The price of impact: reflections on academic outreach amid the ‘refugee crisis’

Abstract

Ever since the ‘refugee crisis’ hit European shores, policymakers, journalists and politicians have sought out knowledge on ‘unwanted’ migration and ‘what to do about it’. As influential people knock on academic doors – at times seeking out anthropologists, such as this author – how should we engage, and under what conditions? The seemingly endless rounds of panel debates, conferences and other policy-focused outreach pull academics towards ‘high-level’ engagements, while short-term or politically driven ‘emergency’ funding pushes us towards narrowly defined research objectives. Meanwhile, the ‘impact’ agenda – most developed in the UK, yet increasingly encroaching on other academic ecosystems – is shifting institutional incentives towards specific forms of scholarly activity. This article builds an ‘auto-ethnographic’ account of my own experiences of crossing the borders of anthropology at a time of perceived migratory crisis and increasing impact calls. Delineating the pitfalls and risks of ‘capture’ by policy agendas, the article argues for active navigation of the borderlands between academia and its various publics. For anthropologists to wrest some control, I suggest, we must be willing to take risks and get our hands dirty; strategically deploy our ethnographic sensibilities to the full; and stand ready to apply our analytical skills to powerful systems – including, not least, to the impact agenda itself.