What are the benefits and challenges of participatory research from the perspectives of co-researchers? What helps to facilitate belonging and collaboration, and what hinders this? What is it like to reflect, analyse, and dialogue across diverse experiences and perspectives? How do aims of countering relations of domination and inequality in participatory research play out in practice?
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Participatory research is often depicted in celebratory terms, leading to critiques that its transformative claims to de-hierarchize knowledge production, or challenge the unequal conditions of existence which often prompt such research in the first place, are naïve or unsubstantiated (Hill, 2006; Holland et al., 2010). Despite longstanding recognition of this problematic, it remains the case that little is known about how the laudable aims of participatory research play out in practice and especially how they are experienced by diverse co-researchers (Hopkins et al., 2022). This runs the risk of masking the ways in which participatory research may be controlling and a potentially alienating mode of social action, rather than radical or empowering (Gallacher and Gallagher, 2008; Rosen, 2023b).
In this article, we dialogue about participatory research, drawing on our experiences as young people with migration experiences and co-researchers on the Children Caring on the Move (CCoM) project in a conversation with Rachel Rosen, CCoM co-lead. CCoM was a 4-year investigation of unaccompanied child migrants’ experiences of the care they (should) receive at the nexus of England’s migration and welfare systems, as well as the care they provide. Focused on two anonymised local authorities in England, CCoM involved a total of 187 interviews with various stakeholders.
Twelve ‘Young Researchers’ with migration experience, some of whom participate in this conversation, were co-researchers on the project’s central work package. Together, co-researchers and university-based researchers refined research questions, designed methods, and generated data with unaccompanied young people. A total of 75 interviews with 38 unaccompanied young people (1-3 interviews each) were co-facilitated by a co-researcher and a university-based researcher. These included object-based interviews, where participants shared an object that represents care; photo elicitation focused on a ‘day in the participant’s life’; and walking interviews to see places of (un)caring. Co-researchers were also involved in analysing and disseminating findings (e.g., Aissatou et al., 2022). Additional outputs produced by the university-based researchers remain informed by the project’s collective analytic process (e.g., Rosen, 2024).
Rachel: I’m really looking forward to reflecting together about your experiences of being co-researchers on the Children Caring on the Move (CCoM) research project. As a participatory research project, one of the first things we did was to form two teams of ‘Young Researchers’ to help design and carry out the project. You are all part of these teams, alongside university-based researchers (myself and Lucy Leon, Veena Meetoo, and Eva Prokopiou). I wondered whether you wanted to start by introducing yourselves and saying a bit about why you decided to get involved in CCoM.
Mirfat: I’m Mirfat, and I'm a student. I joined CCoM because of my experience as an unaccompanied minor in the UK. I thought it was an appropriate and inclusive project involving people with experience like, or similar, to mine. It was a great opportunity for our voices to be heard by the Home Office
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and the care system. Hopefully, after analysing our findings, we can give them out and make the system better for the future: for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and for refugees and asylum seekers generally in the UK. It was really interesting for me to participate, and I put my all into it. This is why we are going for the fourth year, because it's really interesting, and of course because we are committed to making a better future.
Arjana: To begin with, I was actually a participant in the study. After my interview, the university researchers asked me if I wanted to be a Young Researcher, and I said yes for two reasons. There's a personal reason and wanting to make changes. As Mirfat said, it's important to share our stories and what we've been through. No one wants to hear them. But, this study allowed us to get everything that we had to say across to people who make decisions in the care system and who work with unaccompanied children and young people. I thought it was a great way to do it, because we hear so many people say, ‘Oh, we want to hear what you have to say.’ But no one really listens, and hearing and listening are two different things. Through our research, people get to actually read about, listen to, and understand the difficulties that we face. The changes that come from research are gradual. I wasn't expecting that taking part would change my experience of the system. But if we put together this and other projects that other people are doing, then hopefully, we can make a change for the young people and children that will come after us. In terms of my personal reasons, I wanted the experience of doing research and expanding my knowledge and getting the extra training. I heard a lot about research in university, but I never properly practiced it before now.
I felt really comfortable as a Young Researcher because we had a great team, very supportive. I feel like the university researchers helped us not just in terms of guiding and training us in research skills, but also taking care of us. I'm very grateful for that. And I have really enjoyed this journey. Not everyone has a chance to be involved in these kinds of experiences, or maybe they don't feel confident enough to be part of this kind of project because they struggle or they feel shy. But I wish that everyone would have the chance to get involved, because it helps you to evolve as a person, gain skills that you didn’t have before, and expand your knowledge, and you feel more academic. Also, through this and the other research project I was involved in, I was able to better understand the asylum system and the care system because we learn from each of our different experiences as young people.
Zak: Hi, I’m Zak. I’m one of the Young Researchers from CCoM. I joined the research project because I know that as unaccompanied young people we always struggle, and it is a bit difficult to speak out. I know through the research we can send a message and speak out. I'm not going to say we can change the system, but at least we can speak out to change something.
Musharraf: My name is Musharraf. When I joined this project, I actually had no idea what research is and what are the reasons for doing it. I joined because I was curious and thought, ‘Yeah, let me try.’ I wasn't expecting that I would stay here till the end of the project. I remember when Rachel and Lucy first came to explain the project and what we would do, I was like, ‘Three years!’ That’s why I asked that first day if I could stay for a year only. And they said, ‘Yes, absolutely. You can leave any time.’ But during the project, first I was able to express my problems, my experiences, and then I managed to hear so many stories from different people – from you, my co-research colleagues, and from the participants. It was really interesting, and I gained the skills to interview people, to listen, to be patient, and to analyse. But, the big reason why I stayed until the end of the project, and why I still want it to continue, is because of all of you people. Rachel and Lucy weren’t just doing the project because it is their work and they get paid for that. I felt your passion to change the system and how you feel it's unfair what's going on with us personally. You’ve been through everything with us. Like when my asylum application was refused, you were with me in that time. And, when I got my positive decision, you were still there. In my difficult and good times, you have always been here. This is not like other projects in different organizations. They tried to help me and used to be next to me, but in the end of the day they were doing their job. Maybe they were doing their work from the heart, but I didn't feel that they were doing it purely because they are my friends. But with you I felt that, and I hope our friendship, if I can call it that, will last forever. This is one of the big reasons why I'm involved in this research. The main thing is the fight against injustice and the second thing is having the great people who will be with you forever. So that's why I'm passionate and keep going in this project. It was actually people and feelings, you know. I wouldn't be here if I didn’t feel respected or validated or actually heard. Being together makes us stronger and makes our life more stable.
Gulli: Hello to you wherever you are, and I hope you’re doing well. If you're wondering how I’m doing, I’m phenomenal. I’m involved in this project because when I first heard about it, the researchers mentioned ‘care’. And, I thought, care is love, and love is the priority. I said, ‘Yeah, why not!’ I was in a box and that box was literally closed. When I joined them, they told me about many things that I've never imagined, about how to deal with the system, how to deal with people, how to deal with your social workers, carers, school, colleagues, and anything they do on a daily basis. When I came out of the box, I was with the research team and they share care and love, which are priorities. I said, ‘I need to share it to with people. I need to make other people aware of how to live better in this society, in this corrupt system.’ Now we are doing our best to tell other young people or anyone who's not aware of the system, who's not aware of their rights, we’re trying our best to make them aware they have more than they think and they are more than they think they are. This makes them more comfortable and gives them some mental power to talk for themselves and to stand their ground – just like us as unaccompanied young people. I believe that when we came here, none of us was thinking of ourselves as an actual person, able to ask for his or her rights and to ask for what should be done for him or her. There’s a lot more to say, and if you are reading this, I wish you were here so we could talk face to face to show you what we've been through and what we've done. I bet we are doing something great, and I wish everyone could join us and be part of this project to make a better system, and a better life, so we can all feel we’re in a better society.
Aisha: My name is Aisha, and I'm a young, unaccompanied child. I’ve been involved in this project for three years now! And, when I think about the beginning, you know, I didn't even know what this project is all about! I used to come to meetings and wonder: is this really important? When it really started to kick in for me was when started preparing the interview questions for participants. When we started talking about care, I really started realising what the aim of this project is. It’s such a strong word. I decided I needed to put head and toes on this: it’s about to open up my life and it’s really helping. It just needed some time. Thank God I never gave up on it. I got more involved because I believe I can make other people lives better. I believe I can contribute into this and make changes, and also for myself: learning, understanding more about the system. It was a lot about giving and gaining.
Arjana: Can I just add something? I also think the research also helped us in terms of preparing us for uni and life. It gives you that confidence and makes you believe in yourself. Like, if I can do a whole study with academics, I can definitely go to uni and study a degree.
Mirfat: Even if you don't want to go into research or do anything about the system, it’s still interesting. Like Zak, Gulli, and I, what we're looking to do in the future has nothing to do with research or with the system. But no matter where you want to be, this project is good because it's for your general life, not just your career. It helps us because no matter what we still want to help people.
Rachel: And I guess I should introduce myself! I am a Professor at UCL. I have an ongoing interest in the lives of children and families with precarious immigration status, and their practices of sustenance, care, and solidarity in the face of the restrictive welfare and border regimes which shape their lives. For me, CCoM has been an incredible opportunity to do research that aims to tackle injustice both in how it is carried out and as part of wider action for positive socio-political transformation. And, best of all, I’ve had the amazing opportunity to work with all of you.
Nothing about us without us
Rachel: Some kinds of research don’t involve people who are affected by the research topic, except as participants. When we were starting the project, one of the things that was really important to me was the principle ‘nothing about us without us’. The idea is that if this was a project about unaccompanied young people's experience of care, it shouldn't be a project that was done only by people who haven’t had that experience (like me!). It should involve people who are most affected by the issue. This isn’t the only way to do research, and it is not always the best approach. But for this project, I thought it would make research better and that we could learn more by doing research together across our different experiences. . And, I say different experiences here because one of the things that you’ve made clear in our discussions is that the effects of the migration regime are different depending on our social positions, at the same time as the systems people face are similar.
Arjana: Why ‘thought’? Has your opinion changed?
Rachel: I haven’t changed my opinion, but I wanted to think with you about this idea. Because some researchers say that participatory research can be like a tick box exercise or that it’s fake in the sense that university researchers act like they are making research decisions together with co-researchers, but really it’s the researchers at the university who have the power. I’m curious what you think about this debate. Does participatory research always address power relations and inequalities?
Musharraf: You offered us the opportunity to interview people, and we could feel free to do that. You gave options to us. It wasn’t like: ‘You will interview this person or that person.’ And you offered the opportunity to everyone and everyone had the opportunity to do an interview with participants. It was really good that nobody had the situation that they didn’t have a chance to do what they wanted to do in the research.
Aisha: If this project was only a tick box exercise, we would not have joined! We have always been the priority in this project. Maybe in other projects that’s the case. But in the CCOM project, we have always been the leaders. That’s what has motivated us more! You showed us the way, you opened the door and we entered and we’re building it. You’re giving us so much strength and you’ve allowed us to speak for ourselves. That’s the important thing – you’ve made us feel confident.
Mirfat: Also, when it comes to our findings, and how we are going to share them, it was a collective decision. Some prefer sharing our findings in a book and some prefer videos, but it was a collective decision and collective ideas, so we did both. It wasn’t just like, ‘Okay, I make the final decision. We’ll just do a book.’
Arjana: I don't agree with other researchers saying that it is fake. Maybe there are cases where researchers do just to say they included young people, but not here… In this case, you’ve always asked us about everything we’ve done. We’re analysing the data all together. You wrote down and recorded the analysis that we’ve been doing. Actually, we got to speak more than you guys got to speak on the analysis of that data.
Musharraf: Definitely it’s not fake; otherwise, I wouldn't be here for this long. In different projects I’ve been involved with, obviously not as a researcher, but I felt like they didn’t really consider the participants. They said, ‘You are the main character, not us’ but at the end of the day they were deciding what we were going to do. If, for example, you didn't want to do writing, they would say ‘You have to write.’ In a nice way like ‘you have to do this if you want to complete the project.’ So, I feel like they had set the plan and they weren’t giving us options to do something else. Here, we feel like it's all about us and it's a group decision. When we say ‘the university researchers’, I know that sounds like there is a barrier or a wall between you and us. In other situations, I have had that feeling: I am just a person, and they are workers. But, in this case, I never saw that. It was really surprising.
Aisha: On CCoM, when we meet, you come with a topic: ‘Ok guys, this is what we think we should talk about today.’ But the moment you finish saying that, the rest is in our hands. And this is amazing. We just start our own conversation, and the university researchers are just listening. You only say: ‘You spoke about that point, can you say more or give an example.’ We end up changing the plan! It’s just an entrance or a way to start something and we have a chance to speak out and we don’t have to if we don’t want to say anything. Actually, its the same thing with interviews. We come up with questions, but we never go through all the questions because the participants are already talking about everything.
Putting the ‘co’ in participatory research
Rachel: I’ve learned so much from you as co-researchers, and I have a lot to say about this! But, why don’t we start with what you see as important things you’ve brought to the research?
Arjana: The interpretation of the data, of everything that we've done so far.
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It's not just from your point of view, it's from our point of view. This is how we see it, but not just how we see but how we've experienced it and how we felt it. That’s the main thing and the most important thing which would differentiate this project from other projects that do not include young people as researchers. This gives meaning to ‘nothing about us without us’. For example, I remember that when were starting to write our book, Musharraf was the one who came up with the ideas of the ‘Professor of Waiting’.
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Maybe you wouldn't have come up with the same title of the chapter or the same concept. It was Musharraf’s idea because of what she's experienced and how she sees and interprets that.
Aisha: University researchers might just make up your minds and think this is how things are, but it is better to hear the experiences. Without us involved, this wouldn’t have happened.
We have really contributed our points and the experiences we have had. That’s what is really building up the project. We want our experiences to be heard and shared, so we can make a change.
Musharraf: There was a couple of us who wanted to do the book, and some of us wanted to do the blog and the film. It was basically our suggestions, our ideas, which were realised because of us. It's a great thing that you heard us and believed in us, and we are managing to make it real.
Rachel: For me, one of the things that I immediately think of that would have been different if you weren’t involved is the focus of the project. When we started, we were focused only on care that unaccompanied young people provide others. The idea came from talking to other people, including unaccompanied young people, but before we met you personally. In our first team discussions, it was clear that care is important, as Gulli said, ‘It is the priority’, and how young people care is really important. But many of you also said that we can’t think about care without thinking about the system – that tangled web of institutions, policies and individuals who are meant to care for children on the move, but often do not, and instead make decisions about who can stay, who must leave, often in racist and dehumanising ways (Aissatou et al., 2022). The system shapes all aspects of unaccompanied young people's experiences, even how they care. But that was not something we had as a focus of the original project. Now, it is so much richer because of your insights.
Mirfat: Because you haven’t experienced what we've experienced. This is why I think this group works well. We combine your academic knowledge about how to do the actual research and our experiences of the system. We put our different knowledge into the project and collectively analyse what we find. That’s why we achieved so much and stayed interested, and also how we’ve stayed positive that we will make changes, in the future of course.
Arjana: It was a really good combination. I thought about that when we were talking about the fakeness of some people. We can only do so much. We can help to interpret and analyse data, we can say our opinions, but we’re not academics. We can’t write it the way you have to. We don’t have that experience. We're not qualified for that. You are. You guys did that perfectly combining your own skills with what we had to contribute to the project. And, it was always collective. It wasn't just what you wanted or just what we wanted. And that's why we are a team. Otherwise, it would have been us separate and you guys separate, everyone just doing their own thing. That was what makes it special.
Participatory research as an act of care
Arjana: Another thing we brought to the project is that by having young people involved as co-researchers it's easier to create relationships with participants. For example, as a participant, seeing that there was another young person doing the interview made me feel more comfortable. In my interview, the Young Researcher said to me, ‘Oh yay, I know, I can relate to this.’ And I felt understood. If it was only one professional researcher, I would feel less comfortable. I would contemplate: should I participate or not? But when you see other young people being involved, then you think, ‘Oh, they’re like me, and they trust the professional researchers, so I trust them too.’ From the participants’ point of view, it makes the university researchers more trustworthy. Because they might think, ‘The Young Researcher wouldn't do this if they didn't trust this team, so I can trust them too.’
Mirfat: This is why I think that you guys decided to get us involved as co-researchers – people who already had the experience. You wanted the participants to feel comfortable. When you guys came to us the first time, you were trying to build that trust with us and to have us share our stories together so we would feel comfortable around you.
Musharraf: We are important in making sure participants are comfortable with you and with us, because we are Young Researchers, and we actually in the system. So, they won’t feel like professionals are judging them, or professionals are taking their information. It was a good call to get us involved!
Zak: I also think it is important when we present the project to say: ‘We are not the Home Office’.4 That can make participants comfortable when we ask to interview them.
Rachel: I think that was such an important way you all suggested for starting our interviews. Since so many unaccompanied young people have had such negative, suspicious, or punitive interviews with the Home Office, it is important to say and make sure that interviews with us are different.
Gulli: You know, the Home Office, they take another question out of your answer and try to catch you up.
Mirfat: I remember they did that to me. They just want to find a reason to fail you, to not give you your papers.
Rachel: We’ve heard a lot of about unaccompanied young people’s difficult situations, with Home Office interviews but also with the care system, with children’s services, and on their migration journeys. Some of the young people we spoke with were sometimes really upset. I’ve been wondering how that was for you when we were doing the interviews.
Aisha: I was already mindful and prepared that I was expecting some emotional things. When Musharraf did a practice interview with me, at some point I did get emotional because some experiences are really traumatising. So, I know how it feels to be interviewed. I feel like that really helped us. I got asked the same questions that I’m going to ask the person. It really prepared me. I knew that I have to be strong for the participants, especially for the type of interview we are doing. If I get emotional, that will make them more emotional! So, as the interviewer I did get prepared. You know we just have to show empathy to others by giving breaks, not carrying on with the interview, or speaking another time. We just need to try to work it out.
Zak: I mean, for me, I wasn’t really coming for that. I wasn’t expecting it. But one of the things that I've learned from the research is the definition of care. So basically, care is not just a few things. Care is being a good listener and being patient. Care means having to think about what I’m going to say to a participant and what it is going to make them feel OK. Sometimes we have to step out of the interview and just carry on talking about something different for 20 minutes or half an hour and then get back to the interview. I had to skip some of the question in one of the interviews, because the time was short. Because some participants get emotional, you have to find a way to make them comfortable. I remember one time, we decided to take a break. So, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, let’s go for a smoke.’ I had my cup of tea and I said, ‘Let’s just stand here for five minutes.’ Or, if I felt like we had been sitting for a long time, I was like, ‘Can we just walk?’ We would start walking and talking.
Gulli: If you want people to be able to speak without hesitation, first, you have to do it yourself. I believe all of us co-researchers have similar experiences with the participants, if not 70%, then 50%: the same life, same situations, same process. So, whenever you ask a question, when he or she answers, we can say, ‘That happened to me too. But mine was a little bit different. Let's talk about it.’ If she says, ‘I don’t know my housing situation, the Home Office, my ID’, we can tell him a little bit about ourself so he will, or she will, see himself or herself in the same position. Then that person will be more open to you. That is better than peppering them with questions: What? How? How did it happen?
When you interview someone, having similar experiences means you can also give them a piece of advice: ‘In my opinion…’ or ‘That’s what I’ve done…’.
Rachel: That’s something I’ve really learned, and experienced, while doing interviews with all of you. I’ve witnessed how research interviews can be encounters of care, a meeting with somebody by listening and by sharing.
Mirfat: So, you’re saying that we talk too much? [laughter]
Arjana: We have an expression in my country that goes: ‘Whoever gets burned by it, let him keep it.’ So, if you think Rachel was saying ‘You talk too much’, you keep it!
[Laughter].
Rachel: Really though, it has been so important that some of you have spoken about how hard it can be to do interviews when participants raise difficult or triggering experiences. I hope that the strategies we’ve developed together have helped – like knowing you can take a break, doing interviews together and knowing you can throw the lead to the university researcher, and always reflecting together afterwards. Because of your insights, I hope I never forget to do this with anyone I work with.
‘Waking up’ through participatory research
Rachel: We've done so much together in the last four years. It’s amazing, and you’ve said a lot about what has been good about being part of the project. I'm wondering if you have anything to say about what has been challenging or hasn’t worked so well? If we think about the things that were hard, we can think about how to make them better in future or about when participatory research might not be the best approach.
Aisha: Our project has been such a great experience, even in the hard times. An example is lock down. We managed to go through it. I always think about that. The fact that we managed to do this project even in lock down. What can stop us? What? I’m telling you… Most of the interviews were online because of lockdown. In the future, I might make a change and do more in person, face-to-face. For example, we were only able to do a trial walking interview in London. It meant a lot to go to places that mean something to me. There was so much coming out while walking that when you’re sitting there you never think of. It’s always better when you see something and don’t just imagine in your head. Also, maybe I would have had more interviews with more young people and more experiences. Mostly they have the same experiences of not enough support from social services and struggles, especially with the Home Office. I’ve not heard one positive story. There is so much in common in the stories we’ve heard from unaccompanied young people, but there is always one thing that is strong and different so it would have been good to speak with more. But, that doesn’t mean we didn’t speak to a lot of young people and get everything we wanted.
Zak: I found the individual interviews very difficult. We should be trained to do these well. Because sometimes young people take you away from the interview questions. You can ask a question and they will forget about your question and jump somewhere else. You have to be able to get back into the interview guide. Sometimes it's really difficult. I feel like we should be trained more and learn more, before we start doing the individual interviews.
Mirfat: But, we’ve done that exactly! I’ve learned and adapted so much.
Zak: I remember one interview. I wasn't struggling, and I feel like I did well on the interview. But, at the same time, the participant can forget about your question. They'll tell you another story. So, you have to be careful. You can’t just carry on. You have to remember you are in the interview and get back to the questions.
Mirfat: One hundred percent. The first interviews I did were all like that. I didn't know how to find a way to get back to it. But the more we did, the better we got.
Musharraf: I was really good at asking questions, and one of the university researchers was always next to me. Before we started the interview conversation I told them, if you think I need to ask something, just jump in. And sometimes when I would ask my questions, then Lucy would step in and ask a question. There was interaction between me, Lucy, and the participant, so it was quite nice.
Rachel: I have been doing interviews for a long time and I do find what Zak mentioned to be a challenge. When you ask a participant a question, they have a story they want to share with you. And you, as a researcher, have something you want to find out about. Sometimes they are similar, but not always! One of the things some of you have said to me is that the interview doesn’t go well if we only stick to the questions we have planned, but in this research we have found if we listen to the person and we have a natural conversation, it works better.
Mirfat: The script of questions is just in case you go off the track. It’s kind of a guide. You don't have to follow everything exactly in order as long as you cover the main questions. It’s smoother.
Zak: For me, when they give me an answer, I make another question based on what they said because everyone is different. But I found it challenging. I would have liked more practice because I never interviewed people in my life before this! Sometimes it depends on the interviewee. Some people are not so easy to interview. The good thing is I think I’ve done well.
Musharraf: I didn't feel any challenges speaking with participants because all of their stories were so interesting. And I kept asking deeper questions. I improved my skills interviewing people and creating new questions from their answers. Thankfully, we didn't have a limit time. People weren’t in a rush to finish the interview so it could be two or three hours. Probably I would have struggled to ask all the questions in our guide if we felt rushed. So having enough time is really important.
Gulli: It is not a competition. Just do what you can, help with what you’ve got. It became daylight when CCoM arrived. It woke us up! We are here to help everyone out.
Aisha: Yes! It has been a great experience. To be here today and telling people about the system and making changes – I’m telling you! I’m more informed and more aware now. It improved my knowledge and I hope as well that knowledge can improve other people in life which I think it is doing already.
Conclusion
Rachel: Can I ask one last question, which is: does anybody else want to ask a question?
Musharraf: Are there any possibilities to do another research project?
Arjana: That was my question! Obviously, this research has brought up so many things. Is there any other possibility we can continue this research or one strand of it?
Afterword
Rachel Rosen
I write this afterword not because I think my co-researchers cannot speak for themselves. They can and do. Instead, their insights inspire me to reflect on some of the critiques of participatory research in the academic literature given my interest in and ongoing commitment to engaging in co-production.
First, I turn to the critique that participatory research can wind up simply obscuring the extraction which characterises much academic research, or indeed producing more complex forms of authority and inequality. Such critiques emphasise the gulf between the promises of participation’s laudable goals and its actuality given the greater demands placed on co-researchers in participatory research. These may include demands on time, personal contacts, and narrativizing oneself, as well as expectations of being particular types of participatory subjects (Gallacher and Gallagher, 2008). When I asked my co-researchers about this critique above (albeit using terms that may not have adequately captured the complexity of critiques in my effort to be relevant and accessible e.g., about ‘fake’ collaboration, check box participation, and decision-making power), I was struck by the force of their response that our research was ‘not like that’. It was not that these critiques were unfathomable, as Musharraf articulated. Many of the co-researchers had previously experienced the problems associated with purported participation. They also may have felt uncomfortable critiquing the project with me there given that I am one of the co-leads. However, they did raise other critiques (e.g., about not receiving enough training prior to doing the field work).
The strength of their reaction, I venture, is (also) a rejection of the idea that they were not influential over the course of the research. For me, this indicates that while concerns about the limits of participation are important, for co-researchers such critiques can be experienced as minimising or even dismissing their contributions. My point is not that university-based researchers should stop reflecting on the impact of our practices and to what extent our claims, or at least desires, to create more horizontal and collaborative forms of knowledge production are coming to fruition. Such reflections are crucial considering our unequal positioning with co-researchers from marginalised social groups (e.g., children and young people, those with migration experiences living in hostile border regimes), as well as inequities between co-researchers, and the stratified rewards received in participatory research (e.g., promotion, pay, etc). Instead, my point is about the complexity of making this critique without undermining contributions made by co-researchers and (inadvertently) over-emphasising the contributions of university-based researchers.
Second, at the risk of falling into a self-congratulatory trap, I have found myself thinking a lot about whether there might be something to learn from my co-researchers about what might have made participation in this project different than some of those others which they spoke about critically. One of the keys, I think, lies in Mirfat’s repetition of the fact, indeed insistence, that this was a collective project, a reflection which others concurred with strongly. This is evident in the ways that we all spoke about ‘our interviews’, even though not all the co-researchers led interviews with participants and not all co-researchers were actively involved at all points in the project. Different people made distinct contributions based on what they were able, and wanted, to do and what skills or interests they wanted to develop. In other words, I have learned that collectivity, or co-production, in participatory research does not imply that everyone must do the same thing, the same amount, and so forth (Rosen, 2023b). Importantly though, all members of our team were invited to speak, share, and ask questions regardless of whether they were university-based researchers or co-researchers. Also, we tried to move away from the expectation that only co-researchers would share experiences, a stratified practice which can vulnerabilise those who tell their stories, reproducing power hierarchies and suffering subjects in the name of ‘giving voice’ (Tuck and Yang, 2014). So, for example, when we practiced ‘care object interviews’ early on, we all brought an object that meant care to us and spoke about these.
Gulli reminds us that ‘care is love, and love is the priority’ which offers some keys to what it means to build a sense of a research collective. Indeed, Zak and Arjana speak about practicing ‘care’ together as part of the research. We have written previously about not wanting to flatten the complex and tangled experiences of participants into a ‘single story’ (Chimamanda, 2009), exemplified by a children’s services case file (Aissatou et al., 2022). It seems to me that forging relationships of care which exceed the co-researcher-researcher relationship have been an important part of forming our sense of collectivity in this project. To put this differently, we are not just researchers, and having our multiple stories met with care and concern and our secrets or silences respected have been critical to participation in this project. Part of what I want to stress here is that caring relationships work in multiple ways. So, Zak highlights the careful attention given to participants in our research, not least because of their exposure to state violence through a migration and care system that purports to protect children’s rights but in many cases produces periods of anxious waiting (Bhatia and Canning, 2021), stolen dreams (Heidbrink, 2023), and the commodification of unaccompanied children themselves (Rosen, 2024). Arjana and Musharraf speak about the care that university researchers offered to co-researchers. To this, I would highlight the care that I have received from my co-researchers, including multiple calls saying ‘I just wanted to say hi, it has been a while’ to offering to help me when I moved flats during the research. Participatory research understood in this way means that projects and relationships do not and cannot end at the points where funding stops. This requires significant effort to push back against the pressures for speed, novelty, and research ‘buy out’ which are part and parcel of the neoliberal academy and its competitive ethos. Efforts to theorise ‘caring research’, therefore, seem fruitful for deepening our understanding of participation’s promises and pitfalls, including what this means in situated research practices (Brannelly and Boulton, 2017; Shahrokh, 2023), which takes me to my next point.
Stressing that collectivity does not mean sameness is important in another way that I have learned alongside my co-researchers, exemplified by the passionate disagreements we have engaged in throughout the project. It need not be a ‘competition’, as Gulli reminds us above, but to be able to experiment with perspectives by shining a prism of light on issues from different angles has been an important part of our methodological and analytic process. For instance, as we debate above: do we develop interview skills through training, practice, or both, and what are the consequences for co-researchers’ sense of themselves and the research project? Or, to take another example which we have deliberated based on our research data: Should we understand the variations in unaccompanied young people’s treatment at the asylum-welfare nexus as an issue of luck or are discrepancies part of how the state’s hostile migration regime operates to produce destabilising feelings of despair and self-doubt? Participation and a sense of collectivity are fragile, but they do not endure ‘because of similarities [among co-researchers] or impositions of authority’ (Rosen, 2023a: 31). Instead, being able to disagree while ‘listening with respect’, as one co-researcher puts it, and to neither try to resolve debates once and for all nor stifle them seems to me to have been crucial to maintaining feelings of involvement, influence, and participation in our team.
A final point of reflection about collectivity relates to the ways in which we embraced and made CCoM a shared project of common cause. Gulli commented that, ‘It became daylight when CCoM arrived. It woke us up!’, and Aisha said it was like ‘a door opened’ because of CCoM. While I share their sentiment (at least what I interpret it to be) that being a part of this research project generated new understandings and relational ways of being, I would be inclined to frame this differently. I am less certain that the story to tell here is about an external research project bringing something to these young people by enabling their participation, as much as it is about what the project has grown into through our collective efforts. While CCoM was always concerned with building knowledge that could contribute positively to the lives of unaccompanied young people, it was through layering our experiences, perspectives, and understandings that we began to more clearly articulate the consequences of a violent state system presented as a form of ‘care’ and use this analysis to work for change. I saw this in the micro-interactions between co-researchers and participants, only a minutiae of which are described above, and in our team’s ongoing efforts to ‘do things’ with our findings. Perhaps then, I am suggesting that participation for participation’s sake is not sufficient for addressing relations of power and inequality in knowledge production, nor is it always the best approach to research. But, when participatory research projects take on and develop opportunities for building common cause and standing together across difference in the face of injustice, they can be a potent form of solidarity (Mohanty, 2003).
