On the complexities of collaborative ethnography : ethical and methodological insights from the HOMInG project

Big collaborative projects are today common in social sciences. These projects imply the collection of large data stored and shared by collaborators and with funders. As increasingly discussed by anthropologists, sociologists and other social scientists, however, large collaborative projects, especially when they are based on ethnographic research, entail specific ethical challenges. While funders increasingly expect scholars to share their data to insure transparency and accountability, the nature of qualitative data collected on the basis of trust relationship between researcher and respondent makes sharing and archiving a problematic issue. This article aims to address these issues by drawing from the experiences of the 7 researchers involved in the HOMING project, an investigation of the nexus between home and migration. In particular, we discuss three issues which concern ethnographic and qualitative collective research projects: data collection (the role of serendipity and trust in doing ethnography and conducting in-depth interviews); data sharing (ownership and authorship, informed consent, usage of data of others); and data storage (waste or accumulation). First we argue for the importance to insure that ethnographic projects can count on a significant flexibility to be able to accommodate ethnographic serendipity and the need to expand or narrow down fieldwork boundaries contextually to the relationships and circumstances of the specific field. Second, we elaborate on the ethical difficulties we face in sharing our data among our team and reflect on the implications of sharing. Finally, we expand on the positive and negative implications of data storage and what that means in particular for migration research