Beyond IRB Approval: The Realities of Collaborative Public Scholarship with Migrant Mutual Aid
Payal Fadnis is a second-year graduate student in the Master’s of Public Anthropology program and an intern at the Immigration Lab at American University. She is currently researching migrant mutual aid for her master’s Significant Research Project.
Affiliation: Department of Anthropology, American University
Keywords
IRB; accountability; collaborative public scholarship; research ethics; graduate research
Methodological Takeaway:
“The requirements laid out by the IRB cannot fully address the complexities of conducting collaborative research… Collaborative public scholarship involves deep engagement with communities that have their own ethical frameworks… Most of this negotiation involves maintaining a balance of being receptive to the collective’s input while also continuing to conduct my research. Collaborative public scholarship is fundamentally about having honest conversations that shape your research in ways that only forming relationships and connections with communities can.”
When my master’s research proposal was accepted by the Institutional Review Board (IRB)[1], I was ecstatic—finally, validation that my research design was sound. It was my first time conducting a research project of this scale, and I had written and rewritten my proposal several times to fulfill the IRB’s questions.
My research project initially sought to examine how institutional failures in the current political moment contributed to the rise of mutual aid networks and explore how migrant mutual aid groups not only provide resources to migrant communities but also how they move beyond to foster a collective sense of empowerment. With increases in anti-migration legislation, such as revocations of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and deportations to third countries, as well as active attacks by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), many migrant communities live in fear. I wanted my study to examine how marginalized communities protect each other, especially when institutional support is lacking, and how solidarity-focused networks contribute to resistance movements.
Due to the precarious nature of my project, the IRB was thorough, asking how I would maintain digital safety, ensure the privacy and confidentiality of my participants, and carry out each aspect of my project, from interviews to participant observations. The IRB had also asked me to determine the criteria for choosing interviewees for the project. I was worried that in the fraught political environment, people working in mutual aid could be targeted. As federal troops were being sent to D.C. and migrants were being detained without due process by ICE, my biggest fear was that my research might put someone in danger. To reconcile this, I decided to only interview U.S. citizens, thinking that was the best way to protect the collective. I adjusted words and clarified my thoughts with each iteration of my submission. Every time I submitted a revision, I crossed my fingers and hoped that this time it would be accepted.
As far as I knew, IRB approval meant that my proposal met ethical standards, and I could begin my research in full force. Over the summer, I had already reached out to a migrant mutual aid group called the Montgomery County Immigrant Rights Collective (MoCo IRC) based in Montgomery County, Maryland that served primarily Latine communities. I discussed my research with them and emphasized that I intended the research to have the community’s best interests at heart. The organizers were incredibly welcoming, and soon I had set up some interviews in early October.
As the summer came to a close, my IRB application had still not been approved, and my stress began to intensify. What would I do if I didn’t get IRB approval? How would I complete my research? Would I be able to graduate? When I finally received the email of approval, my reaction was one of great excitement but also great relief.
A few days before my first interview, I received a message from one of the organizers. They expressed concerns over the informed consent form that I had sent to the collective. Some organizers and members of the group are not U.S. citizens, and they play an integral role in the creation and operation of the mutual aid collective. By excluding their perspectives from the interviews and, by extension, the research, I was omitting the very people who made the collective's work possible. The organizer explained they didn't feel comfortable sharing their experiences as part of the collective if non-U.S. citizens could not share theirs. The criteria that had been necessary for the IRB had not been accepted by the community that I was working with.
My positionality shaped these dynamics in complex ways. As a second-generation Indian migrant and an anthropological researcher, I occupied an interesting position in relation to the collective. I had a personal stake in the efforts of the collective, as I knew that the administration’s targeting of Latine communities would only expand to include other migrant groups as well. With family and friends on green cards and H1B visas, I worried that they would become targets for the administration’s ire. Further, I was consumed with the fear that my research was exploitative, as I was not part of those primarily Latine communities or from Montgomery County. Throughout my academic career, I’ve read ethnographies by anthropologists that follow colonial methods of taking information from communities they didn’t belong to without considering the effects on the community. I didn’t want to be the kind of researcher who absconded with information from the collective while its members actively faced danger from ICE. My decision to restrict interviews to U.S. citizens stemmed from the culmination of these two anxieties. When the organizer pushed back, it forced me to confront my assumptions about the collective and their work, as well as the agency of non-U.S. citizens in general. In trying to avoid falling into the pitfalls of hierarchical research, I had ended up deciding for the collective without their input.
I had entered a strange crossroads in my research. Did I follow the steps of my IRB-approved project, or did I change it according to community input? I asked myself, what would it look like to conduct a research project focused more on the process instead of the outcome? What would it mean to strengthen my relationship with MoCo IRC and the community?
I turned to why I had decided on this topic in the first place. In the current atmosphere of terror and attacks on migrant communities, I felt compelled to do something to protect and help the community where I live, using my abilities as a researcher. Ultimately, it was a question about accountability, about who the research was for. And I realized that to genuinely impact affected communities, I needed to follow the lead of those already on the ground.
After a panicked call to my advisor, I asked her what steps to take to ensure that I followed the community’s guidance while also adhering to IRB requirements. Since it was unlikely that the IRB would respond before my first interview, my advisor suggested preemptively crossing out the citizenship section on the informed consent form and initialing next to it to indicate the change. Additionally, we decided to submit a formal IRB amendment detailing the collective’s requests to remove the citizenship from the consent form and emphasizing that the research would not be able to continue without this amendment.
Since that moment, my methodology, the way I approach my research, shifted. And it continues to shift and change as my involvement with MoCo IRC grows. Every time I attend an event, I send my notes to the organizers to ensure I don't include sensitive information and to request any insights that I may have missed. Every time I interview someone from the collective, I send them the transcript and ask them to review the information. Even while writing this essay, I have kept the collective updated on my drafts and revisions.
On one occasion, I was asked to remove an entire section of an interview transcript, as it contained sensitive information about a member. At first, I was hesitant to remove it as the narrative it told served the purpose of my research, especially as it detailed how people in the community challenged ICE’s presence. Even though I used pseudonyms and avoided identifying information, I determined it was best to remove that section for two main reasons. First, I decided to rely on the expertise and wishes of the organizers, as they have more experience in these spaces than I do and a better understanding of the dangers facing their members. Second, I wanted to honor the relationship that I had built with the organizers and the collective. They had welcomed me and my research into the collective and provided me with so many opportunities without hesitation. Maintaining this relationship was more important than one section in an interview transcript.
In that same vein, although I am attuned to the wishes of MoCo IRC, the collective is also willing to listen to my ideas. I proposed using my research to create something to help the collective, like a community archive or a fundraising event, and the organizers put me in contact with people who could potentially bring those ideas to fruition. Together, we are attempting to find an avenue through which my research can be directly beneficial to the migrant community in Montgomery County. In a Zoom call, I brainstormed ideas for what this project would look like along with an organizer. They expressed some hesitation in producing a community archive that focused on impacted families, but suggested that focusing on documenting the collective’s journey could be beneficial to others interested in mutual aid. I then proposed potentially creating a facilitation guide based on the trainings and structures of the collective. Although we have not landed on a project yet, this back-and-forth communication facilitates not only a sharing of information but also reveals possibilities for what public scholarship can do. My focus on the outcome of my project has been redirected to collaborate with the collective and explore how to conduct my research in the service of the migrant community.
The requirements laid out by the IRB cannot fully address the complexities of conducting collaborative research. IRB guidelines function as ethical standardization but also serve to protect institutions from legal liability. Once a project receives IRB approval, it becomes legitimized in academic eyes, yet the IRB "operates as an instrument of neoliberal consciousness biased heavily towards the positivist, the quantifiable, and a definition of evidence that is startlingly narrow" (Chin 2013: 202). Under this framework, whether a project constitutes "research" matters more to the IRB than nuanced ethical standards. Where the IRB provides a generic checklist, ground-level work proves far more complicated and context-specific. Even after IRB approval, community review processes continue.
Collaborative public scholarship involves deep engagement with communities that have their own ethical frameworks. In my case, the migrant mutual aid collective’s focus on providing aid and protection to migrants in a time of great turmoil and institutional attacks informs their standard of ethics. What had been considered acceptable, or even necessary, by IRB standards had been rejected by the collective. For the collective, sharing the stories of organizers and members, regardless of immigration status, was more important to their work than relying only on perspectives deemed “safe.” It made me realize that for some groups engaged in activism and material aid, visibility itself is a form of protection, not just for organizers but for the community as well.
As Dana-Ain Davis (2006) states, “the process is as important as the outcome” when conducting engaged research (229). Committing to a participatory and collaborative methodology is a “reflection of accountability” (Davis 2006, 236). Holding myself accountable to MoCo IRC means that the process of conducting my research adheres to the expectations and ethical standards of the group. Understanding these nuances comes only from engaging in intentional dialogue with the collective, where we can share ideas and build arrangements that benefit both the community and my own research.
The review process that I undergo as a member of MoCo IRC and as a researcher is in constant motion. Public scholarship is deeply relational—building connections and maintaining them through conversation and compromise. There is no predetermined endpoint or linear path. Instead, it requires ongoing negotiation and renegotiation of praxis based on reciprocal relationships.
This approach transformed my research from examining institutional failures to focusing on the collective and how they specifically understand mutual aid as a mode of empowerment. My research questions shifted toward how the collective enacts mutual aid as a means of resistance and empowerment to dismantle hierarchical and oppressive systems. Speaking with the collective and attending events revealed that the collective does not envision the current political moment as something new, but rather a symptom of structural oppression. As such, the collective emphasizes building new systems based on reciprocity and connection while breaking down those oppressive systems. They do this by centering the most impacted—migrants that have a family member detained by ICE or those who are most at risk of ICE detention—who direct the trainings and responses of the collective. The community archive I proposed is still taking shape, with discussions considering the safety of families and collective members, as well as the form it may take, such as an art installation, publication, or zine, among other ideas. I am still deeply involved with the collective and hope to take on a more impactful role in the coming year, using my anthropological sensibilities to assist their work.
For graduate students and early-career researchers navigating similar tensions, several lessons emerged from my experience. First, although the IRB provides general ethical guidelines, in practice, ethical understandings come from the community. The context of their situation and their specific goals influence what they deem to be ethically important. These understandings cannot occur at a distance but emerge from conversations with people on the ground. Second, being adaptable is one of the most important, if not the most important, traits in conducting public scholarship. You have to be able to reconcile, to some extent, your own intentions with those of other participants. Although you may have a vision for your research, others may not share the same one. Being able to navigate these differences and compromise can lead to a nuanced and insightful project. Third, relying on institutional supports can provide some respite and direction in the academic realm of research, but the realities of conducting research with communities involve learning from them. Finally, public scholarship involves focusing on how you conduct research more than what you produce at the end. Your project is bound to change, and you should expect it to do so. This means that even for a project like mine, where I have to produce a written product, I have to accept that there are some things that I may not be able to cover or truly capture.
Some tension remains concerning how much of the collective’s work to divulge and in what capacity. Most of this negotiation involves maintaining a balance of being receptive to the collective’s input while also continuing to conduct my research. Collaborative public scholarship is fundamentally about having honest conversations that shape your research in ways that only forming relationships and connections with communities can. The question is not about locating an “objective” outcome but rather exploring the process of collaboration. What does research look like when ethical standards are constantly being reevaluated and reconstructed? What does it mean to understand ethics as a process determined by the negotiation between various actors?
[1] The Institutional Review Board (IRB) reviews research proposals on human subjects to ensure they follow ethical regulations in the United States. Most universities and research institutions require compliance with federal regulations as well as home policies (American Anthropological Association n.d.).
References
American Anthropological Association. N.d. “Institutional Review Boards and Anthropology.”
Accessed December 11, 2025. https://americananthro.org/institutional-review-boards-and-anthropology/.
Chin, Elizabeth. 2013. “The Neoliberal Institutional Review Board, or Why Just Fixing the Rules
Won’t Help Feminist (Activist) Ethnographers.” In Feminist Activist Anthropology: Counterpoints to Neoliberalism in North America, edited by Christa Craven and Dana-Ain Davis. Lexington Books.
Davis, Dana-Ain. 2006. “Knowledge in the Service of a Vision: Politically Engaged
Anthropology.” In Engaged Observer: Anthropology, Advocacy, and Activism, edited by Asale Angel-Ajani and Victoria Sanford. Rutgers University Press.