Being Human and “Hanging Out”: Mutuality,Trust,and “Voice” in Youth Participatory Research

Abstract

Reflexively drawing on my experiences as a young researcher conducting collaborative research with young people from migrant backgrounds in rural Australia, this paper brings a critical lens to participatory or co-designed research processes with youth. Drawing on learnings from three relationships with young people involved, I explore some of the ethical complexities of participatory processes with young people, the nature of voice and listening, trust and reciprocity, and knowledge co-production. I argue that paradigms of youth participation and co-design should involve more than sharing projects. They should also involve sharing processes of co-imagining and co-creating accessible, ethical, enjoyable, and realistic forms of participation with young people—which vary across communities, places, and over time. Further, I explore what might be possible, in these processes, if we move beyond “word-centric” approaches to knowledge, “voice”, and connection, and learn to listen with our whole selves. What new insights might emerge when we recognise participatory processes and voice itself as co-created, co-creative, and mutually transformative?

Introduction

In Australia and internationally, there is growing interest in facilitating youth participation and “youth voice” around and issues that affect young lives (Centre for Multicultural Youth [CMY], 2023; Foundation for Young Australians [FYA], 2023; Hadfield & Haw, 2001; Multicultural Youth Advocacy Network [MYAN], 2018; Office of the Advocate for Children and Young People [ACYP], 2015, 2019, VicHealth, 2023). There has been a proliferation of research for researchers and practitioners seeking to successfully implement participatory and co-designed projects with young people, driven by an ethical-methodological imperative to get these processes right (ACYP, 2020; Young and Resilient Research Centre [YRRC], 2023).

Following education and disability scholars, I approach participatory and co-designed research with the understanding that all people have the capacity to skillfully communicate their views and experiences (Cook-Sather, 2002; Edwards et al., 1998; Jenkin et al., 2020; Hadfield & Haw, 2001), and that “it us up to us [researchers and practitioners] to find ways of understanding [these] views and experiences”—especially those that have historically been excluded for speaking differently (Morris, 2003, p. 346).

Drawing reflexively from my experiences working in partnership with young people in Australia to explore everyday wellbeing, this paper offers a critical perspective on the limitations of participatory research and co-design paradigms which emphasise ideals of shared decision making and articulate advocacy (Jackson & Mazzei, 2009; Pascal & Bertram, 2009; Ungunmerr-Baumann et al., 2022).

The paper begins with an introduction to key concepts of voice, trust, and listening, in participatory research. I then provide a brief overview of key ethical-methodological approaches to knowledge co-creation informing this paper, including Ungunmerr-Baumann and colleagues’ exploration of deep listening, or “Dadirri”. Following an outline of the research methodology and the positionalities of those involved, I provide a brief account of how young people shaped processes of participation in this research. I move on to discuss three relationships with youth in the project and the ethical-methodological learnings that emerged from them.

Firstly, discussing my relationship with Saw Hser, I explore the possibilities for researcher learning and mutual trust that emerge when researchers strive to connect with young people and hear their voices on young people’s own terms (Hadfield & Haw, 2001; Swartz, 2011). Secondly, discussing my relationship with Dhriti, I explore the ethical implications around young people’s involvement in participatory youth initiatives in complex, relational community contexts. Thirdly, discussing my relationship with Atong and Nyalauk, I explore what mutual trust, encouragement, and support can look like in research conducted among young people. Ultimately, I invite readers to consider how our voices and learning can be mutually shaped and relationally enabled together with those of the young people we work with, through shared experiences over time.

On “Voice”

Following Chadwick (2020), I conceptualise voice as a fundamentally relational phenomenon that emerges in, of, and between complex sociomaterial relations rather than an inherent property of individual, bounded bodies. Voice may be expressed through (intra)actions, artistic representations, verbal articulation, silence, or other ways of being in and moving through the world (Chadwick, 2020; Jackson & Mazzei, 2009). While a review of existing literature on voice is beyond the scope of this paper, I direct readers to Chadwick’s (2020) outline of key theoretical developments around voice and productive “troubling” of the concept in qualitative research.

Rather than centring voice, this paper addresses a need to build researcher and practitioner understandings of what it means to open our ears, our hearts, and minds, indeed our whole selves to listen to young people, well (Bragg, 2001; Hadfield & Haw, 2001; Pascal & Bertram, 2009; Rodriguez-Jimenez & Gifford, 2010; Stride et al., 2022).

Trusting Over Time

Increasingly, researchers are turning to methodologies of knowledge co-production to work with young people and communities as experts in their own lives and experiences. Genuinely co-produced research cannot be pre-defined, and continually emerges through dynamic, situated relationships in ways we cannot predict or hurry. Further, evolving and reciprocal processes of trusting, sharing, co-learning (Armstrong et al., 2022; Palmer et al., 2020) and even co-becoming (Möllering, 2013; Ungunmerr-Baumann et al., 2022) are central to—indeed perhaps constitutive of—these relationships. Participatory processes and trusting relationships are continuously co-created between people, communities, and environments, so that we cannot know how they may look in the future. Yet, it is this sense of a shared future (and past/s) which is central to our ability to create something together, over time (Armstrong et al., 2022; Palmer et al., 2020). Reflecting on such processes of ongoing co-negotiation through uncertainty towards shared aims, Blacksher and colleagues have called for researchers to see themselves as “explorers together”, side by side with communities (2016).

Following Blacksher and colleagues (2016) in recognising that trustworthiness must be demonstrated, through actions, by researchers to those with whom we work, I agree with Armstrong and colleagues’ conceptualisation of trust as continually, precariously “[re]negotiated” over time and “continually on trial… contingent on how researchers and community partners respon[d] to all circumstances and resources” (2022, p. 1011; see also Jagosh et al., 2015). I also agree with Swartz who has emphasised the need for “mutuality or an intentional ethics of reciprocation in research” where researchers respect and trust young people as experts in their own lives and as capable co-producers of knowledge (2011, p. 56, see also Stride et al., 2022).

Researchers seeking to work with young people must also be willing to reciprocate some of the sharing that we ask of those involved in our research (Swartz, 2011). Indeed, Armstrong and colleagues have highlighted how this can assist in building a sense of shared enterprise, shared history and future among those co-creating knowledge (2022). However, researchers should ultimately be guided by the wishes of those with whom they work, and the unique relational contexts of research, when making decisions around when, and what, to share (Armstrong et al., 2022; Berger, 2001).

Learning to Listen

Education and disability scholars have criticised research approaches that listen only to voices that are convenient to hear and speak when invited to do so, on the terms of researchers. They have urged researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to learn to listen to the diversity of ways children and youth are already expressing themselves and participating in their everyday social and political lives (Fitzgerald et al., 2021; Hadfield & Haw, 2001; Jenkin et al., 2020; Malone & Hartung, 2009; Morris, 2003; Pascal & Bertram, 2009; Vromen & Collin, 2010). Agreeing with Morris, I call for researchers and youth practitioners to work against existing “extreme form[s] of social exclusion” whereby some children and young people are not recognized as capable of communicating, and instead, to recognize all children and young people as capable communicators (2003, p. 346).

Such efforts require researchers to look beyond one-size-fits-all approaches to voice and listening and move past preoccupations with listening for quotable voices as good “data” (Bragg, 2001; Jackson & Mazzei, 2009). We must also recognize the limitations of our own understandings of communication as verbal and articulate, what is in/appropriate, and work through our discomfort at sitting in silence, not knowing the best way forwards, and allowing our practice to be guided by those with whom we seek to learn (Morris, 2003; Stride et al., 2022).

Fox has challenged approaches to participatory youth research where “young people are expected to take part in ways adults feel are appropriate and possible”, for failing to adapt to youth needs, priorities, and interests (2013, p. 996). Such approaches perpetuate modes of participation which lack relevance to many young people and further entrench existing inequalities where the voices of young people who benefit the most from existing institutional structures are often the loudest (Fox, 2013; see also Finneran et al., 2023; Vromen & Collin, 2010).

Following Fox, youth researchers have suggested a range of narrative, creative, and arts-based methods which may enable more accessible, relevant, and enjoyable opportunities for young people’s participation in research (Fitzgerald et al., 2021; Stride et al., 2022). Indeed, Lohmeyer has conceptualized participatory youth research as “parallel projects” where everyone involved, including researchers, can be considered as a participant with their own aims and agenda—their own project—that intersects with the projects of others involved (Lohmeyer, 2020). This approach can support researchers to invite research to be shaped by those with whom we work (Swartz, 2011), in the understanding that terms of participation should be co-created.

Breathing Together

Increasingly, youth and community researchers have emphasised ongoing processes of trusting as central to knowledge co-production as an inherently relational, reciprocal process (Enright & O’Sullivan, 2012; Pascal & Bertram, 2009; Stride et al., 2022). Indeed, Morris has argued that “being with’ [children and young people] is an appropriate method for gathering information about their experiences”; indeed, sometimes more appropriate than more traditional methods’ (2003, p. 346).

Beuthin (2014) has invited researchers to surrender to becoming “stuck” in the moment in dialogue, to “breathe deeply” and open ourselves to new ways of understanding our research, and the world. Drawing from Beuthin, I conceptualise co-presence as complete absorption in the shared moment and connection with the other person/s present, and something that is essential to meaningful knowledge co-creation (Beuthin, 2014; Ungunmerr-Baumann, 2017).

While a growing body of youth research recognises co-presence as essential to our ability to hear youth voices, a sense of visceral discomfort and researcher anxiety frequently prevails in the existing literature. Such unease emerges from friction between analytical, silence-averse, individually reflexive, verbal data-oriented researcher ways of being and the uncertainty, silence, and relational being-in-the-moment required for genuinely co-produced research and the trusting relationships that enable it (Beuthin, 2014; Fitzgerald et al., 2021; Stride et al., 2022). Beuthin’s description of her experience of knowledge co-production as “breathing in the mud” (2014), Fitzgerald and colleagues” account of “muddling through” (2021) and Stride and colleagues’ language of “messy encounter[s]” encapsulates this embodied, affective sense of struggle in attempting to balance these conflicting ways of being. Indeed, as the co-production of knowledge is fundamentally relational, affective, and even existential, the researcher’s state of being during research has a profound impact on research outcomes, as well as processes (Beuthin, 2014).

Therefore, there is a need for researchers to find ways of being fully, meaningfully, present and well during the co-production of knowledge, rather than consumed by our own internal struggles. I turn to Ungunmerr-Baumann and colleagues’ conceptualisation of “Dadirri” as a research methodology that can meaningfully support researchers to be with those with whom they co-produce research, finding stillness in recognising “there is nothing more important than what we are attending to”, and finding presence in the environment they share (2022). A methodology and way of life from the Nauiyu community and Ngan’gikurunggkurr people in the Daly River region in northern Australia, Dadirri involves a cyclical, relational, and reciprocal process of listening, reflecting, feeling, learning, and trusting grounded on Country and in community: “the art of being present, being still, connecting with yourself and the environment in such a profound way that it creates space for deep relationships (Ungunmerr-Baumann, 2017; Ungunmerr-Baumann et al., 2022). Emphasising the importance of “surrendering” control and being relationally in the moment, Dadirri enables processes of co-creating new ways of understanding and being in the world that are mutually beneficial for those involved (Ungunmerr-Baumann et al., 2022, p. 99).

Methodology

This paper emerged from research on everyday “wellbeing” with young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds (hereafter “migrant”), living in regional and rural (hereafter “rural”) Victoria, Australia. Conducted from 2021–2023, the research drew from ethnographic and participatory methods including “photovoice” (Vaughan & Khaw, 2021; Wang & Burris, 1997; Woodgate et al., 2017). While the research was not designed based on principles of Dadirri, insights presented in this paper resonate with principles of deep listening and awareness, trust, and reciprocity central to Ungunmerr-Baumann et al. (2022) conceptualisation of Dadirri as a methodology. As such, the paper draws from Dadirri to support analysis.

Ethics approval was obtained from The University of Melbourne (Project ID: 21316). Initial written consent and ongoing verbal consent was obtained from young people who participated in the research. Pseudonyms have been used to protect their privacy.

Due to funding requirements and the logistical constraints associated with PhD research, key parameters of the project were determined by the researcher rather than through participatory or co-designed processes. These included the broad research question, “what did young people experience as helpful or conducive to experiences of positive wellbeing?”, the project’s geographic area, demographic group, and methodological approach. In two rural communities, I sought participants aged 15–25 who had grown up in families or households where an additional language (other than English) was spoken. Although the research did not have a linguistic focus, these recruitment criteria recognised the importance of English language to migrant experiences in the Australian context (D’Warte, 2021; Dryden & Dovchin, 2021; Sinkeviciute, 2020) and brought together groups of young people with some shared similarities across their varied lived experiences. While most young people in the study had backgrounds of forced migration, they preferred to be described as having “migrant” rather than “refugee” backgrounds. Guided by their wishes and supported by migration scholars who have called into question the accuracy and ethics of research perpetuating shifting distinctions between “migrants” and “refugees”, (Bakewell, 2008), which often supports discriminatory structures against forced migration (Klocker et al., 2021), I have described all young people in the research as having “migrant” backgrounds.

Following 6 months of relationship building involving attendance at community and youth events and meetings with stakeholders, I worked with two groups of seven young people, meeting once or twice monthly from June 2022 to February 2023. One group was based on Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung Country, in Ballaarat. While this place name is commonly spelled as “Ballarat”, this paper employs the original Wadawurrung spelling (Australian Broadcasting Coorporation [ABC], 2019; Clark et al., 2014; Harold & Luise, 2009; Williamson, 2023). The growing regional city has a population of 113,000 people, where over 24% of the population had at least one parent born overseas (2021 Australian Census).

All seven young people in this group lived in town with their parent/s and often referred to themselves as “multicultural”, perhaps influenced by the language of local youth and settlement services. Six group members aged 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, and 16 identified as female, including one who also identified as part of the Queer community, and one, aged 15, identified as male. Four referred to themselves as “Sudo”, meaning South Sudanese and spoke Nuer with their families. One referred to herself as Asian Australian and spoke Mandarin, and one identified as Nepalese and spoke Nepali. All group members had lived in Australia for 10 years or more, and two had been born in Australia.

Group meetings were usually held in the evening after work, often attended by 3–5 group members due to young people’s limited availability. Pre-existing friendships and relationships fostered a casual, intimate, and often light-hearted atmosphere, as all young people in this group had at least one pre-existing relationship with another person involved in the project. Often, everyone in the room identified as female. Several young women described group meetings themselves as “good for [their] wellbeing”, as a quiet, “chill” space to “reflect” and connect with friends as well as some new people. With the consent of all present, I recorded most discussions with this group, except where commencing recording would have disrupted the flow of spontaneous conversations.

The second group was based in a small town on Wotjobaluk, Wergaia, Jupagalk, Jaadwa and Jadawadjali Country (hereafter “Wotjobaluk”), in the Wimmera region of Victoria. The town had a population of under 3000 including a growing Karen ¹ community (2021 Australian Census). Three young people in this group, aged 21, 20, and 16, identified as male, and four, aged 25, 18, 16, and 15, identified as female. All identified as Karen and spoke S’Gaw Karen at home. All had lived in Australia for five years or more. The oldest group member sometimes took on a facilitating role during group discussion.

Meetings usually occurred in the late afternoon after school and were often attended by 3–5 young people involved due to limited availability across the group. All group members had at least one pre-existing relationship with another person involved in the project and shared a degree of familiarity with all group members due the close-knit nature of the local Karen community. With my encouragement, they often spoke in Karen during group meetings before relaying, in English, the details that they wanted to share with me.

While the atmosphere in initial meetings—held indoors due to poor weather—was awkward and halting, the group dynamic gradually warmed along with the weather as we were able to meet outdoors on Country, where the group felt more at ease. I also attribute this shift to a strengthening group rapport, facilitated by a range of group activities (see below). Due to the relative dis-ease of early group meetings, I did not record initial discussions and instead took limited notes during meetings and detailed noted following meetings. I chose to maintain this approach throughout my work with the group, to avoid disrupting the sense of ease that developed over time.

Research Activities

Initial project meetings, designed to help build rapport, shared aims and expectations for the project, involved photography workshops and the co-creation of “group agreement” contracts outlining key shared values and relational responsibilities to support an inclusive, enjoyable group dynamic. In subsequent meetings, I ran photovoice training sessions where we discussed ethical considerations around photography-based research (Golden, 2020; Hannes & Parylo, 2014; Sutton-Brown, 2014).

Over nine months, we undertook a range of activities to enable trust-building, knowledge sharing and co-creation. These including photography, writing, drawing, mind mapping, graphing, on-the-spot polls, Instagram scrolling, whole group discussions, small group and paired conversations, sharing meals and picnics, spending time in nature, bushwalking, and generally “hanging out” (Armstrong et al., 2022; Blacksher et al., 2016; Robards & Lincoln, 2017; Stride et al., 2022). Striving to encourage, and hear, the voices of all involved, I invited each group to think about what helped them be well in the world, and express themselves in ways that felt comfortable, including through art, diagrams, and writing (Bragg, 2001; Fox, 2013; Stride et al., 2022).

Most sessions started with organic conversation as group members discussed what was happening in their lives. If the conversation was in English, I sometimes asked questions about topics that arose. If the conversation was in Karen, I asked about moments of heightened emotion (usually laughter or excitement). Then, I invited anyone who wished to share a photograph/s to do so, sometimes prompting with questions around why they took the photographs, what they showed, and how they related to wellbeing. The photographer’s phone, displaying their photograph/s, was typically passed around the group as the photographer shared their thoughts, prompting organic discussion. Sometimes, no one wanted to share photos and we simply “hung out”, played Jenga ² or went to the park. Other times, youth in the project sent me photos and comments over text or email instead. (Lohmeyer, 2020; Stride et al., 2022).

Following some explanation and encouragement—some young people involved had never been to an art gallery or photography exhibition— both groups decided to conclude the project with a “photovoice” exhibition in their local communities, which we held in February 2023. I encouraged group members to each select 3–5 works guided by topics or issues related to their wellbeing they wished to share with their local community, and to produce brief written “blurbs” explaining the significance of their images.

This paper is based on audio recordings and notes from group meetings, notes from a research journal I kept recording my own experiences of research processes, and my affective responses that emerged as I revisited this data.

Meg (the Researcher)

Relationships play a central role in shaping—indeed, constituting—qualitative research processes and outcomes, particularly where participatory processes are used (Armstrong et al., 2022; Fresnoza-Flot & Cheung, 2023). Here, I briefly outline my own positionality in relation to young people involved in this research, and how I understand this to have shaped our work together.

I identify as mixed race and often experience an “ambiguous racial position” (Kamp, 2021, p. 72; see also Leboeuf, 2020), although I am often perceived as somewhat Asian. I was raised by my White mother and am fluent only in English. Aged 24–25 during this research, I was, by local definitions and by many international definitions, a “young person”. On Wotjobaluk Country, community members from a range of backgrounds—although rarely those from Karen backgrounds—sometimes assumed I was Karen.

Born and raised in Ballaarat, I had pre-existing connections to local “multicultural” organisations from my time as a service user, work experience student, volunteer, and employee. These organisations had played a role catalysing the research scholarship facilitating my research. However, to the young people I worked with, it wasn’t particularly relevant that I was a researcher—that identity had little significance in their experience of the world. I was Meg, another young person and student asking them to share their time and photos with our group, for my project.

Following Swartz, I invited young people involved to ask questions of me throughout the research, particularly questions relating to my work, the research topic and processes. I provided brief answers to all questions I felt were appropriate, elaborating where they expressed interest in hearing more. Like Swartz, I felt that my own sharing helped enable young people in the research to be “open” with me and feel “free to talk” (2011, p. 57; see also Armstrong et al., 2022; Berger, 2001).

Co-created Processes of Participation

Initially meeting young people who had agreed to be involved in a “photovoice project”, I felt ethically bound to explain what “photovoice” could look like, emphasizing how we would share the project, and they could consider themselves “co-researchers”. I thought this transparency was vital to fostering trust.

However, young people involved in this research did not allow me to impose on them my own idea of what ethical participatory or co-designed research involved. They participated in, directed, and owned the project when and how they wanted to. They were often too busy with other priorities to take an active role deliberately directing the project, and ultimately recognised that they didn’t have the resources to drive it. They wanted me to do this emotional and logistical work (Rodriguez-Jimenez & Gifford, 2010).

When my idea of our project didn’t align with their own vision for our time together, they simply didn’t attend or stay engaged. Thus, they encouraged me to incorporate, into our work together, their own priorities and parallel projects (Lohmeyer, 2020). They demonstrated their preference for activities that supported their social and emotional wellbeing, such as spending time outside or with friends in the group, “having fun”, trying “something new”, and “meeting new people”. Many forgot to take photos. Instead, they showed me photos from their camera rolls or included me in their discussion of photographs from social media. In this way, they continually shaped and re-shaped the research process.

As we shared time, Country, food, and experiences (Blacksher et al., 2016; Palmer et al., 2020; Ungunmerr-Baumann et al., 2022), young people in this research gradually expressed—with their time, with their bodies, their silences and, increasingly, with words—information about their lives and wellbeing.

Saw Hser

Saw Hser was the most consistent attendee at group meetings and activities on Wotjobaluk Country. Below is my field journal reflection on when I first met Saw Hser, aged 20, at a “community information session” with “free food and board games” for young people as part of my recruitment process:

…as well as simply being “shy” and not wanting to speak much to me in English, Saw Hser also had difficulty understanding me. But, when [a local interpreter and a cultural worker who were present] spoke with him they told me he wanted to be involved in the project. …I think they are keen to see him… become involved. Saw Hser reads Karen. He read the translated community information document, and [the cultural worker] took him through the English Plain Language Statement. Saw Hser wanted to complete the consent form, which [the cultural worker] took him through. (June, 2022).

Following this, I had a conversation with Saw Hser using a telephone interpreting service. When I asked if he really wanted to be involved, he told me he did, and he understood what the project was about and what being involved meant, and he didn’t have any questions. He agreed to have a few “check-in” phone interpreted conversations with me over the course of the project.

I felt ethically confused. How did I know he genuinely wanted to be part of it and wasn’t feeling pressured, or obligated? How would I be able to do the whole knowledge co-creation thing with him if I didn’t understand his thoughts or feelings? I was struck by my inability to interpret his body language and physical cues just as much, perhaps more, than my trouble understanding him when he did speak. It seemed, to me, that we found each other mutually unintelligible. What must I look like to him? Full of words but unable to understand him. Anxious. Hanging onto every word he said like it mattered when maybe it simply didn’t, or maybe something else mattered more.

But perhaps Saw Hser wasn’t as preoccupied with my concerns and priorities as I was with his.

It took me a while to see that Saw Hser was using the research to pursue his own opportunities and priorities. Because of this, his participation was perhaps more in the spirit of collaborative project design and co-production than anyone else’s.

Saw Hser often seemed to become uncomfortable whenever I tried to engage him in conversation with a direct question, or during sedentary activities, or if I stood perhaps too close (at the same distance that worked well for the rest of the group). He indicated this by ceasing talking, or breaking off any fleeting eye contact that he had sustained, or becoming more agitated with his fidgeting, or stepping back from me.

After a couple of months, I realised perhaps our mode of interaction could be different to what I had planned, and perhaps that was ok. Perhaps we could just share the space, share an appreciation for the beautiful Country we were on (Ungunmerr-Baumann et al., 2022), the food we were having, or the photographs we were looking at.

Loud and Clear: Beyond Words

Saw Hser didn’t feel the need to do what was expected of him. Or, if he did, he didn’t let it dictate his actions. When I ran group activities in the park, he joined for as long as he wanted before going over to the playground. When I tried to have a conversation with him, sometimes he engaged and sometimes he refused. Yet he was usually the first to come and the last to leave our activities. Sometimes, he helped me pack up afterwards. His actions clearly conveyed his priorities and his commitment to our group.

I tried to let Saw Hser know that I supported him and took his views seriously, by showing that I cared about in the things that seemed to interest him, by going over to say hello, and by ensuring he was included in decisions, which I invited the group to discuss in Karen.

Other group members or the local interpreter and cultural worker, who were sometimes present according to the wishes of the group (who I consulted about this both individually and together), sometimes interpreted for us. Those who knew him well were able to draw from their longstanding relationships with him to synthesise his non-verbal and verbal cues into meanings.

I also communicated with Saw Hser via phone text messages in simple English, including him in a group messaging list which I used to invite the group to “hang out”. Despite my initial concern his one-word replies of “ok” might mean he didn’t understand my texts, he came along at the right time and place consistently and independently.

However, my conscience drove me to maintain a confidential, in-language form of communication with Saw Hser via telephone interpreting services, to try and clarify the stories behind the photos he shared, to make logistical arrangements for our activities and to maintain clarity around his continued consent to participate. These conversations were poorly suited to communicating with him. We couldn’t read each other’s body language or pass photos around, point to specific features in them. More importantly, perhaps, over the phone we couldn’t share an activity or experience. The only times he sought out verbal conversation with me were when we were outside, walking or taking photos. Indeed, as Morris (2003) found, it was generally true that the group spoke and interacted much more freely when they were doing another activity besides discussion, preferably something outdoors.

Along the way I realised that I was getting to know Saw Hser, maybe in his way more than my way. Or maybe, somewhere between our ways of knowing.

It was the time I spent “hanging out” with Saw Hser, listening deeply with my eyes, ears, and my whole self, and sitting in silence (which became less awkward as I remembered it wasn’t all about me), that allowed me to gain a sense of his voice (Ungunmerr-Baumann et al., 2022). I might have failed to recognise, and trust, the agency and skill with which he communicated his views and preferences (Swartz, 2011). I hope that sharing this relational learning might support researchers and practitioners working with young people to hear differently, holistically, and open themselves to the voices of young people whose communication styles differ from their own (Morris, 2003).

On “Translation” and Being Heard

Research that seeks to produce social change faces the challenge of translating the voices it seeks to make heard, into languages which can be heard and understood by—and ideally move– those in positions of power (Campbell et al., 2010; see also Finneran et al., 2023; Jackson, 2003). Perhaps the biggest ethical dilemma I faced with Saw Hser was how to translate his voice into a language that would be accessible for the audience of our community photovoice exhibition. Saw Hser wanted his work displayed under his real name, something which I took as an indication he wanted to have his voice heard. I did not have the resources or expertise necessary to work with him on producing a video or other artistic representation of the ideas and experiences behind his photographs, and the local art gallery would not have had the capacity to accommodate this. I felt we needed to produce some text to accompany Saw Hser’s images.

I knew that Saw Hser didn’t like writing; we’d done a few activities involving writing and/or drawing and he had chosen to do neither. In a similar process to what I’d used for group activities, I came up with a few different levels of involvement and asked Saw Hser which one he would like to do, if any. This avoided asking him open-ended questions which I believe he generally experienced as stressful.

After some clarification, we agreed that we would use our phone calls to draft some dot points about his photos. I would write the dot points based on what he said, and read them back to him at the end of each call for him to check. I would then produce some written “blurbs” about his photos for the exhibition, using the information from the dot points. I would send these back to him and make sure he had the support of an interpreter or trusted person to explain what I had written to him, for his final approval before the exhibition.

Using quotes from a young person to represent their “voice as evidence” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2009, p. 4) remains the ideal which I have internalised as perhaps the most faithful testament to a person’s views and experiences. I have learned to gloss over the necessary interpretation and interference that I undertake when I quote a young person; re-presenting their worded “voice” outside the context in which it was co-produced. In contrast, I scrutinised and problematised the processes which led me to my written interpretation of Saw Hser’s “voice”. Yet on reflection, are both processes not a form of translation?

I am able to (continually) justify my “translation” of Saw Hser’s voice, with the knowledge that the alternative would have been to deny the voice of someone who wanted his ideas included in our exhibition, and a failure to recognise his ability to communicate; both clear forms of social exclusion (Morris, 2003).

Dhriti

Dhriti favoured an informal tone in our interactions and included me in her language of “us” and “we” in group meetings. She also used the same informal language (including swear words) with me as everyone else, asked me questions about my life, and teased me about my short height.

At the same time, Dhriti seemed exactly the kind of young person that fits right into the roles that researchers, youth teams, and service providers set aside for youth representatives or co-researchers. Articulate, assertive, and opinionated, she had views and accounts of her own lived experience on the tip of her tongue, ready to parcel up for collection by people like me (Cook-Sather, 2002; Fitzgerald et al., 2021). She spoke the “palatable” language of youth participation, and because of it her voice has been championed across various local, state-wide and national platforms (Finneran et al., 2023, p. 2).

That’s the problem.

The list of youth reference groups, advisory bodies, leadership roles, working groups, and other “youth” opportunities that Dhriti was juggling during my project was enormous. Stressed during her experience of year 11 and daunted by the prospect of year 12 the following year, what little of Dhriti’s time that wasn’t taken up by schoolwork, community commitments, and three casual jobs was taken up by mental-health related appointments, which she joked was her only “hobby”. She often couldn’t come to our group meetings and dropped out of contact after the first few meetings.

I caught up with her for coffee in the beginning of 2023, in time for her to join in for our exhibition. I did not arrange the meeting as a recorded interview because I was concerned that the perceived formality of this format might disrupt her usual informal style of interacting with me (Beuthin, 2014; Rutakumwa et al., 2020). Additionally, I had not been able to maintain an ongoing conversation around informed consent and participation with Dhriti and felt it would be ethically problematic to ask her for an interview 4 months since I had last seen her, during which time her circumstances may have changed. Instead, I asked her if it would be ok if I took some notes as she spoke, and she agreed.

In the café, Dhriti told me with a combination of pride and chagrin that last year she had she “survived year 11 with a 25% attendance rate”. Although it had been plain to see that Dhriti had been struggling to maintain all her commitments, I had not realised that her ability to attend school had been so severely compromised. I was a little surprised and hoped that my project hadn’t which contributed to this concerning rate, although I knew that it must have, being yet another a demand on her time. This interaction also made me question, in a new way, the ethics of youth leadership systems which essentially headhunt individuals like Dhriti to serve as representatives for other young people supposedly “like them” (Finneran et al., 2023).

Ethics in Shared Contexts

Researchers and practitioners have recognised that participation in research is often more accessible to young people who benefit the most from existing institutional structures and approaches, who may be asked to represent “youth” as a group (Chabot et al., 2012; Finneran et al., 2023; Fox, 2013; Vromen & Collin, 2010). This carries risks of misrepresentation as a select few, specific voices may be held to represent “youth” as a homogenised whole while other voices are overlooked (Finneran et al., 2023; Hadfield & Haw, 2001). It also results in disproportionate pressure and demands being placed on this group, who may not feel able to say “no”. Indeed, this may be especially true for young people driven by a sense of social justice, for whom failing to “speak up” or accept the “seat at the table” might be experienced with a sense of guilt or even moral failure. Further, in the broader context of an educational system that lauds extra-curricular enrichment activities and leadership experience, the experience of any real ”choice” to become involved in participatory research (or not) may be limited, particularly for “high achievers” (Fitzgerald et al., 2021, p. 427), including those whose parents migrated in pursuit of better opportunities for their children.

Moreover, researchers, youth workers, and service providers often rely on these young people to sustain and legitimate projects like the current study, through their participation and involvement. All of us—young people, service providers, and researchers—understand that if this cohort don’t help us out, our projects run the risk of failure or simply not happening at all. Young people who understand this, and have a strong commitment to youth representation, may feel they have little option but to say “yes” when asked to participate.

The centrality of relationships to this work cannot be underestimated, particularly in regional and rural areas where the same youth workers regularly organise and attend events, activities, and programs for young people. Someone like Dhriti, who regularly attends youth events, may not want to risk damaging her relationship with youth workers by refusing to take part in “opportunities” they promote, especially in small communities where they may be aware of how and where she chooses to spend her time.

When I saw Dhriti in 2023, I emphasised that she should not feel obliged to continue her involvement, given how busy she was, but she was adamant that youth wellbeing was a topic she was passionate about, and she wanted to continue. However, while she seemed theoretically interested in exploring ideas around wellbeing together with other young people, she simply hadn’t had the capacity to attend regular group meetings, which were now finished.

She advised me that after our discussion, she would need me to give her some concrete tasks to facilitate her involvement in a contained, accessible way. I asked her to send me five to ten of her favourite photos for the exhibition, and some accompanying text. I provided some written guidance and suggested prompts for the writing task. In the end, she did not have time to produce written work to accompany her photographs. I eventually realized, over a phone conversation, that she – among others – had seen it as part of my role as a researcher to produce this text. She did not want to take on the task of writing it herself as she already had enough to do.

Wishing to avoid perpetuating inaccessible systems of participation where researchers fail to “meet young people halfway” (Fox, 2013, p. 996), and instead seeking to support Dhriti to participate “on her own terms” (Swartz, 2011, p. 60; see also hooks, 1990), I decided to allow the research strategy to be shaped by Dhriti and follow her wishes. I tried my best to produce the text, drawing from my notes, which contained few substantive quotes from Dhriti because of the informal nature of our meetings and my prioritization of being present during these interactions. With a few anchoring few key phrases, I was guided by the experiences, emotions, and ideas that she had communicated to me with her body, her verbal expression and tone in the café.

I wrote some brief paragraphs which I emailed for her to check over and change if needed. She corrected some details that I had misinterpreted, and gave the following feedback in her reply:

Thank you so much for writing this for me. I think they’re all written up really well honestly don’t think I could have done it better. …I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to write it myself and you had to do it. Please let me know if you need anything else.

I found myself questioning how much Dhriti had really been able to gain from the whole process. And again, I was left doubting the heightened value I have been taught to place on intact, complete quotes from participants, rather than the knowledge that emerges from our shared discussions in fragments, spontaneously, iteratively, and always in the context of “being with” each other (Morris, 2003, p. 346).

Atong and Nyalauk

Atong and Nyalauk, close friends who from Ballaarat, were in their early twenties—only a few years younger than me. At one of our meetings, they were discussing, amongst themselves, photographs of a young man on Instagram who they both found attractive. Atong tried to bring me into the conversation, moving to show me the picture in a moment of giggles. She responded with surprise when Nyalauk pointed out that this person might be too young for me. She “didn’t realise”, or had forgotten, that I was older than them. At any rate, we agreed our difference in age was, still, “not a big gap”.

Atong and Nyalauk could both drive, had access to a car, worked and studied to enter their chosen professions. Like the rest of the group and myself, both lived at home with their parent/s in Ballaarat during the project. They both knew that they wanted to start their own families someday.

To a certain extent, I saw both women as more conventionally “adult” than myself because they saw clear social roles for themselves in the future as nurses, beauticians, mothers, and wives, while I didn’t. I was able to connect with them with little concern for the inequities caused by differences in age.

Mutuality Among Young People

Much of the existing academic literature on facilitating youth participation is clearly targeted at “adults”, people too old to be recognised as peers by young people (Hadfield & Haw, 2001; Stride et al., 2022). As we see more young people like Dhriti emerge during an apparent golden era of youth “co-research” and “co-design” processes (Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies [CRIS], 2022; see also ACYP, 2015, 2019, FYA, 2023; MYAN, 2018; Victorian Government, 2023; Yanar et al., 2016), there is a need to recognise that “youth” fulfil a range of professional and voluntary roles in youth participatory or co-designed projects. There is, further, a growing need to recognise the unique experiences of young researchers or facilitators, and their relationships with the young people they work with. How might research relationships, activities, and conversations benefit from these new understandings?

Atong and Nyalauk – indeed, much of the Ballaarat group – could see that I often felt awkward and unsure how to work with a group who were more my peers rather than the less-powerful “youth” often assumed in methodological literature (Swartz, 2011). During meetings, Atong and Nyalauk regularly helped me feel safe to express myself in imperfect words, reassuring me that this was a supportive and inclusive environment for discussion. This was the exchange that followed when I paused after starting to ask a question:

Atong: go for it, don’t be shy –

Nyalauk: yep [encouragingly]

Meg: I wanna ask you questions that it’s not like a yes or no answer but this one kind of is, sorry.

Atong: We’ll expand on it.

They reminded me that dialogue is truly a collaborative, mutual process (Frank, 2005) of emotional exchange, connection, and transformation (Beuthin, 2014; Blacksher et al., 2016; Swartz, 2011; Ungunmerr-Baumann et al., 2022). Indeed, over the course of our time together, some young people in the project expressed that they “f[elt] more confident” because of their involvement with the group. Nyalauk shared that felt more able to recognise her own expertise about wellbeing, that she “knew a lot more about wellbeing than [she] thought [she] did”. Just as I saw some young people in the research develop more confidence in their own knowledge and abilities as they were supported to reflect and share during the research, I also saw my own confidence in my facilitation skills grow. As I became more confident to sit in silence, trust the young people involved, and learn together, group discussions became easier (Armstrong et al., 2022; Ungunmerr-Baumann, et al., 2022).

The mutual encouragement, trust, confidence- and capacity-building co-created between young people and myself in this research ultimately shaped how, and what, young people chose to communicate, as they gradually came to share more freely and spontaneously, exploring ideas or flights of fancy together, laughing more (Armstrong et al., 2022; Stride et al., 2022; Swartz, 2011; Ungunmerr-Baumann et al., 2022). Moreover, these young people also shaped my own voice and aspirations, both within and beyond the scope of the research we shared, driving me to explore participatory processes as a central part of my work (Beuthin, 2014).

Beyond the Paper

In this paper, I have provided three in-depth accounts of relational processes in youth research, to build on a growing body of literature exploring researcher and practitioner experiences and learnings from meaningful participatory processes with young people.

My relationships and interactions with young people in this project enabled me to learn that my most valuable skills were my human abilities to connect with others through listening, time spent together, and nonverbal communication as well as discussion. Supported by the young people who shared in this research, I was able to I was able to un-learn the role of “researcher” as I implicitly understood I was supposed to perform it; someone in control, with enough foresight to plan ahead, someone guided by logic and rationalized feeling. I was able to re-centre the importance of being still and listening and find faith in my own expertise as a an embodied, emotional, relational and emplaced human being (Fresnoza-Flot & Cheung, 2023; Ungunmerr-Baumann et al., 2022).

These processes have led me to echo Chadwick (2020) in conceptualising “voice” as a relational and co-produced experience that functions beyond words alone. They have also led me to conceptualise ideal participation as something that must be collaboratively co-imagined and co-created within trusting, reciprocal relationships, and necessarily looks different in every relational context.

For people working with youth more broadly, I call for an effort to listen differently, and to open our whole, human selves to hearing and learning from voices different to our own (Ungunmerr-Baumann et al., 2022). We can be guided by the understanding that mutually demonstrated trust over time, deep listening, shared experiences, and aspirations are central to this process. We can have faith in the understanding that, done well, collaborative research is something that we should not know exactly how to do, but rather learn along the way as we co-learn and co-become alongside those with whom we work.