This chapter considers the effect of risk and securitization policies on researchers and their counterparts in the context of the study of smuggling. Smuggling has become an object of securitization policies conducted by states, security agencies, and military interventions, and also by non-state actors. Consequently, researchers and their counterparts can be put at risk or become the objects of state and non-state repression as a result of their interactions in the field. Risk and the making of zones of danger have led to securitized research practices that pose a challenge to research ethics and academic knowledge production. In many countries, institutionalized ethics review boards are considered professional tools to ensure ethical compliance. However, these standardized ethics screenings are legalistic procedures that misunderstand the dynamics, uncertainty, and ambiguity of fieldwork. This chapter argues that research ethics must instead be based on a jointly negotiated and socially embedded morality that develops through the interactions between researchers and their counterparts. The awareness and joint anticipation of risk are part of such a process.