Does a voucher make things easier? Rethinking participant compensation in qualitative research

No registration is required for this workshop.

The workshop examines participant compensation as a key methodological and ethical issue in qualitative research. While remuneration (e.g. cash, vouchers, gifts) is often treated as a practical recruitment tool, it also raises critical questions about power, reciprocity, and the conditions of knowledge production, especially in research with marginalised groups. Drawing on the I-CLAIM project on irregularised migrant households in Europe, the workshop explores how compensation shapes researcher-participant relationships and the narratives produced as data. Rather than treating it as external to research, we will approach compensation as constitutive of the research process itself. 

The session combines short inputs with small-group discussions and case-based exercises. Participants will reflect on their own practices, institutional constraints, and disciplinary norms.The workshop aims to foster a more critical, reflexive, and ethically grounded approach to participant compensation across diverse research contexts.

Biography

Giulia Garofalo Geymonat is Assistant Professor in Sociology at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice working in the field of gender and sexuality. Her main areas of expertise are intimate and reproductive labour, migration/trafficking and disabilities. She has extensive experience of qualitative and participatory research with social movements and stigmatised identities in relation to sexuality, sex work and domestic work.

Organiser

Maja Sager, Senior Lecturer in Gender studies at the Department of Sociology

Welcome on May 18^th!

Arranged by Lund Social Science Methods Centre