Drawing from qualitative research conducted in a participatory action research framework with 28 transgender women in Colombia, this paper presents the stigma-related barriers to healthcare experienced by trans women and their experiences of multi-level violence within the healthcare system. The authors also discuss how advocacy work was conducted as part of the research process and how trans community leaders were involved throughout the project in order to promote policy-relevance and community-based implementation of findings. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the experiences of violence and stigmatisation within the health care system is linked to broader processes of structural stigma reproduced within Colombian society.
In this paper, I discuss the ways I have fallen short as a participatory geographer and activist both in my teaching and research practices. I use three critical moments in the development of our PAR collective in Colombia to push debates in geography on participatory research and pedagogy further through reflection on my struggles in the streets and in the university. Additionally, I connect these experiences and previous discussions in participatory geographies with Orlando Fals Borda's discussion of sentipensar (a concept that engages feeling and thinking simultaneously). I draw attention to the Latin American origins of PAR philosophy by placing Fals Borda into dialogue with the protagonists of our social movement in Colombia including human rights activists, homeless drug users and sex workers. In a general sense, this paper is an examination of the challenges I have faced in the contact zones of PAR inside and outside the classroom.
This paper presents the participatory visual research design and findings from a qualitative assessment of the social impact of bazuco and inhalant/glue consumption among street youth in Bogotá, Colombia. The paper presents the visual methodologies our participatory action research (PAR) team employed in order to identify and overcome the stigmas and discrimination that street youth experience in society and within state-sponsored drug rehabilitation programmes. I call for critical reflection regarding the broad application of the terms 'participation' and 'participatory' in visual research and urge scholars and public health practitioners to consider the transformative potential of PAR for both the research and practice of global public health in general and rehabilitation programmes for street-based substance abuse in Colombia in particular. The paper concludes with recommendations as to how participatory visual methods can be used to promote social inclusion practices and to work against stigma and discrimination in health-related research and within health institutions.
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