Clandestino: Ethical Issues in Irregular Migration Research

This paper is concerned with the ethical issues arising for researchers engaged in the study of irregular migration. Irregular migration is by definition an elusive phenomenon as it takes place in violation of the law and at the margins of society. This very nature of the phenomenon raises important issues of sensitivity of the question, vulnerability of the research subjects, and a series of ethical issues to be addressed when conducting fieldwork with irregular migrants, as well as at the stage of analysis of data, processing and disseminating the findings of the research.