"May God Bless the Hand that Works": Stories from Displaced Syrian Farmworkers during Covid-19

Horizontal partnerships
& valuing Syrian expertise
In this project, we avoid extractive
forms of research that use academics
from affected communities and study
countries as “research assistants”,
frequently exploiting their labour,
while downplaying their contributions.
All team members in this project were
involved in all stages of the research
process and are credited as co-authors
on all publications. We firmly believe
that Syrian academic expertise is an
overlooked resource in designing
culturally sensitive and sustainable
humanitarian responses to Syrian
displacement. By including Syrian
agricultural scientists in this study,
we help ensure that our findings are
relevant to improving labour
conditions for Syrian agricultural
workers during the pandemic, and to
rebuilding Syrian agriculture in
the long-term.
RETHINKING CONSENT
Social science handbooks urge
researchers to seek informed
consent from their
participants in writing.
However, the conditions of
remote research, and the
limited literacy of many
Syrian participants, make
it impossible to ask them
to sign written consent forms.
To ensure that all
participants freely agreed to
take part in interviews and
data collection, and were
fully aware of how their data
would be used, we devised a
staggered consent protocol:
several days before the
interview, all participants
received participant
information sheets and consent
forms in Arabic via WhatsApp.
We also sent them an Arabic
voicemail that explained
their role in the project
in lay terms. At the
beginning of each interview,
the interviewer explained the
consent process again. In this
way, seeking consent became a
conversation, rather than a
one-way interaction, with
participants.