Decolonising concepts of participation and protection in sensitive research with young people: local perspectives and decolonial strategies of Palestinian research advisors

Abstract

Scholars in childhood research have been reconsidering whether the participation of children and young people in sensitive research is necessary. This paper questions whether some of these objections arise out of colonial attitudes towards childhood, young people, human rights, and research. This paper draws on a participatory study that sought to ascertain how Palestinian young people construct their understandings of human rights. Discussion of some of the local perspectives and decolonial strategies offered by the Young People’s Advisory Groups show how they facilitated the voices of their peers safely and decolonised concepts of participation and protection in the process.

The Role of Children in Tourism and Hospitality Family Entrepreneurship

“…Child and youth labour unions have, in some cases, been successful in lobbying for child rights to work including fair wages, limited working hours, legislation against exploitation, and recognition of their worth and dignity [41,42,44]. This is in line with scholarly developments which point to the decolonisation of childhood itself, moving away from universal understandings of childhood that fail to reflect the diversity of children's experiences across familial, social, and cultural contexts including within and across minority and majority world contexts [45,46].…”

Connecting Crises: Young People in Nepal Reflecting on Life Course Transitions and Trajectories during Times of Uncertainty

“…Thus, they propose that to effectively assess community mental health needs, which affects smooth life course transitions, is from increased provisions of cultural translations through the use of idioms/Cultural Idioms of Distress (CIDs) to present and better understand displaced populations experiences with trauma. Similarly, Jiménez (2021) calls for a need to decolonize Eurocentric notions of participation and voice when working with children and young people in crises, such as when working with displaced Palestinian youth, by shifting focus on how young people and groups who work with young people construct their own understandings of human rights, participation, and protection. More recently, when focusing on the COVID-19 crisis a wide range of developing research is starting to investigate emotional challenges concerning LCT both within and outside of Nepal with regard to drastic livelihood changes on work opportunities, births, child health development, birthdays, graduations, engagements, marriages, new jobs, retirements, deaths, restricted migration, and displacement, caused by the pandemic (Benner and Mistry 2020;Bhandari et al 2021;Raju et al 2021;Settersten et al 2020;Subedi et al 2020;Ulak 2020).…”

Research ethics in childhood research

“…There is now considerable excellent work internationally that is evidencing closer attention to some of these issues. This includes decolonising, participatory approaches that seek to go beyond ‘rescuing’, ‘developing’ or ‘empowering’ to recognising children’s agency and resilience and building upon this in a contextually-relevant way (Abebe and Ofosu-Kusi, 2016; Abebe et al, 2022; Beazley and Ball, 2017; Brear and Tsotetsi, 2021; De Castro, 2020; Ipe, 2019; Jiménez, 2021; Moletsane, et al, 2021). Closer attention is also being paid to some of the explicitly relational issues across North-South contexts – such as the use of interpreters and training of local research assistants, aimed at reducing community burden and attending more closely to social justice issues.…”

“…In relation to children's rights, what seems clear from this literature is that where 'ethics' is simplistically conflated with ethics review clearance, there will be children who remain excluded from some research on the basis of protection, in contravention of their participatory rights (Powell et al, 2018(Powell et al, , 2020Lundy, 2019;Stalford and Lundy, 2022). This seems particularly the case for research on 'sensitive issues' (Powell et al, 2018(Powell et al, , 2020, research involving children with additional vulnerabilities (Beazley and Ball, 2017;Harger and Quintela, 2017;Jiménez, 2021), or studies taking participatory, open-ended or co-research type approaches (Cutting and Peacock, 2021;Horgan, 2017). Yet, arguably, some of these children, and their peers in similar situations, may have most to gain personally, and in terms of policy change, from sharing their experiences in research (Alves et al, 2022;Moletsane et al, 2021;Stalford and Lundy, 2022;Warrington and Larkins, 2019).…”