ABSTRACT
Criminologists are secret keepers, skilled in maintaining participant confidentiality and anonymity when collecting sensitive materials. Yet discussions of how to best maintain participant privacy have mainly considered marginalised populations of lower social–economic classes. The ethics of secret keeping within privileged populations is mostly overlooked, as too is the emotional labour involved. In the current chapter, we draw upon the experiences of two researchers who studied legally sensitive topics with a privileged population. While these researchers investigated different topics – drug use and supply among expatriates and marital breakdown among legally precarious migrant wives – they are connected methodologically by their roles as “secret keepers” within Hong Kong’s close-knit and privileged expatriate community. By discussing how the researchers defined, created, and defended boundaries around confidentiality during fieldwork, the authors reflect upon when such shifting boundaries are blurred and challenged/tested and the emotional labour this boundary maintenance demands.
