Search results

While belonging is rarely an explicit concern of participatory arts-based research (PABR), fostering inclusive relations is both an important condition for and outcome of PABR projects. Based on a participatory arts-based study with refugee-background young people in the United Kingdom and Australia, this article proposes five dimensions of PABR that mediate belonging within the project and shape possibilities for belonging beyond it: resources, relations, reflection, representation and recognition. Acknowledging the possibilities for transformative belonging emerging from PABR's unique combination of participation, arts and research, this article draws on Bourdieu's framing of the research interview as an 'exceptional situation for communication' to conceptualise the PABR project as an exceptional sphere of belonging. Attending to (non)belonging in participatory arts-based research projects facilitates new insights into the practical, affective, embodied, socio-cultural and ethical relations that they produce and makes an important contribution to our understanding of PABR's much lauded – but less well evidenced – transformative potential.

Settlement is widely understood as the final stage of the refugee journey: a durable solution to forced displacement and a stable environment in which former refugees can rebuild their lives. However, settlement is shaped by rapidly changing socio-political forces producing contingent, unpredictable, and even hostile environments. This article draws upon Vigh's concept of social navigation to reconceptualize settlement as a continuation of a fraught journey in which refugee settlers must continually seek new strategies to pursue viable futures. We illustrate with an in-depth case study of the settlement journey of one refugee-background young man over his first eight years in Melbourne, Australia. ; L'établissement est presque toujours comprise comme l'étape finale du voyage d'un réfugié, soit une solution pérenne à un déplacement forcé et un environnement stable dans lequel des ex-réfugiés peuvent reconstruire leur vie. Elle est cependant déterminée par des forces sociopolitiques rapidement évolutives pouvant générer des environnements contingents, imprévisibles, voire hostiles. Cet article s'inspire du concept de navigation sociale de Vigh pour reconceptualiser l'établissement comme la continuation d'un voyage semé d'embûches, au cours duquel le réfugié colon doit continuellement être à la recherche de nouvelles stratégies pour établir un avenir pérenne. Nous illustrons cette perspective par l'étude approfondie des efforts d'établissement d'un homme jeune originairement réfugié, au cours de ses huit premières années à Melbourne, Australie.

Calais Again is a digital story recounting a young man, Anas' experience of returning to France for the first time after migrating to the United Kingdom as a separated asylum-seeking child. Produced using biographical narrative and participatory arts-based research approaches, Calais Again was created as a rare self-authored contribution to Anas' personal archive of migration documents, and as a resource for communicating the multiple and multi-layered journeys of asylum-seeking young people. In the context of COVID-19, the story additionally highlights how the pandemic is just one of many forces of ontological insecurity and constrained mobility in the lives of young forced migrants. While the project was commenced pre-pandemic, the editing and launch of the digital story took place remotely, presenting ethical, methodological and relational challenges, but also unanticipated affordances. In particular, the spectrum of options for differentiated presence enabled by online events – from anonymous observation to co-presentation – offers unique opportunities for navigating safeguarding and agency for youth researchers.

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the lives of young people, transforming and disrupting education provision, employment opportunities, social practices, mobilities, and experiences of health and well-being. In the UK context, the pandemic can be understood as both a unique event and as a further addition to the intersecting crises—including austerity and Brexit—that are increasingly shaping and constraining youth experiences and aspirations and exacerbating precarity and inequality. In this article, seven undergraduate students from Manchester, UK, with two academic co-authors, employ a co-productive approach to reflect on our experiences of the pandemic. Our autoethnographic accounts draw attention to the situated effects of the pandemic, and its intersection with existing challenges and pressures, including the gig economy, mental and physical ill health, and transnational family networks. At the same time, our narratives capture a sense of precarious hope : hopefulness that is both a product of precarity and itself precarious, opening up new possibilities for collectively imagining and pursuing viable and meaningful futures in uncertain times. Supporting our endeavours requires the inclusion of youth voices in research, policy, and practice; work we begin here.

AbstractIn this article, we explore the return visits of resettled young people from refugee backgrounds to their personal and/or ancestral countries of origin. We draw on qualitative data from a longitudinal study of people who fled their country of origin at an early age, many of whom were born or lived for protracted periods in countries of asylum, and resettled in Australia. We demonstrate that return visits are not simply a homecoming; the young people's narratives reflect ambivalent relationships to the homeland experienced across multiple domains of belonging. Accounts of return visits refer to three core domains of belonging – practical national belonging, family connection, and attachment to material places. We argue that a return visit gives these youths a valued opportunity to negotiate and develop their homeland connections, though not necessarily an unambiguous opportunity to belong.

This interdisciplinary collection charts the experiences of young people in places of spatial marginality around the world, dismantling the privileging of urban youth, urban locations and urban ways of life in youth studies and beyond. Expert authors investigate different dimensions of spatiality including citizenship, materiality and belonging, and develop new understandings of the complex relationships between place, history, politics and education. From Australia to India, Myanmar to Sweden, and the UK to Central America, international examples from both the Global South and North help to illuminate wider issues of intergenerational change, social mobility and identity. By exploring young lives beyond the city, this book establishes different ways of thinking from a position of spatial marginality