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Despite difficulties in ensuring that consent is informed and freely given, denying the opportunity to give such consent and then participate in the research that would follow may have the side effect of further disenfranchising an already silenced group. It is of grave concern that participation in research may endanger an individual asylum seeker’s status in the country, possibly leading to deportation (as in the case cited in Zion and colleagues 2010), yet to deny him the chance to heroically further his cause or to champion that of another could be seen as pernicious in itself. There is, then, a paradox in trying to conduct ethical research into the lives of asylum seekers.

This commentary first discusses ethical hazards that may arise from Zion and colleagues’ approach. It then looks at two reports recently released in the United Kingdom looking into the lives of immigration detainees and destitute failed asylum seekers …