Any port in a storm: fieldwork difficulties in dangerous and crisis-ridden settings

Abstract

This article draws on the experience of conducting fieldwork in Russia, as part of an international comparative examination of health and safety regulatory enforcement in the shipping industry. We discuss the difficulties faced by fieldworkers in ensuring personal safety and maintaining rapport with research respondents in conditions characterized by danger and crisis; a situation made worse by the murder of one of our key gatekeepers. We develop a provisional conceptual framework which draws distinctions between the `frontier'-like nature of settings associated with some research areas, the challenges posed by researching institutions faced by various kinds of crisis, and the sensitivity of the specific research topic in question. We argue that a combination of these dimensions produce particular social spaces, which we term `risksaturated', which are especially corrosive of relations with respondents, and which may pose very real physical threats to field workers.