Working with, not on unemployed people

Exploring the ethical dilemmas in situated co-research

Abstract

Co-research challenges conventional hierarchies between researchers and participants by seeking to produce knowledge with rather than on people. This article argues that co-research is not merely a participatory method but a situated epistemological practice in which power, knowledge, and ethics are continuously entangled and negotiated. Applying and further developing the distinction between working on and working with, the article explores how these different orientations shape knowledge production as well as it interrogates selected ethical dilemmas involved in the research practice. Drawing on the collaborative research project INDIGMA, where eighteen unemployed people participated as co-researchers over one year, unemployment is used as an empirical case to examine how a situated approach can be operationalized. The article analyses four ethical dilemmas relating to 1) recruitment, 2) how we investigate together, 3) what we attend to together and 4) how we disseminate the findings in a museum exhibition. The article argues that co-research does not eliminate power asymmetries but relocates them, requiring continuous reflection on how knowledge is produced collaboratively.