Walls, Cracks and Change: The Challenges and Opportunities of Critically Engaged Research Within Current Academic and Refugee Research Structures

Maria Charlotte Rast

doi:10.1177/08969205211034227

Abstract

Many consider academic research an important means to address societal inequality of marginalized groups, such as refugees. However, transformative research arguably requires critically engaged practices that consider and transform dominant exclusive structures permeating both society and knowledge production. This paper discusses challenges and opportunities of such research practices, especially given power and (neoliberal) politics around knowledge production within Dutch academic and refugee research structures. Based on 14 researchers’ narratives, the results reveal how critically engaged refugee research is challenged by its marginalized position, academic pressures and culture as well as the recently emerged ‘refugee research business’. However, the paper also uncovers various ways in which researchers manoeuvre within challenging and facilitating structures by operating outside or in the margins of academic structures, making use of facilitating spaces and strategically employing dominant discourses. Finally, researchers arguably transform academic structures by challenging dominant research paradigms and transforming the institution of academics itself.

Highlights

As a solution to academia’s crisis of relevancy, legitimacy and public confidence in the past decades, various scholars have been advocating for more critical, public and engaged scholarly practices, among others in the social sciences. Mills (1959) advocated for sociology to live up to its Critical Sociology 00(0)promise by stimulating ‘sociological imagination’, a capacity that helps people better understand what is going on in the world by connecting their ‘personal troubles’ to ‘public issues’
This paper has shown that critically engaged researchers (CERs) feel marginalized within mainstream refugee research structures in the Netherlands
It indicates that traces of the historically strong research–policy nexus with its preference for instrumental, data-driven and policy-serving research (Essed and Nimako, 2006; Entzinger and Scholten, 2015) are still present in today’s Dutch minority and refugee research context

Summary

Introduction

Promise by stimulating ‘sociological imagination’, a capacity that helps people better understand what is going on in the world by connecting their ‘personal troubles’ to ‘public issues’. Recent years have seen an increased interest in relevant academic knowledge that can help solve societal problems (Bourke, 2013; Kajner, 2013) This certainly opens up spaces for community collaborations, including engaged practices that may disrupt hierarchies and traditional approaches to knowledge production (Edwards and Brannelly, 2017). It is not surprising that collaborative, creative, activist, inter-institutional and intercultural research practices are considered especially promising spaces for transformations (De los Reyes and Lundström, 2020; Meekosha et al, 2013) These approaches can constitute ‘cracks’ that allow scholars to open up and explore alternative research spaces, defy and breach boundaries and even transform academic structures despite their own marginalized position within current academic structures (De los Reyes and Lundström, 2020). Operating in the margins comes with limitations regarding time and resources, as well as the risk of exclusion from rewards, privileges and belonging within academia (De los Reyes and Lundström, 2020)

Methodology

Discussion and Conclusion