Can the displaced speak? Muslim refugee girls negotiating identity, home and belonging through Photovoice

Abstract

This paper reports on ‘Can the displaced speak?’ a photovoice project conducted with ten Muslim young women with refugee background attending one urban high school in Canada. Through the camera lenses the co-researchers expressed their views and feelings about their identities, their displacement and their perceptions of home and belonging. The project emerged as part of a larger ethnographic study with Muslim youth in Western Canada and it was conducted over a school year with co-researchers from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, who share being Muslim and becoming refugees. The paper contributes to the limited research available conducted with Muslim and refugee young women using participatory visual methods; it discusses the feminist, ethical and methodological underpinnings of the project, presents the voices of ten Muslim girls through their photographs and highlights the process and the impact of using photovoice with young, Muslim girls with refugee background.