Witnessing Without Intervention: Ethical and Methodological Dilemmas in Research with Refugee Children in Reception Centers
Witnessing Without Intervention: Ethical and Methodological Dilemmas in Research with Refugee Children in Reception Centers

Summary/Abstract: "This article reflects on the ethical dilemmas that emerged during qualitative fieldwork conducted with children residing in the reception centre for foreigners in Czerwony Bór, Poland. While the research was designed to explore the educational and everyday experiences of children with refugee backgrounds, the fieldwork also placed the researcher in a morally complex position: that of a witness to experiences of uncertainty, loss, and emotional distress. In such encounters, the role of the researcher becomes ethically ambiguous. On the one hand, academic research requires analytical distance, methodological discipline, and careful representation of participants’ experiences. On the other hand, encounters with children’s vulnerability often evoke a strong moral impulse to respond, support, or intervene.This tension between methodological distance and ethical responsibility forms the central concern of this article. Drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, the reflexive sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, and the anthropological reflections on suffering developed by Arthur Kleinman, the paper examines the position of the researcher as simultaneously observer, witness, and moral subject. In doing so, it explores how theoretical frameworks function both as necessary tools for analysis and as mechanisms that may distance lived experiences from their immediacy."

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