From Vulnerability to Marginalisation: The Ethics of Terminology in Non-Profit Research
Author: Dr. Anna Neya Kazanskaia
Publisher: NEYA Global Publishing
Journal: NEYA Global Journal of Non-Profit Studies
Series: When Research Becomes Harm
Series Code: cgsnf
Material: 07/10
DOI: https://doi.org/10.64357/neya-gjnps-cgsnf-07
Type: Journal Article
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Abstract
This article examines terminology as an ethical instrument in non-profit and community-based research. Words such as vulnerable, marginalised, at-risk, underserved, disadvantaged, and excluded are not interchangeable. Each term carries different implications for dignity, protection, political framing, institutional identity, and public perception.
In safeguarding-sensitive contexts, terminology may either protect a community by naming risk and responsibility, or intensify stigma by reducing people to externally imposed categories. The article argues that researchers should not treat terminology as a neutral academic convention.
In cross-border research, terminology also participates in international representation: it shapes how one country, institution, or academic system describes another community to external audiences. Language should therefore be reviewed with attention to safeguarding, local institutional practice, cultural context, and the self-understanding of the communities and organisations involved.
Research Significance
Terminology is often treated as a matter of academic style, disciplinary convention, or preferred vocabulary. This article argues that in non-profit and community-based research, terminology is an ethical decision. The words used to describe people and communities can shape how they are understood, protected, funded, judged, or stigmatised.
The significance of this article lies in distinguishing between terms that may appear similar but carry different ethical consequences. Vulnerable, marginalised, at-risk, underserved, disadvantaged, and excluded do not describe the same relationship between people, institutions, risk, protection, and social power. Some terms foreground safeguarding responsibility. Others foreground structural exclusion, political marginality, lack of services, or social disadvantage. When used carelessly, terminology may reduce people to externally imposed categories or distort the institutional meaning of the organisations that serve them.
This problem is especially important in safeguarding-sensitive settings. A term may protect dignity when it accurately names risk and responsibility. The same term may intensify stigma when it becomes a public label detached from local context, institutional mission, or community self-understanding. In cross-border research, terminology also becomes part of international representation: it shapes how one academic system, country, or institution describes another community to external readers.
The article contributes to research ethics by treating language as part of the safeguarding architecture of research. It argues that terminology should be reviewed not only for accuracy, but also for dignity, contextual fit, institutional impact, and potential harm. This is particularly important in research involving vulnerable communities, women’s centres, faith-based organisations, children, trauma, migration, poverty, social stigma, and developing-country fieldwork.
Author Positioning
Dr. Anna Neya Kazanskaia’s work is grounded in non-profit knowledge architecture, charitable centre research, digital education implementation, counselling system development, and field-based engagement with vulnerable community settings. Her academic and practical work has focused on how educational, counselling, and organisational systems can be developed and implemented in low-resource and charitable contexts.
This article is informed by the author’s broader research and systems work on non-profit organisations, vulnerable communities, institutional learning, social impact systems, and ethical knowledge production. It reflects a concern with how academic language may either protect communities through responsible description or expose them through reductive, stigmatising, or externally imposed categories.
The analysis approaches terminology as a form of ethical infrastructure. It argues that responsible research must consider how words affect dignity, safeguarding, institutional identity, public perception, and international trust. Language is not only a descriptive tool. In vulnerable community settings, it can become a protective mechanism or a source of harm.
Series Note
This article is part of the NEYA Global research ethics series “When Research Becomes Harm: Colonial Gaze, Western Bias, and Safeguarding in Non-Profit Fieldwork.” The series examines how research access, consent, terminology, anonymisation, academic novelty, publication framing, institutional ethics systems, and safeguarding affect vulnerable communities and non-profit institutions in developing-country contexts.
It treats research access not as an individual academic opportunity, but as a high-trust institutional relationship across countries, communities, and systems of protection.
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Suggested Citation
Kazanskaia, A. N. (2026). From Vulnerability to Marginalisation: The Ethics of Terminology in Non-Profit Research. NEYA Global Journal of Non-Profit Studies. https://doi.org/10.64357/neya-gjnps-cgsnf-07
