“Slowly by Slowly”: Youth Participatory Action Research in Contexts of Displacement

Abstract

Background/Context: Despite substantial evidence documenting the benefits of community involvement in the decisions that impact their lives, much humanitarian action in settings of displacement continues to be driven by the interests and funding streams of donors and international agencies. These dynamics particularly marginalize youth, who fall between interventions designed for children and opportunities for voice and agency that are reserved for adults. As youth-centered approaches have proliferated across diverse fields, pointing to the important insights gleaned from positioning young people as experts on their own lives, we rarely have a sense of how young people were included in the research or planning processes carried out, or the extent to which these processes reflect issues that local youth populations consider meaningful and relevant to their everyday lives. Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) aims to redress the limitations of traditional approaches, recognizing youth as co-researchers with the agency to shape the inquiry process, positioning them as both knowledge producers and agents of social justice beyond the research context. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Youth agency is central to YPAR, but interpretations and enactments of this agency are often implicitly bounded by nation-state constructs of legality and citizenship. How do we apply this approach in contexts where youth populations lack legal citizenship status and experience habitual threats to spatial movement, freedom of expression, and social belonging? In this paper we explore how youth locate openings to enact the agency that YPAR assumes of them, and the dilemmas that emerge as they aspire to address local challenges and contribute to the common good in contexts of forced displacement. Research Design: We examine these questions in the context of YPAR collaborations we carried out with displaced youth living in refugee camps and urban settlements in three country contexts: Burundi, Jordan, and Kenya. We approached YPAR collaborations with distinct research methods, positionalities, timelines, and varying levels of resources and institutional support. In each case, granting youth agency as co-researchers, we implicitly and explicitly raised questions about how young people come to understand the limits to their rights and agency, when forcibly displaced by conflict. Conclusions/Recommendations: Across the three collaborations detailed in this text, we underscore the ways that YPAR became a novel, and at times a radical, form of democratic citizenship education for a youth population traditionally positioned as passive recipients of both school curriculum and humanitarian aid. Notwithstanding significant challenges, we point to ways that this approach “slowly by slowly” created openings for young people to make claims on their rights and organize towards changes. It underscores the empowering potential of developing young people’s civic capacity and instilling their rights to understand and interact with their communities in exile.

Shifting ground or moving furniture around: Youth participatory action research in Kakuma Refugee Camp

“…Initially conceiving of "no way" to act on their interests and desired reforms in the camp, the youth researchers eventually came to see themselves as capable of authoring research and mobilizing a collective resource aimed at making Kakuma's opportunity structure more transparent and navigable. In this sense, YPAR allowed for potentially transformative learning among those individuals who directly participated in the research process (Bellino, Chopra, and D'Sa, 2021). On the other hand, I worried that the collaboration was not transformative on a systemic level, nor did it necessarily inspire potential for systemic change.…”

Empowering student voice in Eastern India: an exploration of students' needs

“…In addressing school or community issues, YPAR brings youth in at all stages of research. In refugee camps in Burundi, Jordan, and Kenya, researchers utilized YPAR in collaborations with youth in refugee camps who aided in developing questions (Bellino et al, 2021). The case studies varied in length from 2 months in Burundi in 2013, 7 months in Jordan (2016-2017) and 2 years in Kenya (2015Kenya ( -2017.…”

“…It is relevant to the stakeholders involved in this study. Work by Bellino et al (2021) utilized YPAR in the Middle East and Africa, with refugee students developing questions and finding solutions in their communities. In Senegal, participants in a study created civic engagement tools to impact needs they identified in their communities (Fortin et al, 2022), something Shakti graduates spoke of wanting to do.…”