Democratising Research Practices With Unaccompanied Refugee Young People Using Participatory Arts-Based Methods

Democratising and participatory research methods enable vulnerable young people such as refugees to document their experiences of displacement on their own terms, allowing them to resist essentialised tropes highlight their helplessness and vulnerability. Previous research employing just single creative methods have reported many benefits to its participants and the democratising process. This article draws on lessons learnt from using participatory and arts-based methods in a discourse analysis research project with Afghan unaccompanied refugee young people living in Malaysia. It offers suggestions on how to broaden the concept of participation of young people in research including using iterative consent and a flexible flow of sessions and activities, and diverse methods for data collection using arts-based methods. This allows the sharing of refugee experiences across multiple modes that transcends linguistic ability, culture, and age. The flexible nature of the workshops and its focus on the production of embodied knowledge over intellectual knowledge facilitated the participants’ self-determination and trust in the research process. Examples are provided from the analysis of the diverse data set – comprising oral, written, visual, and theatrical narratives – using various discourse analytic methods. The commitment to the diversity in both the methods of eliciting narratives and data analysis aimed at avoiding imposing preconceived representations on an already vulnerable group of people.