Let’s talk about emotional labor—some reflections from the field

ABSTRACT

While methodologies on fieldwork are widely discussed in geography, this paper illuminates the challenges of emotional labor that are associated with ethnographic fieldwork. For many geographers, fieldwork is an exciting and crucial part of their job, but for some, especially junior faculty and graduate students, there are many undiscussed and unanticipated difficulties associated with this work. We focus on three challenges that in particular require emotional labor: always being on alert, attachment to places, and the relationships to research participants. Building on personal stories from their research in US cities, both authors reveal the hardships and realities of ethnographic fieldwork. Yet, in order to open up more critical dialogue and honest conversations about the emotional toll of research, this paper demands an institutionalization of support services, particularly for Early Career Researchers (ECRs), so fieldwork can continue to be a crucial and rewarding part of our discipline.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional labor
• fieldwork
• ethnography
• early career researchers (ECRs)
• attachment

Introduction

Field research is at the heart of geographic empirical work. We go to and into the places we study, observe, participate, and encounter. Going into the field, forming relationships, traveling to new places, and the possibility of our work resonating with audiences is an exciting and rewarding part of our careers as researchers. And it is these experiences in the field which are foundational to contemporary geographic thought. The way we think about space and time in human geography is based on how some of the founding mothers and fathers of modern geography have experienced the places around them; think only of Doreen Massey’s vivid descriptions of Northwest London, Jane Jacob’s street ballet on the sidewalks of New York City’s Greenwich Village, or David Harvey’s explorations of Baltimore. For many of us, fieldwork is also what motivated us to major in geography and to become professional geographers. We wanted to be the person who explores the mundane geographies of everyday life in new and exciting ways. So, when we talk about fieldwork, we mostly discuss the excitement and the connections with places and people that shape our work.

The literature on fieldwork discusses ethical as well as procedural quandaries of research (e.g. Emerson, 2011; Lofland et al., 2005; Murphy & Dingwall, 2011; Weiss, 1994) and it stresses its many benefits: the skills one develops in the field, the active learning processes, and the critical re-examination of theory (e.g. Boyle et al., 2007; Higgitt, 1996; Hope, 2009; McSweeney & WinklerPrins, 2021). Yet, the literature often fails to acknowledge that the same exciting benefits of fieldwork also take an emotional toll on the researcher. Especially feminist and critical geographers lament this gap and try to raise awareness. Indeed, recent conversations on emotional labor address some of the hardships researchers face in the field as well as how those emotions influence the conclusions we draw (e.g. Bonet & McWilliams, 2018; Copes, 2018; DeLuca & Maddox, 2016; McGarrol, 2017; McQueeney & Lavell, 2017).

We intend for this paper to be a starting point for more honest discussions about the emotional labor researchers are doing in the field. We define emotional labor as the management of feelings – often conflicting feelings – during fieldwork. Managing emotions is part of the job and a necessary requirement to fulfill one’s role as a researcher working in the field. While everyone experiences fieldwork differently, also depending on research design and personal biography, these experiences can result in similar conflicting feelings – especially for early career researchers (ECRs) who want to prove themselves in the field. During those first years in academia, fieldwork is still a critical part of one’s research and writing, while at later stages managerial and editorial tasks might become the focus of one’s academic work. Additionally, as Alderson et al. (2023) as well as Wöhrer’s (2014) introduction to an entire special issue on the topic highlight, there are many challenges that are notable about the experience of early career researchers. ECRs are not only faced with the pressure to produce innovative research and publish extensively in a competitive job market, they also battle with the constant worries over short-term contracts, lack of financial stability, as well as expectations to move frequently, often at a time when major decisions with life partners and family planning crop up. Those challenges compound the emotional stress that can be felt during fieldwork.

More so, this paper is informed by the personal experiences of the two authors who identify as ECRs. As we write this paper, we are both still on the way towards earning our doctorates, which certainly adds to some of the insecurities experienced in the field as well as the pressure to perform well. This paper was born when we as peers worked through the messiness of being in the field – but felt increasingly frustrated that these conversations were not happening at our institutions. It has been an empowering experience to share and write about our complex feelings together, yet we believe that, building on Harrowell et al. (2018), we need to move beyond support among peers and accommodate these conversations into our departmental settings.

This paper uses personal stories from the field to draw attention to the emotional labor ECRs grapple with during and after ethnographic fieldwork. Following on a short literature review (section 2), we reflect on three challenges in particular that we have experienced in the field: the feeling of always being on alert, the attachment to places, and the relationships to research participants (section 3). Here we draw on our own experiences doing fieldwork in Austin (Colt, covert observations) as well as Washington, D.C., and New Orleans respectively (Judith, open observations). In section 4, we then want to discuss some suggestions on how emotional labor could find its way onto geography curricula and into discussions at our departments. While we acknowledge that our observations are highly subjective and are shaped by what we as white, abled-bodied, and highly educated individuals bring to the field, we hope that our observations find some resonance in order to move the needle into the direction of more honest conversations about the emotional labor and the challenges experienced in the field. By opening up these conversations, we believe that more geographers, departments, and institutions could feel comfortable discussing emotional labor and supporting their early career researchers.

Situating emotional labor in geography – some theoretical remarks

The recognition of emotional labor as well as the interrelatedness of emotions and fieldwork were born out of a growing recognition of emotions as an integral part of geographic research and ethnographic fieldwork in particular (Askins, 2008; Bennett, 2004; Davies & Spencer, 2010; Hemer & Dundon, 2016; Hubbard et al., 2001). As Davies writes in the introduction to his co-edited volume Emotions in the Field (2010), emotions need to move from the margins to the center of our reflections on methodology and fieldwork. Also, authors such as Cindi Katz (1994) and Audrey Kobayashi (1994) have long pointed to the messiness of being in the field and the volatile environments in which we conduct our research, which makes it hard to predict and manage the emotions we encounter. Such reflections are based on researchers grappling with their positionalities when in the field. As Whitson (2017) outlines, the reflexive process of research is first and foremost a confrontation with our own subjectivity and a deconstruction of the picture we paint of ourselves. These often conflicting feelings of difference and sameness and the realization of the researcher’s privileged position are hard to navigate, particularly for ECRs (Caretta & Jokinen, 2017; DeLuca & Maddox, 2016; Kobayashi, 2001).

Especially the work of feminist geographers is foundational here. Johnson et al. (2021) and Nyantakyi-Frimpong (2021), for instance, reflect on the complications of a researchers’ positionality and identity when conducting research, revealing that male researchers benefit from patriarchal social structures when accessing social circles, creating uneven research experiences across race, gender, and sexuality. Moreover, researchers are not absent from the socio-historical roots that they are researching. In Johnson et al. (2021), researchers document the struggles of uneven and unequal perceptions of the researcher by research participants. Not only does this make it difficult to gather the data necessary, but it adds to the emotional burdens of ethnographic fieldwork.

Much of the emotional burden, however, comes from struggling with negative emotions. There is a feeling of guilt that often comes with the privileges and power dynamics one is confronted with as a researcher, especially when one is conducting fieldwork to climb the career ladder (Katz, 1994). DeLuca and Maddox (2016) stress that these feelings can arise even if students have sound research designs and respect research ethics. Some researchers also reflect on how they try to alleviate feelings of guilt and privilege by supporting the places and people they start to feel emotionally attached to (Caretta & Jokinen, 2017; Myers, 2010). Additionally, there are the everyday frustrations and negotiations which are exhausting. These often fall under the table once the book or research paper is published and the results look smooth, but ethnographic fieldwork is a constant up and down of successes and set-backs – and sometimes it also fails. There is now a small but growing body of literature on failure in geographic research that aims to establish talking and writing about failure as an integral part of the research process and in overcoming doubt (Frazier, 2019; Harrowell et al., 2018).

Yet, it is not only the everyday frustrations and negotiations that pose an emotional challenge, but there are also researchers struggling with trauma during and after conducting fieldwork, which for a long time was silenced in geography (Bonet & McWilliams, 2018; Drozdzewski & Dominey-Howes, 2015; Tucker & Horton, 2018). Taylor (2019) admits to feelings of vulnerability and insecurity caused by severe mental health issues which were triggered after bearing witness to violence in the field. After suffering through a range of emotions and mood-swings, often being unable to work, he was later diagnosed with PTSD. Personal accounts such as Taylor’s (2019) are critical in highlighting the need for more conversations on emotional labor and well-being in the field, while also recognizing the diversity of emotional challenges that researchers encounter. Drozdzewski and Dominey-Howes (2015) argue that it is crucial to acknowledge diverse emotional responses to the field and various forms of trauma, even if they cannot be clinically categorized.

Even though there is an array of literature on emotional labor and fieldwork, the sometimes drastic emotional challenges, as well as the various (emotional) roles and settings researchers find themselves in, on an institutional level, little has changed. When we prepare geographers to go into the field, we talk about methods, research ethics, and positionality, yet we circle around the emotionally challenging experience of being in the field. There is still a significant gap between what is taught and talked about in geography and the actual experiences researchers have in the field. This is mostly due to institutional settings lagging behind the discussions in the community, but also due to a lack of honest conversations about the hardships experienced in the field. In the competitive academic space, it is challenging to admit to feelings of incompetence and failure, particularly as an early career researcher. As the papers above suggest, researchers often have to find individual coping mechanisms because there is no space and time for these conversations at their institutions. Many (ourselves included) use their writing as an outlet for their frustrations, but our goal is to lift these conversations to the institutional level, where work and research settings could be changed and accountability frameworks introduced.

Our stories from the field – reflections & considerations

The following vignettes offer glimpses into our experiences conducting fieldwork in Austin, TX (Colt, covert observations); New Orleans, LA; and Washington, D.C. (Judith, overt observations). We hope to demonstrate that fieldwork is a process of constant reflection and negotiation, which poses an emotional burden on the researcher. We acknowledge that the struggles and challenges are numerous, depending on the personal circumstances of the researcher, the setting, and often the language – both authors coming from very different backgrounds – yet what unites researchers doing ethnographic fieldwork are those constant negotiations between conflicting feelings. The literature review as well as our own experience with ethnographic fieldwork have exposed three challenges that we want to discuss in detail. While we are conducting fieldwork, we are constantly on alert (1), confronted with many unexpected encounters, we become attached to places (2) and research participants (3), yet we have to reconcile these experiences with our positionalities as researchers and our academic goals.

The feeling of always being on alert

As we study the landscapes and cityscapes around us, geography is practiced every day and is never restricted to regular working hours. While this is the appeal of geographic research, it can also be emotionally draining if there is no turning this off and boundaries between work and leisure become blurry. This is especially true during fieldwork when we have to gather the most data in a limited period of time, often knowing that our academic future depends on the success of our work. It is in a way natural that we have an increased sense of awareness for the topics we study, yet it can be challenging when this infiltrates personal spaces and relationships.

Both authors have experienced this feeling of constantly being on alert. As the cities we are studying are undergoing rapid redevelopment and gentrification, every new building in a neighborhood, every new coffee shop or restaurant, every new piece of street art is of interest – even when one is running personal errands or spending time with friends – piquing our minds continuously throughout the day. For Judith, who is studying the housing market in Washington, D.C., “for sale” or “open house” signs all over the city spike her interest, real estate companies target her personal social media, and shows such as “If You Lived Here” become more than a pass-time. When personal spaces are also invaded by research and work, it can become very challenging to find time to relax and unwind after a day in the field.

During fieldwork there is also always the element of the unexpected. It is in fact one of its central elements, providing us with insights that we could not get working behind a desk. This practice of radical openness to new situations and people one encounters in the field requires a researcher to constantly be on alert. Colt’s ethnographic research on music venues in Austin is an example here. Taking in all interactions and relationships on site, understanding specific mannerisms, and how to access social circles is an exhausting experience. After a hot Texas summer and being on site for 7–10 hours a day, over 30 concerts attended, 100 recorded hours and nearly 4000 interactions, he felt mentally and emotionally drained. Withal, Colt had little time to recover from the field and had to immediately perform academic duties while writing manuscripts.

Additionally, we also have to acknowledge a fear of unwarranted interactions, as harassment and crime can also be part of working in the field. Judith, who works in mostly Black neighborhoods, always stands out as a female, white European researcher, who is not native to the U.S. and can be identified by her accent when speaking English. She often experienced situations in which people followed her in the streets or singled her out on public transport, begging for money and food. While most of these interactions remained friendly, she has also been in situations which made her feel uncomfortable and even scared to revisit certain streets on her own. Colt has also had uncomfortable encounters with visitors of the music venues he studies. He experienced situations in which venue visitors aggressively flirted with him and tried to take him home, not respecting his no for an answer. These are not singular events; Ross (2015) documents similar encounters, revealing that researchers often experience or are threatened by sexual violence in the field.

While we acknowledge that being able to do ethnographic fieldwork is a privilege – especially when said research involves visiting and meeting new people and cities – we recognize that the feeling of constantly being on alert (either to gather information or to make sure one is safe), of constantly forming relationships quickly and maintaining these relationships can take an emotional toll on the researchers even if they are happy to travel and visit places of leisure.

Feelings of attachment to place

For many of us, the places we study are not the same places we live in. This means that each research trip also involves a period of getting used to a new surrounding and finding one’s way around. This usually has to happen as quickly as possible, because we are supposed to get to work and become an expert on the place we are studying in a limited time. It requires a lot of (emotional) energy that must be invested to settle into a new place and become familiar with new surroundings, customs, and languages. As an international researcher, this is something Judith experiences. Even though she has visited the U.S. many times, there is always a period of transitioning back into life in the U.S. and getting used to a different culture and daily lifestyles.

When Judith visits Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, she usually spends several weeks or months in one place, which makes her more than a tourist yet also not a local. In a way she will always remain an outsider because her visits are always temporary. Having her routines in each place and frequently returning to those places, however, have led to a sense of attachment, which makes returning and leaving again an intimately emotional experience. The places are no longer neutral, and the trips are not simply professional, but rather, they are intertwined with previous knowledge, relationships, and personal memories made there. Katz (1994) describes these tensions and discomforts as double displacement. The researcher is first displaced in order to do research away from home, see and explore the lifeworlds of others, and then displaced from the field in order to write and speak about what she has found. Thus, it is also those feelings of attachment to place that need to be considered when thinking about the emotional labor geographers do in the field.

Colt, on the other hand, is experiencing Austin through the eyes of a local as Austin is his hometown. However, his visits are no longer as a local, but rather, through a researcher’s lens. While in human geography it is commonly accepted that completely removing subjectivity is impossible, the task of balancing the roles of a researcher and a local is challenging and tiresome. This becomes even more complicated as Colt sees that friends and family are affected by the redevelopments the city is undergoing. Recently, a $10 million renovation project was announced in his neighborhood, which he felt was a call to action to understand how this project could directly affect him, ultimately blurring the lines between his work and personal space.

Judith, too, is engaged in the fight for social and spatial justice in the cities she is studying. Her research has inspired her to join the fight for a right to housing, meet with activists, go door knocking, and participate in housing rallies. This concern for local issues of social and spatial justice grows out of the emotional connection both authors feel to the places and people they study. We are touched by the injustices and inequities we witness, especially in places we deeply care about. Indeed, as Johnson et al. (2021) highlight in examining resource extraction legacies and logics, our historically rooted positionalities are never removed from our research. Similarly, Askins (2009) and Askins and Swanson (2019) highlight that it is particularly these emotions and tensions that motivate our research, shape our writing, and underpin our academic activism. Thus, we are aware that our research is neither impartial nor value-free – especially because fieldwork is emotional and runs against the messiness and chaos of the real world. Yet, we are still expected to sum up these experiences in generalizable work. Though it is now commonly accepted that our work is never detached from emotions and can never achieve full objectivity, the act of producing quality empirical work that contains real, everyday practices of life can be frustrating, triggering, and distressing.

Relationships with research participants

The challenge of knowing where and when to set boundaries also affects the interpersonal relationships geographers build in the field. The biographies and hardships of the people one encounters in the field can be emotionally challenging to grapple with. On the one hand, these emotions and relationships shape our work as academics in both writing and teaching, even inspiring activism beyond the scope of one’s research, which can be a rewarding part of doing fieldwork. On the other hand, these same personal encounters can also become exhausting and emotionally draining, particularly when personal boundaries are blurred.

Judith, who studies displacement, has encountered people who are facing existential struggles such as homelessness and eviction, yet finds herself in a position where she would like to help but often cannot. It is heart breaking to listen to the stories of people and communities which have been so harmed. She often feels that the trust people place in her by sharing their personal stories is both a privilege and a burden. It entails certain (political) responsibilities which she is not sure she can live up to. Judith has had the experience of research participants asking her to do more for them and trying to draw her into their own (sometimes personal) fights, which makes it hard to draw the line between one’s work, one’s personal political beliefs, and the call to activism one feels. While Judith is engaged in the fight for housing justice and believes that her writing is one means of bringing attention to the issue, the various and sometimes conflicting expectations that come with being a researcher, activist, writer, and teacher can be hard to navigate and often feel impossible to reconcile.

The ethics of covert ethnography remain hotly contested (Spicker, 2011). Indeed, many challenge covert methods and its lack of input from research participants and their right to withdraw and be part of research (Babie, 2004; Murphy & Dingwall, 2011). However, Spicker (2011) suggests that covert ethnography reduces (albeit not completely) the presence and disturbance of the researcher in the field and eliminates the likelihood that participants will perform for the research rather than give authentic data, and additionally, can allow the researcher to access social circles more easily. Nonetheless, the weight of covert fieldwork on the researcher warrants an open discussion. While some geographers are able to disclose their identity and intent, and form more open relationships with their subjects, research that requires the geographer to go undercover creates a form of guilt.

During Colt’s time in Austin, he formed many relationships under the guise of a concert participant. With time, he befriended many regulars, workers, and owners of the establishments. Yet, he could not reveal his research intentions (he did, however, have written letters of support from club owners). Colt’s ethnographic experiences left him feeling detached and guilty for forming these close relationships without revealing that he was gathering information from his participants. This is not to question the overall benefits of doing covert ethnography. Indeed, Colt purposely used these research methods to achieve a robust project, but his experience suggests that methodological scholarship and the discipline of geography need to be more open about the psychological and emotional effects of conducting such research.

How to move forward? Ideas and suggestions

This is not an essay that questions fieldwork – not in the least. Both authors believe in the value of their field experiences and hope that fieldwork will continue to play a major role in geographic research, despite digital methodologies and travel restrictions in times of a pandemic. While fieldwork is one of the many reasons we chose this profession, it is also a requirement of our employment. In this sense, the authors urge higher education institutions and departments to recognize the emotional labor we as academics undergo, and thus call for institutional support for these burdens. Furthermore, funding institutions should also be aware of these challenges. Alderson et al. (2023) highlight that early career researchers would often benefit from having more support in terms of finances. This does not eradicate the emotional challenges we have outlined above, but it would certainly alleviate some of the additional pressure ECRs are under. With tight deadlines and restraints, meeting the expectations of those who support and fund research can cause anxiety in the field when faced with barriers that hinder our research. Funders who are aware of uneven field experiences, could thus help alleviate feelings of stress and anxiety.

On the institutional level, we suggest offering workshops before and after going into the field. Here, strategies could be taught that help ECRs in particular to handle emotionally challenging situations. As Taylor (2019) stresses, more comprehensive guidance and training is necessary because the transformations researchers undergo hardly ever stay in the field but travel back with us and into our daily lives. We believe that it can be helpful to discuss the emotional component of fieldwork in group settings or departmental networks, so that the reflections on fieldwork can become part of the learning process. DeLuca and Maddox (2016) too call for professional outlets and a structured debriefing process together with colleagues as “acknowledging and confronting these emotions is an important step in the production of knowledge” (293). If fieldwork is to remain a central teaching and learning tool in geography, we have to reconsider its place on the curricula and in our departments.

In planning new research endeavors, many challenges and misunderstandings could be prevented if emotional support and ombudspersons were integrated into projects from the beginning. This way research networks or graduate programs could channel some of their funding towards investing in their researchers’ emotional and mental well-being. Apart from the challenges researchers encounter in the field, there are also often tensions among colleagues as everyone is under a lot of pressure. Having a neutral person to talk to (someone who is not the supervisor of one’s work as not everyone has an equal supervisor-student relationship) or having someone to negotiate in times of conflict could help facilitate difficult conversations and improve academic work environments.

We further believe that conversations on emotional labor are essential in an academic workspace that is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), especially as navigating emotional labor is more difficult given various and intersectional positionalities across race, class, and gender. As Tunguz (2014) as well as Ashencaen Carbtree and Shiel (2019) point out, white, male scholars, especially those who are tenured, will have more accessible resources to cope with the emotional labor of ethnographic fieldwork. Institutional support and critical social networks will help ECRs, especially first-generation, BIPOC, and women scholars with the emotional burdens of research.

Of course, there are several barriers that prevent us to be completely open about the effects of fieldwork. We are all bound to the Institutional Review Board (IRB),¹ and our research participants’ information must remain confidential. We suggest developing a close network of researchers doing similar work where it is possible to discuss the emotional toll of fieldwork without breaking the IRB protocol. This can be especially helpful to ECRs who are new to fieldwork and academia. Having camaraderie with your department can help open critical dialogue that can elevate the emotional labor of transitioning in and out of field research and while at research sites. We also acknowledge that some geographers may not feel comfortable opening up to colleagues for a variety of reasons. In this case, we suggest having a journal separate from your fieldnotes where you can document personal feelings in order to process experiences and encounters from the field.

Even though we call on departments to acknowledge the emotional labor researchers do and institutionalize support systems, we do not want to disregard the importance of informal conversations among peers. Both our departments offer regular meetings or coffee hours where people come to ask questions, practice conference and job talks, or simply relieve stress. We suggest that other departments should hold similar informal meetings or develop groups specifically to enable conversations among colleagues and between researchers at different stages of their careers. In addition, ECRs might find mentors besides their immediate peers and supervisors.

Often, and perhaps at some point in our careers, we may feel compelled to become activists for the people and places we study. Indeed, Askins (2009) tells us our emotions are essential to activism and thinking in academic work. While we recognize that activism is not for every researcher, and that other forms of research still have merit, we suggest that scholars who feel a call to action in order to rectify certain attachments to place can develop scholarship within the paradigm called research activism, where theoretical work in scholarship is put into practice, and vice versa. More and more, scholars have used theoretical contributions and community knowledge to uplift research subjects (e.g. Kobayashi, 2001; Myers, 2010). We suggest that such research could potentially alleviate feelings of guilt and distress when developing attachments to places and research participants.

Lastly, we should start by simply acknowledging that we need breaks and time off to process and recharge after fieldwork. It is vital to our research that we have time to reflect on the experiences in the field. The authors believe it is imperative that departments, higher education institutions, and research funders recognize the unevenness of conducting research and create institutional and systemic changes that facilitate the emotional labor of research. Particularly ECRs should not be expected to handle challenges during fieldwork on their own and have sole responsibility in dealing with emotional labor. While the aforementioned suggestions are believed to help reduce this baggage, workshops, groups made up of colleagues, and personal journals cannot reduce this weight on its own (see e.g. Caretta & Jokinen, 2017). We feel that after decades of scholarship on the effects of emotional labor, there needs to be a change. Until there are some institutional changes that recognize, support, and remove the stress of research as revealed by feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial scholars, the emotional labor of research will always be uneven. We hope that this paper can spark new conversations about fieldwork, inspire researchers to include new coping strategies into their work, and ultimately help make what we love better.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the inspiring and thought-provoking feedback by Solange Muñoz and David Wilson. Their support and mentorship have been crucial in shaping our work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Notes

1. The Institutional Review Board, or IRB, is an institutional committee utilized across US institutions that investigates the research ethics of methods proposed in human-based research.