Material guides in ethically challenging fields Following deportation files

Research objective: This chapter will help social science researchers who use ethnographic methods in their practice-oriented research. Practice-oriented researchis understood here as research where a research population does not form the central focus, instead the focus is on a practice that is mobilized by various actors who become part of the research given their relatedness in this practice.

Research puzzle: This chapter focusses on ethical challenges that arise in such practice-oriented fieldwork due to the tendency in ethical guidelines to focus on research populations as a singular actor. This makes “textbook ethics” inca-pable of addressing differences between ethical needs of the various actors involved in a practice. This difference is especially the case if a researcher man-ages to get behind closed doors during fieldwork and such challenges were unforeseen during research design. This chapter therefore addresses the gap between pre-fieldwork ethics, or “ethics in the books”, and ethical dilemmas that practice-oriented ethnographers encounter in the field.