Since the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’, the lens of researchers has been increasingly focused upon asylum seekers and refugees around the world. Nevertheless, working in the field of refugee studies poses several methodological and data challenges. For example, there is a relative paucity of detailed statistical data on refugee stocks, which has led to researchers favouring the collection of personal, qualitative stories from refugee populations. Although this produces a substantial volume of rich narratives, these can be geographically and temporally specific. The collection of qualitative data is also expensive, time consuming, and labour intensive. Therefore, alongside the increasing institutional and mandatory demands to deposit qualitative material in open access repositories, there is growing recognition of the value of archiving refugee accounts. There are also significant challenges in archiving refugee interview transcripts to enhance broader knowledge. In this paper, we discuss the process of archiving refugee accounts to highlight the practical and ethical challenges of depositing sensitive material. Specifically, we draw upon the archival process that was required upon completion of two Research Council funded projects in the UK. This involved the preparation and depositing of interview transcripts from over 100 refugees. Key challenges that arose included the need to uphold interviewees’ confidentiality, the process of anonymisation, and determining the level of access to grant future users. Subsequent issues have involved responding to data requests, permitting selective release of data, and stipulating conditions for release. We then reflect more widely upon the tensions we encountered between procedural and micro-ethics, namely the difference between decisions based upon rules rather than judgement. In doing so, we consider key processes and highlight best practice to be adopted in the future archival of refugee stories.

自2015年“难民危机”以来，研究人员越来越关注全球的寻求庇护者和难民。然而，在难民研究领域的工作提出了一些方法和数据方面的挑战。例如，有关难民库存的详细统计数据相对较少，这导致研究人员倾向于从难民人口中收集个人的定性故事。尽管这会产生大量丰富的叙述，但这些叙述可能在地理和时间上都是特定的。定性数据的收集也是昂贵，费时且劳动密集的。因此，除了越来越多的机构和强制性要求在开放存取存储库中存储定性资料外，人们越来越意识到存档难民账户的价值。在存档难民采访记录以增强广泛知识方面也存在重大挑战。在本文中，我们讨论了对难民账户进行归档的过程，以强调存放敏感材料的实际和道德挑战。具体而言，我们借鉴了英国完成两个研究委员会资助的项目所需的存档过程。这涉及准备和存放来自100多名难民的采访笔录。随之而来的主要挑战包括需要维护受访者的机密性，匿名化过程以及确定授予未来用户的访问级别。随后的问题涉及响应数据请求，允许选择性释放数据以及规定释放条件。然后，我们将更广泛地反思程序伦理和微观伦理之间的紧张关系，即基于规则而不是基于判决的决策之间的差异。在此过程中，我们考虑了关键流程，并强调了在未来的难民故事档案中将采用的最佳实践。