This article is based on a sociological research, combining qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations, undertaken in “radicalization assessment units” in French prisons. We will first summarize the context of negotiating the research agreement, amidst a climate of panic on the part of political authorities who feared terrorist attacks. Then we will describe empirically the way the researchers were particular objects of surveillance on the prison grounds, in a way that was different, in its nature and unusual intensity, than the usual surveillance of other people who come into the prison. Lastly, we will show that this surveillance spreads beyond the prison walls, for example, the researchers were tailed when they left the prison. A reflexive work would explore all the ambiguities of this surveillance—from protection to control—and at the same time consider this surveillance of the researchers not as a contextual element of the study, but an object of the analysis in its own right. In doing so, this case study more broadly examines the methodological challenges of ethnography undertaken in difficult fieldwork together with a grounded theory capable of integrating into the analysis the vicissitudes and uncertainties of the research process itself.

本文基于在法国监狱的“激进化评估单位”进行的社会学研究，结合了定性访谈和民族志观察。我们将首先总结在害怕恐怖袭击的政治当局的恐慌气氛中谈判研究协议的背景。然后，我们将凭经验描述研究人员在监狱中成为特定监视对象的方式，其性质和强度与通常对进入监狱的其他人的监视不同。最后，我们将展示这种监视扩展到监狱墙外，例如，研究人员离开监狱时被尾随。一项反思性工作将探索这种监视的所有歧义——从保护到控制——同时将这种对研究人员的监视不是研究的背景元素，而是本身的分析对象。在这样做的过程中，本案例研究更广泛地考察了在困难的田野工作中进行的民族志的方法论挑战，以及能够将研究过程本身的变迁和不确定性整合到分析中的扎根理论。