practice of ‘diagnostic surveillance’ (McCorkel, 2003) shapes everyday relations between staff and young people. The young people know that staff have access to files and registrations, yet, because the young people do not have access to these files, they are left to speculate about what the staff know about them. To some degree, as a researcher positioned in proximity to staff, you inevitably become a part of the surveillance and disciplinary apparatus (Foucault, 1979), where professionals assess young people and share past and present knowledge about them. In our studies, we took diverging approaches to this and want to quickly highlight the ins and outs of both processes. In both cases, it is vital to continuously reflect on our position as researchers in relation to an environment that exercises heavy control and surveillance.

The Danish secure unit (study 1) offered access to the young people’s institutional ‘logs’. It was decided not to access the data for ethical reasons and concerns about positioning too close to staff. In order to establish rapport and trust with the young people, it was neccessary to distance ourselves from the practices of discipline and surveillance, which staff are engaged in, by repeatedly telling the young people, that there was no sharing of information with the staff and no access to their files. However, every time the young people saw the researcher sitting at the computer in the staff area, talking to staff after having interviewed them or knowing about participation in staff meetings, this confirmation of confidentiality was potentially jeopardized.

In the Scottish secure unit (study 2), understanding the working of the institution in and by itself was a main part of the research design and therefore access to files was a vital part of understanding the extent of the young people’s supervision and surveillance. Fieldnotes included what was written about young people in their files (given they and their social worker had granted prior consent) but it also involved extensive notes on procedures, policies, rules, timetables and daily changing messages, like ‘no hot drinks at all for any young people’ or ‘no clothing in room, remove cardigans’ (Schliehe, 2016: 133). It also involved understanding the self-assessments young people had to fill in and indicators that quantified/assessed ‘progress’ (Schliehe, 2016: 126). The data profile that was created for each young person resembled a ‘permanent bureaucratic “gaze” targeting the state of both body and mind in the guise of “care”, but in practice by documenting/assessing using strict “control” and encouraging “self-control”’ (Schliehe, 2016: 123). Understanding the extent and effect of this surveillance was of major importance for the analysis, and to some extent provided the young interviewees with a sense of relief that someone, who is not part of the institution, can document this measure of control (Fieldnotes, study 2). In both cases, however, this is not just an ethical dilemma related to researching ‘both sides’ (Liebling, 2001), but highly relevant to reflect on in terms of building trust and rapport and how failure to do so impacts on data and findings.

(Re)constructing the ethnographic path

Reflecting on positionality and power in the production of knowledge has gained wide attention in critical human geography and reflexive ethnography, acknowledging that our position as well as the ‘knowledge’ we produce is limited and partial (Rose, 1997: 307). Sitting at the intersection of academic knowledge and power (e.g. in that the researcher has the final power of interpretation), the relationship between the researcher and the researched should be open to debate. Rose (1997: 311) argues that, if this process is about making visible certain processes, it is also about a particular spatiality and situated ‘transparent reflexivity’. At the same time as describing these reflected power relations as a kind of ‘landscape’, Rose (1997: 311–313) acknowledges that the search for positionality is contested and intimately tied to our understanding of difference (see also Phillips and Earle, 2010). If we accept that doing research is a messy business, we have to work with the ‘worry that [our] work may exclude or erase’ and that we cannot easily control its effects (Ibid: 318). The negotiation of research relationships, including the similarities and differences between researcher and researched, requires particular consideration, not least as a way of enriching rather than debilitating reflective research (Bondi, 2003). Thus, mapping the situational context by identifying interacting social relations, power structures, discourses and materialities, contributes to bring forth complexities in the field and in the process of data and knowledge production (Clarke et al., 2016).

The issue of representation and the concern of ‘writing with’ rather than ‘writing about’ is taken up by Sultana (2007) when addressing fieldwork practice and concerns about marginalisation and differences in representation. A reflexive approach, she argues, does not only rest on fieldwork process, but also on content through writing, including being willing to ‘relive discomforting experiences, to look awkward and feel ill at ease’ (Sultana, 2007: 376). Feeling ill at ease and looking awkward are certainly not unknown feelings, when doing research in closed environments:

I often felt out of my depth and unknowledgeable, clearly not the powerful researcher ‘holding the strings’ and producing knowledge. Working inside institutions, however, particularly revealed my in-between status (not staff, not inmate) and contradictions in my positionality which I felt was constantly unstable, fluid and needed work. I went through innumerable instances of inner tension, discomfort, ambivalence and consciousness of the unsteadiness of my subjective position. (Schliehe, 2016: 84)

This unease is not unfamiliar in literature on ethnographic and wider qualitative work. Thus, a reflexive approach to producing knowledge requires being able to reconstruct ‘the ethnographic path’ (Sanjek, 1990). For this purpose, fieldnotes are valuable as detailed descriptions of places, relations, events and sensory experiences in the field or as analytical notes on how themes and findings emerge during the field work process. The recording of fieldnotes can vary widely and writing them ‘discreetly’ while in the field can be a challenge (Bengtsson, 2014: 734). In some settings, it may not be permitted to carry a notebook and pen, while in others you might find it possible to sit in the corner and scribble away. Safety measures can mean that recording devises are banned and every paperclip and pen needs to be counted. Often initial notes can be sketchy due to the nature of the environment, but rather than seeing this as a disadvantage, this material can highlight the many different things going on at the same time – the many different issues to which staff had to respond immediately (Bengtsson, 2014). Thus, the recording style has to fit around the research environment which can look quite different from ‘textbook’ ethnography.

By the end of the fieldwork period, the researcher is left with what may seem as huge amounts of loosely-connected data which can feel quite troubling and raise concerns about adequate representation. One aspect worth noting about observational research is the inclusion of a variety of data sources and to allow for emerging disparities:

Just chatting with young women provided me with accounts of their lively, boisterous and thoughtful characters underlining their agency and strength; whereas the file data had the opposite effect, creating a sense of extreme victimisation and suffering. I often struggled to bring the two ‘realities’ together. (Schliehe, 2016: 91).

Ambivalences, contradictions and incoherent narratives and observations are a valuable source of data for understanding the complex social world of confinement. Reflecting back on reflexive geographical practice (Al-Hindi and Kawabata, 2002) and the practicalities of negotiating sameness and difference (Valentine, 2002) in the field, can help to make sense of fieldwork encounters. Nonetheless, ‘subjectivities, identities, positionalities and situated knowledges’ (Cloke et al., 2004: 367) still remain obscure, complex and vague.

Reflecting on the ‘messy’ fieldwork practice is not unproblematic, but still necessary. Being both spatially and temporally fluid, feeling ‘out of sorts’ or rather powerless in the field can change into feeling uneasiness about the delicate balance between writing ‘too critically’ or ‘not critically enough’, and even confusing roles of research/activism/impact and personal engagement. In the case of secure care environments, dealing with troubled lives can produce a form of ‘guilty knowledge’. Witnessing distress means having to deal with it in the field but it also means revisiting it later when reviewing the data. The issue of fair representation can be extremely troubling when it comes to analysing and writing. One prime example of this is the relationship between young people and staff:

The way young people are dealt with when they cause trouble is a particularly contentious issue. Staff struggle with the violence directed at them, while young people cannot cope with the complete lack of control. (. . .) While staff explain that they feel ‘shaken’ by serious assaults, young people often describe how restraints make them feel powerless and angry. There are some exceptions to negative feelings about restraints, though, as some young people describe feeling ‘comfortable, it’s like “Yass! Somebody’s taking control.” (Gina).’ (Schliehe, 2016: 173).

Adequately representing the voices of both staff and young people is a challenge and returning to the question of ‘whose side we are on’ means acknowledging the ever-shifting contingencies and tensions that come with research, and research in closed environments in particular (Liebling, 2001: 483). Significant ethical questions and uncomfortable realities also arise when reflecting on the larger role of the researcher within the secure estate or when considering direct involvement in individual cases (Moore and Scraton, 2013).

Conclusion

Ethnography is a valuable source for gaining insight into the everyday lives of confined young people, how they make sense of confinement and treatment, and the complex institutional logics and practices of closed institutions. Confinement can have a detrimental impact on young people’s lives and future life chances, and the empirical insights coming from ethnographic studies can contribute to develop institutional practices that safeguard the mental and physical health of confined young people, provide nuanced understandings of the complex dynamics of care and control, and give voice to a silenced population positioned as both children and clients in a welfare state context.

Working with young people in confinement requires a range of ethical considerations that are not resolved by formal ethical guidelines such as informed consent, voluntary participation and anonymity. Good research practice includes finding answers to questions of respect for privacy (including control by an individual about their information), safeguarding the confidentiality of data, avoiding harm to subjects and researchers, and attending to the consequences of appearing in an academic publication (Bulmer, 2001; Crang and Cook, 2007: 26ff). We argue that a situated ethics (Hastrup, 2009) must apply in the production and representation of data in research with vulnerable and confined minors. This implies being sensitive to how participation in research can affect the interlocutors and being respectful of emic moral and personal boundaries throughout research production, analysis and representation.

While the dilemmas are rife, the inclusion of children and young people in research is important for understanding institutional logics and practices. Their voices are pivotal in the development of practice and in the prevention of doing harm. Often these voices are excluded when institutions adhere to formal ethical guidelines requiring parental consent (Myers, 2015). However, we argue that all confined minors’ voices are important to include and listen to, and it is the responsibility of the researcher to treat this data with ultimate care, precision and respect for the child’s vulnerable position. Thus, formal ethical guidelines reduce children’s participatory rights, while a situated ethics can be enabling, giving them a voice on issues of vital importance for their everyday lives and social mastery. We would argue that this research is ethically committed to provide insight into children’s lived experiences of being protected, educated or treated while deprived of their freedom.

Finally, we call for an ethics of representation that includes sensitivity to the vulnerability of confined young people and to the institutional logics and conditions for providing care, treatment and education for troubled and troubling young people. It may not be possible to include them directly in analytical reflections, but it is beneficiary to engage in a dialogue with institutions about preliminary findings and perspectives. Ethnographic knowledge is not an exact science and the object of research has no fixed ontology (Hastrup, 2004). By constructing the ‘ethnographic path’ (Sanjek, 1990) which produces insight and transparency of the research process, we can aim to ‘locate rightness in epistemological awareness rather than in ontological certainty’ (Hastrup, 2004: 466).