Ethical stumbling blocks: Negotiating ethics as a regulatory regime in ethnographic research with young people

In this paper we examine the application of informed consent to ethnographic research in health care settings. We do not quarrel with either the principle of informed consent or its translation into the requirement that research should only be carried out with consenting participants. However, we do challenge the identification of informed consent with the particular set of bureaucratic practices of ethical review which currently operate in Canada, the US and elsewhere. We argue that these anticipatory regulatory regimes threaten the significant contribution of ethnographic research to the creation of more efficient, more effective, more equitable and more humane health care systems. Informed consent in ethnographic research is neither achievable nor demonstrable in the terms set by anticipatory regulatory regimes that take clinical research or biomedical experimentation as their paradigm cases. This is because of differences in the practices of ethnographic and biomedical research which we discuss. These include the extended periods of time ethnographers spend in the research setting, the emergent nature of ethnographic research focus and design, the nature and positioning of risk in ethnographic research, the power relationships between researchers and participants, and the public and semi-public nature of the settings normally studied. Anticipatory regulatory regimes are inimical to ethnographic research and risk undermining the contribution of systematic inquiry to understanding whether institutions do what they claim to do, fairly and civilly and with an appropriate mobilisation of resources. We do not suggest that we should simply ignore ethics or leave matters to the individual consciences of researchers. Rather, we need to develop and strengthen professional models of regulation which emphasise education, training and mutual accountability. We conclude the paper with a number of suggestions about how such professional models might be implemented.

To Brunswick and Beyond: A Geography of Creative and Social Participation for Marginalised Youth

PurposeThis paper accounts for, and reflects upon, the research design and the methodological approach adopted in ethnographic research with young people. In particular, the purpose of this paper is to reinforce the significance of conducting qualitative participatory and innovative methods with young people, alongside the value of rapport building.Design/methodology/approachQualitative participatory methods are understood as the most appropriate way to empower and respect young people in the research process. Alongside such methods the ethnographic nature of the research is discussed in conveying the importance of rapport building with young people in the field. In doing so the paper examines a number of important considerations when conducting youth research.FindingsThe triangulation of qualitative methods was fundamental in exploring and understanding young people’s lives in each locality and allowed for deep and meaningful explorations of specific themes. The additional and complementary methods employed alongside traditional methods were particularly suited to understanding young people’s everyday lives, as complex experiences are not always conveyed through traditional methods alone. Conducting participatory methods produced narratives around safety, security and governance in public places.Originality/valueBeing reflexive and adapting to a research setting in order to enhance the process of building and maintaining trust with young people is the most important facet when conducting youth research. Giving careful consideration to the impact of a researcher’s presence in the field needs to be carefully navigated.

This thesis examines the experiences, circumstances and difficulties faced by young homeless people residing in hostels in the county of Kent, South East England, especially those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ). My research suggests that there is an increase in LGBTQ youth homelessness due to young people 'coming out' at younger ages than before and encountering difficulties in their family homes that lead to their homelessness. I refer to this as 'the paradox of progress'. Due to political advances in gay rights and an increased media presence of charismatic LGBTQ proponents, youth are changing their outlook on sexuality and gender identity, but paradoxically due to generational differences, some meet adversities at home. Yet, this research also shows that an ensuing prevalence and increase of LGBTQ youth in homeless hostels across the county is a significant concern that thus far has been overlooked. In this thesis I demonstrate that youth homelessness is distinct from adult homelessness and is often misunderstood. Using data obtained through anthropological fieldwork over a period of one year, combined with my professional experience as a support worker working in local homeless hostels for over eight years, I examine and analyse the structural violence and inequalities that young people encounter as they attempt to cope with their homelessness caused by various factors such as deprived family backgrounds, class and a housing crisis that has predominantly affected disadvantaged youth. The long-term dedicated ethnographic fieldwork approach of my research has enabled me to glean insights about current ideas about home, homelessness, and also experiences of young people who live in difficult circumstances, subsequently enabling this research to challenge contemporary understandings of and responses to youth homelessness. Homeless youth navigate their lives in localities where ideas of 'home' hinge upon idealised heteronormative family life trajectories and generalised stigmas of youth homeless as beggars, rough sleepers or substance misusers and as culpable for their own predicaments. In this thesis, I discuss how the lack of or slim options for housing and support available to homeless youth in Kent, reflect upon how the State and the general public homogenise and stigmatise youth who are from working class backgrounds, thus creating further disadvantages that subject them toward structural violence. The anthropology of youth literature (e.g. Wulff 1995, LeVine and New 2008, Peluso 2015) suggests that the agency of young individuals should not be underestimated or subsumed under broader adult studies but that their lives ought to be studied in their own right. My ethnographic data contributes to such literature and further engages the anthropology of home, gender and sexuality to understand the issues that come together to comprise contemporary youth homelessness in Britain. Ethnographic research is well suited to explore intimate topic such as sexuality and homelessness, and thus far anthropologists have not studied LGBTQ youth homelessness. To date, the monitoring of sexual orientation and gender identity in the voluntary sector uses unrealistic figures that obscure the severity of LGBTQ youth homelessness. Subsequently LGBTQ individuals are not recognised by funding bodies and the State as a significant population and therefore resources are not allocated to alleviate their challenges and/or support them. This thesis argues that a prominent reason for LGBTQ youth homelessness is the paradox of progress; that the broader political advances in LGBTQ rights are not yet resonating in the reality and lived experiences of LGBTQ individuals in Kent. Young people who are both homeless and a sexual or gender minority, experience exclusion by living outside of the norm in terms of their sexuality/gender identities, as well as living outside of normative institutions such as, the educational system, home and the family. Furthermore, I suggest that conflicting generational views toward 'alternative' sexualities and genders contribute to the increasing numbers of LGBTQ youth in homelessness services. This thesis contributes to the limited ethnographic studies available regarding youth homelessness in anthropology. It also aims to offer insights to broad literatures in social, political, economic and applied anthropology, the anthropology of youth, the anthropology of care, kinship studies, the anthropology of Britain and the anthropology of home and homelessness. Additionally, it has the potential to be of interdisciplinary interest, as it draws on insights from the disciplines of sociology, human geography as well as literature from queer and gender studies. Finally, this research will inform homelessness and housing policies and facilitate a better understanding of the under-researched topic of LGBTQ youth homelessness. The outcomes of my research suggest that policy makers in voluntary and government agencies need to employ a culturally sensitive approach to housing policy for youth and young individuals who identify as LGBTQ and those that are homeless.

This article explores the strengths and limitations of doing ethnographic research with young people in confinement. The article draws on two studies from Scotland and Denmark, and reflects on critical issues such as getting access, obtaining informed and voluntary consent, emotional challenges, safety, positionality and situated ethics. While a substantial body of literature addresses the methodological challenges of doing ethnographic research in prisons, the literature on doing qualitative research with young people confined in locked residential institutions and youth remand centres is very limited. The article demonstrates the continued importance of doing ethnographic research in penal institutions, by showing how sensory data and lived experience of penal practice and materiality, contributes to our understanding of how young people experience confinement. By drawing on fieldnotes and interviews, this article aims to inspire and lay the grounds for new researchers in the field.

Moving through, interacting with, and caring for the city. Children's and young people's everyday experiences in smart cities

An ethnographic inquiry into the contacts between marginalized groups and integrated society in an urban environment in Quebec elucidates the complex problematic of young street people in relation to their social networks, insertion mechanisms, transferable competences and how it is structured by underlying forces and potentialities. The identification of certain elements allows insight into the continuities of different time and space. In young people, experience living on the street is informed by logics and practices, sometimes complementary and sometimes contradictory, which make-up a symbolic universe where the history and the memory of the network is central. The collective existence of these young people is described in terms of three types of network strategies : socialization strategies, protective strategies, and social participation strategies.

The ‘problem’ of violence involving young people and how to respond meaningfully to it continues to occupy the minds of policy-makers and other stakeholders across Europe. Based on a two-year multi-national research project examining youth work responses to youth violence, this book develops a unique analytical frame that presents a model for meaningful responses to youth violence at 4 levels – the personal/psychological, the community/cultural, the structural/symbolic and the existential. The authors develop a number of original themes, namely that for street based youth work to have an impact on street violence it needs to be challenging and avoid collusion with violence, and that interventions need to be aimed at individuals, their communities and the state. Additionally, the authors discuss the transformative potential of an existential approach to youth violence, i.e. one that focuses on meaning making, interpersonal encounter and the privileging of improvised ‘in the moment’ interventions. They also examine how the disciplinary split between sociology and psychology can hinder understanding of youth violence. The authors argue for a psychosocial theoretical approach such as the need to re-think the character of worker-young people relationships, emphasising the complexity of the inner and outer worlds of young people involved in violence. Creating public policy for good practice involves contesting social policy narratives that demonise young people by simplistically identifying them as a threat to others; The need for street based youth workers to meaningfully inform policy responses by seeing themselves as simultaneously practitioners and as ethnographic researchers – an activity we call ethnopraxis.

Based on ethnographic research in the northernmost part of Finland, Norway and Russia (Barents region), this chapter analyses the elements of wellbeing and discusses the (im)mobility dilemma of Indigenous youth in the Arctic. Wellbeing is here understood as lived citizenship that encompasses the feeling of being in charge of one’s own life path. The dilemma of (im)mobility presupposes that young people need to decide between staying in (traditional or new) professions in the Arctic area or leave for the cities. This dilemma is supported by dominant contradictory narratives surrounding the Arctic and its inhabitants, which leave little space for the local people. The chapter asks whether there is necessarily an either/or demand, to stay or to leave, for the Indigenous youth. The young Indigenous peoples living in the Arctic challenge these discourses in multifarious ways. They do not, as assumed in much of the literature on minorities and language and culture loss, necessarily abandon their cultures, languages and lands in the case that they physically move away. Using the example of Sámi youth in Finland, this chapter argues that young Indigenous people are finding creative ways to challenge the dominant societal discourses that have for decades deprived them of agency.

To combat boredom, political violence, waithood, and the attendant frustrations, many young people in Zimbabwe turn to music. In an authoritarian state that has long closed off the public sphere and other political and discursive spaces to critical voices, young people have carved out alternative publics where they engage with the political and articulate their grievances and frustrations with the state and its excesses. This chapter examines the temporalities of youth group singing and how it is deployed as a peacebuilding tool in urban Zimbabwe. Drawing on ethnographic research with youth popular musicians (Zimdancehall and urban grooves), the author argues that these genres provide young people with a critical discursive space to creatively navigate violence and enact peace. Apart from being a space through which young people politically resist the gerontocratic, corrupt, and marginalizing power system, the author also frames Zimdancehall music as a discursive space where political differences are (re)negotiated through peaceful encounters. Through group singing, young people try to shape and reshape their futures and fill their days with purpose. In fact, to entertain themselves and improve their well-being, youth participate in group singing, and during weekends, community halls become spaces of collective discursive musical expressions. Through group singing, the author asserts, young people constitute themselves as socio-cultural agents, but most importantly also as political actors who creatively speak truth to power, while simultaneously bridging political polarization and enacting community cohesion.

Based on ethnographic research in the northernmost part of Finland, Norway and Russia (Barents region), this chapter analyses the elements of wellbeing and discusses the (im)mobility dilemma of Indigenous youth in the Arctic. Wellbeing is here understood as lived citizenship that encompasses the feeling of being in charge of one’s own life path. The dilemma of (im)mobility presupposes that young people need to decide between staying in (traditional or new) professions in the Arctic area or leave for the cities. This dilemma is supported by dominant contradictory narratives surrounding the Arctic and its inhabitants, which leave little space for the local people. The chapter asks whether there is necessarily an either/or demand, to stay or to leave, for the Indigenous youth. The young Indigenous peoples living in the Arctic challenge these discourses in multifarious ways. They do not, as assumed in much of the literature on minorities and language and culture loss, necessarily abandon their cultures, languages and lands in the case that they physically move away. Using the example of Sámi youth in Finland, this chapter argues that young Indigenous people are finding creative ways to challenge the dominant societal discourses that have for decades deprived them of agency.

For most young people being not in education, employment, or training (NEET) is transitory. However, the term NEET is often used to refer to young people who may go on to become socially excluded as adults. Although NEET represents a heterogenous group, they tend to be stereotyped by policymakers and society as 'other', whether being labelled as disadvantaged or 'on the margins'. The present study gives NEET young people a voice and the ability to challenge these stereotypes. Ethnographic research was undertaken at a centre for NEET young people in central England, to hear from those with experiences of being NEET themselves. The research demonstrates that these young people highlighted their individual deficiencies when discussing their unemployment. They were influenced by the stereotypes associated with being young and unemployed, trying to distance themselves from these by emphasising their ‘student’ status. They were keen to show that they were ‘doing something with their lives’ despite the barriers they faced. They were ‘ordinary’ young people, like others in their age group but had differing experiences of unemployment and education, and were facing different challenges in their lives, making it difficult to treat them as a homogenous category.

Youth-led peer-support initiatives appear well placed to dismantle conventional binaries of youth-adult, as they hold promise as models able to perceive youth outside the role of service recipients. Drawing on ethnographic research at an Australian youth program that included interviews with young people, young and adult volunteers, and staff, this paper investigates the role young people play in determining, creating, and applying change processes for their peers. Through the mechanisms of “cultivating relatability,” “establishing a culture of support,” and “role-modeling alternative pathways,” new possibilities and hope were created. At the core of peer-support efforts was an attempt to increase social integration and a commitment to notions of equality and respect as well as the eradication of unequal power relations between adults and young people. The dual phenomenon of being both the recipient of peer support and facilitators of change processes for others has novel implications for youth programs that work with young people to enhance processes of empowerment and agency and promote positive youth outcomes. Such an approach to working with young people as engaged partners, which gives them a voice and, in particular, asserts the rights of young people to be involved in transforming and recreating their situations, creates opportunities that may both extend the reach and deepen the impact of youth services.

In 2016, the City of Toronto legalised the ridehail giant Uber under a particularly Uber‐friendly regulatory regime. Rather than understanding this interim outcome along the lines of now widespread narratives of corporate “disruption”, in this article I take up Manuel B. Aalbers’ notion of “regulated deregulation” in order to foreground the state's role as a manically prolific facilitator of early Uberisation. Based on ethnographic research in Toronto, I argue that the three longer‐standing state spatial strategies of (1) the common‐sense neoliberal state, (2) the labour‐averse competition state, and (3) the tech‐infatuated smart state were paramount in creating those “on‐the‐ground” conditions—social, legal, spatial, and other—on which Uber has been able to thrive in many cities across the North American continent.

This paper discusses the impact of algorithms on young people’s digital memory practices i.e. how memories are collected, shared and maintained. It takes the experiences of young people on Instagram to exemplify how young people’s imaginaries of algorithms influence their choices of what to post and how. The paper further argues that the imaginary of algorithms is framing algorithms as actors who hinder young people’s uses of Instagram and lead to the development of strategies to circumvent these gatekeepers. Using findings from ethnographic research into young people’s memory practice it is demonstrated that the co-dependent relationship between algorithms and youth should gain a more prominent role in the study of digital memory making. Furthermore, the potential ramifications of commercial algorithmic feed recommendations on personal memory practices and collective remembering are being critically examined.KeywordsYouthPersonal memoryAlgorithmsCo-dependenceImaginary