‘When we put our thoughts and ideas together, policy makers are listening to us’: Hope-work and the potential of participatory research

Abstract

This article brings together a theorisation of hope with the everyday practices of participatory research against a difficult – often entrenched – policy context. We posit that ‘hope-labour’ can characterise engagement in participatory research, which can itself be generative of hope as part of resistance to the status quo. This novel analysis links, and is relevant to, broader theorisations of resistance and critical policy analysis. While there is a growing recognition of the need to subvert traditional forms of political activism and engagement, there has been less specific theorisation of how and why participatory research might play a role. This article corrects this, drawing directly on four years of participatory research working with parents and carers living on a low income to explicate how hope manifests in our practice. We argue it is important to recognise and carefully work through the significant ethical challenges which characterise hope-labour in participatory research. These include how hope is mobilised and the markedly different ‘stakes’ at play in working with hope for researchers and participants. These represent stubborn challenges, and it is incumbent on researchers to be transparent with participants about them in line with an ethics of reciprocity and feminist research praxis. Research can be aimed at a different – and radical – future, because of its orientation towards delivering substantive changes but also, and significantly, because it foregrounds a fresh, different way of collaborating and connecting, one that values and incorporates a diversity of expertise and promotes collective self-determination rather than competition.