Why Should Social Workers "Study up": Accessing Resistant Institutions

Background/Rationale:

“Studying up” is an approach borrowed from anthropology, which asks the researcher to critically examine where they situate their research, and why they study who they study (Nader 1972). Studying up focuses research on contexts where power and responsibility shape attitudes, controlling high stakes institutional structures which exercise direct or indirect power of life or death over others. Scrutinizing the function of systems of power has significant implications for change that studying the people impacted by policy cannot always have. This presentation is part of a larger ethnographic study of immigration courts as sites of power and exclusion, where decision-makers shape the legal and social wellbeing outcomes of thousands of people. This presentation focuses on the methodology of studying up and some of the difficulties of accessing research participants who are part of institutions that are reluctant to allow scrutiny or critique.

Methods:
This study was a longitudinal qualitative critical ethnographic study into the culture of regional immigration courts, to delineate how the courts function in adjudicating asylum seekers’ cases. It sought to access high-level decision makers (n=73) in "elite" institutional roles. Participants included judges, ICE trial attorneys, defense attorneys, expert witnesses, court staff, and legal advocates. Semi-structured interviews and 8 months of site observation were completed in both detention center and urban center courts. Data was transcribed with Otter.ai, coded and thematically analyzed in MAXQDA.

Results:

The studying up approach attuned to how individuals worked within their roles; how they saw themselves as allied with the court culture or resistant to it, and how power is protected, held and used to reinforce the exclusionary function of the court and the court’s role in immigration enforcement. Practical findings centered ethical components of the research: considerations for participant's professional risk for involvement in the research, confidentiality conversations, and limits of access when the US federal government’s departments disallow employees to talk with researchers. As well, reluctance of high-level participants to criticize courts counterbalanced with self-perceived powerlessness. Findings centered the importance of relationship building and working with key gate-keepers for access, navigating concerns of researcher objectivity, and seeking to interact with individuals as persons, while also situating them in their institutional roles and holding accountability for policy enforcement that undermines human rights and wellbeing of asylum seekers.

Conclusions:
Although it is difficult to access individuals in secretive and resistant institutions, it is incredibly valuable to do so, both to increase public accountability for the outcomes of decisions made in those spaces, and to see where social work and advocacy can intervene to prevent or reduce harmful outcomes. Engaging with ethical complexities of studying up helps assess the potential for change, for institutional buy-in for reform, and creates a foundation for developing interventions that respond to entrenched institutional culture and hierarchy. Only by understanding the priorities, external factors, and commitments of an institution can social work see where it can expand its direct practice push for individual and institutional accountability.

Nader, L. (1972). Up the Anthropologist: Perspectives Gained from Studying Up. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED065375