Researchers as brokers: Reflections from a study of migrant physicians in Chile

Highlights

•	Researchers’ multiple roles are key in drawing boundaries of social responsibility.
•	The researcher may become a cultural broker to attend needs of migrant populations.
•	Research ethics should be viewed as a continual and contextual process.
•	Boundaries of social responsibility need to be constantly re-drawn and negotiated.

Abstract

The perils that migrants face when arriving in a new country are many. To deal with the host community requirements, they often turn to their country people, those who arrived before them, and they build networks that help them manage their new needs and situations. At times, however, when involved in a research project, they also turn to the researcher who can provide help in ways nobody else can. In this paper, I discuss my experience of investigating intercultural communication with migrant physicians in Chile and how, very often, the gatekeepers of my study would require help on matters that could not be addressed through the aims and outcomes of my research. Putting forward the main principles of reciprocity in social research as the basis for the discussion, this article reflects on the boundaries of researchers’ social responsibilities and the limits of reciprocity within the qualitative research, in particular, when conducting studies with migrant communities.

Keywords:

• Gatekeepers
• Intercultural communication
• Social responsibility
• Migrants
• Physicians
• Reciprocity

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to thank all participants in the study for their time and valuable contribution.

Notes

1 http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/oecd-health-statistics-2014-frequently-requested-data.htm.

2 http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/chile-law-on-transparency-and-access-to-public-information-adopted/.

3 Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico Tecnológico (Fondecyt, National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development) of the Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (Conicyt—National Commission of Scientific and Technological Research).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mariana Lazzaro-Salazar

Mariana Lazzaro-Salazar is a research associate of the Language in the Workplace Project, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She is also a Research Fellow, a member of the Ethics Committee and a lecturer in the PhD Programme of Education at Universidad Católica del Maule, Chile. Mariana’s research has focused on healthcare communication, including nurses’ construction of professional identity, an evaluation of doctors’ feedback and the co-construction of narratives in the doctor–patient interview. Her current research project focuses on intercultural communication among physicians in the public healthcare system of Chile. Some of her recent work includes the following articles: “Ingroups and outgroups in complaints: Exploring politic behaviour in nurses’ discourse”, “Psychosocial risks and professional integration of foreign physicians: A study on conflict management in central Chile” and “Communicative conflict and migrant doctors in public healthcare institutions: Towards a healthy work environment”, and book chapters such as “Ethnographic methods” for the De Gruyter Handbook of Methods in Pragmatics, and “Social-constructionism” for The Routledge Handbook of Language in the Workplace.