Representing Refugee Youth in Qualitative Research: Questions of Ethics, Language and Authenticity

Abstract

This article speaks conceptually and methodologically about the ethics and politics of doing research with newcomer refugee youth and issues of representation. Feminist poststructuralist paradigms across a variety of fields have critically examined notions of experience, agency, and identity to in order to encompass more fluid understandings of how individuals and events are represented in text (Butler & Scott, 1992; Canning, 1994;Scott, 1986;Wolf, 1996). Starting from this theoretical framework, I draw from experiences of conducting research with a group of high school refugee students from the Vietnamese Central Highlands to reflect on how positionality and reflexivity can influence the portraits researchers render of their study participants. I consider the importance of examining the interplay between language and authenticity of representation in qualitative research with refugee English Language Learner (ELL) youth.