Participatory Visual Research with Displaced Persons: ‘Listening’ to Post-conflict Experiences through the Visual

Abstract

Research with refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and other marginalized groups entails complexities that make it imperative to think through the ethical and methodological strategies to not only ‘do no harm’, but also allow the research to be valuable for the participants. This article contributes to this methodological debate by demonstrating how participatory visual research offers an innovative tool for democratizing research and avoiding the risk of retraumatization. This type of research moreover enables participants to visually represent and communicate their—gender-specific—truth, thus enabling them to counter official representations of their situation and gendered stereotypes of vulnerable IDP women. Participatory visual research can thus become an instrument to contribute to social change, in line with the goals of feminist research. This article describes its use during a research process with women in two communities of returned IDPs in Colombia’s Caribbean coast.

Introduction

“…As we have argued earlier, the adoption of a visual methodology, even if it holds the same pitfalls as traditional methodologies, can push us to reestablish some balance in the relationships (without being too naive!). To counter the "male gaze", the "colonial gaze" (Edwards, 1992(Edwards, , 1997 and other forms of social control, we present visual methodologies as a tool to restore agency and power for participants, notably for immigrants, for women (Pereira, Maiztegui-Oñate, & Mata-Codesal, 2016;Weber, 2019), and for youth (Allen, 2008;Buckingham & De Block, 2007). Visual methods are often portrayed as ways to democratize research.…”

“…An additional focus we make here, is the ability to show the triviality of the everyday. The adoption of a visual methodology sustains the objective of portraying places and material experiences located outside of "spectacular" events, of official discourses, or of romanticised narratives (Raulin et al, 2016;Weber, 2019). Desille (Chap.…”

“…In fact, when working with refugees or IDPs for instance, researchers run the ethical risks of using participants as research data. By letting participants choose what they wish to talk about, they can decide if to reenact the type of experiences they have encountered -including trauma, poverty or insecurity -and how (Weber, 2019). As already mentioned, Piemontese (Chap.…”

The Uses and Limits of Photovoice in Research on Life After Immigration Detention and Deportation

“…Although initially developed within the field of health promotion, photovoice has been used in research with diverse populations including homeless people (Miller, 2006;Walsh et al, 2009;Wang, Cash, & Powers, 2000), formerly incarcerated women (Fortune & Arai, 2014), women migrants (Pearce, McMurray, Walsh, & Malek, 2017), young migrants (Fassetta, 2016), young adults (Rania, Migliorini, Cardinali, & Rebora, 2015), students (Call-Cummings & Martinez, 2016;Stack & Wang, 2018), drug users (Copes, Tchoula, Brookman, & Ragland, 2018;Fitzgibbon & Healy, 2017), women under community supervision (Fitzgibbon & Healy, 2017;Fitzgibbon & Stengel, 2017), indigenous peoples (Brooks & Poudrier, 2014), and displaced persons (Weber, 2018). As Call-Cummings and Martinez (2016, p. 798) observe, photovoice 'is a critical approach to empowering or "unsilencing" groups often unheard by hegemonic research processes and powerful policy circles', which helps to explain why the method is particularly prevalent in research with marginalised or vulnerable groups.…”

Réalisation d’un film ethnographique dans une ville périphérique israélienne

“…Alors que le conflit israélo-palestinien fait l'actualité internationale de façon hebdomadaire, et que de nombreuses images d'Israël parviennent chaque semaine au monde entier, la production d'images en mouvement dans une ville située à la frontière israélo-libanaise n'est pas un exercice anodin. Dans ce contexte de surproduction visuelle, la réalisation d'un film ethnographique répondait au désir de faire le portrait d'un lieu et des interactions qui s'y matérialisent, et ce afin de montrer ces ensembles d'interactions au lieu d'événements « spectaculaires », de discours officiels ou même de récits romancés (Raulin ;Weber, 2018). En ce sens, les méthodes d'enquête audio-visuelles ont généralement été considérées comme des méthodes privilégiées pour étudier des groupes moins « vocaux », comme les migrants ou les membres de minorités nationales par exemple, et permettre d'augmenter leur visibilité dans l'espace public, médiatique et aussi scientifique (Pereira ; Maiztegui-Oñate ; Mata-Codesal, 2016).…”