Youth Narratives Research Articles

The House Divided Against Itself: Youth and Electoral Violence in Nigeria

The assumption that youths are veritable tools in engineering electoral violence has long been established in Nigeria politics. Many of the elections held in the country at federal, state and local levels where violence had erupted, had behind the scenes youths as perpetrators. While some keep making themselves available to selfish individuals and organisations who empowers them to make elections tensed, hindering citizens, especially young ones from freely exercising their civic responsibilities, this is only a fraction of the Nigerian youth population and not the whole. There are more youths who are willing to join the electoral exercise but have become apolitical partly because of threats to their lives and properties if they participated in the electoral process. There have been cases were serving youth corps members, officiating during elections have been attacked and killed by fellow youth, likewise youth who have gone out to vote. Interestingly, Nigeria has a burgeoning young population with more than 70 percent under the age of 40. For peaceful elections and for representative democracy, the youth have a pivotal part to play. Hence, they are both the cause for and the cure against electoral violence in Nigeria. This paper, using desk research, seeks to go beyond the narrative of youth being used as tools to cause violence during elections to argue that the effects of their actions hamper in no small measure the impact their population is able to make in terms of national development and representative democracy.

Beyond Discrimination: Aspirations for Self-employment Among Muslim Youth in Delhi

While it is argued that Muslims are concentrated in self-employment activities, apart from noting discrimination in salaried work resulting in a push into self-employment, research has not explored additional reasons contributing to this choice. This paper employs a mixed-methods approach and through an empirically grounded work, explores the reasons given by Muslim male and female youth, primarily living in the segregated neighbourhood of Jamia Nagar in New Delhi, India, for the choice of self-employment among Muslim youth. The paper notes that while discrimination in salaried work featured as a significant reason for the choice of self-employment, it was not the overwhelming one. The choice for self-employment, rather, was attributed to a number of reasons, the salient ones being the presence of social networks in self-employment in Jamia Nagar, and the social respect earned through ownership of self-employment (apna kaam). In the narratives of the women youth, safety and respectability offered by self-employment in Jamia Nagar were highlighted as critical reasons attracting them to such occupations.

"Their help is not helping": Policing as a Tool of Structural Violence against Black Communities.

To illustrate Black youth's perceptions of police violence in West Louisville, Kentucky, how they make sense of it, and their responses to it. The study used qualitative interviews with youth ages 10 to 24 residing in West Louisville. The interviews did not specifically inquire about experiences with police, but the theme emerged so strongly from the overall analysis that the current study was warranted. The research team employed a constructivist analytic approach. The analysis yielded two overarching themes, each with several subthemes. The first theme was Black youth experience profiling and harassment by police, with subthemes focused on youth feeling targeted, youth recognizing policing as a tactic to remove them from their community, and youth being acutely aware of police-involved violence. The second theme was Black youth's experiences with the police cultivates mistrust and unsafety, with subthemes including police seen as more likely to harm than help, police not resolving injustices against Black people, and police presence escalating conflict in Black communities. Youth's narratives regarding their experiences with police highlight the physical and psychological violence enacted by police who come into their community, supported by the law enforcement and criminal justice systems. Youth recognize systemic racism in these systems and how it affects officers' perceptions of them. The long-term implications of persistent structural violence these youth endure has implications on their physical and mental health and wellbeing. Solutions must focus on transforming structures and systems.

Understanding factors that promote uptake of HIV self-testing among young people in Nigeria: Framing youth narratives using the PEN-3 cultural model.

It is important to understand how to frame the formats for promoting HIV self-testing to increase uptake among young people. In this study, we used a culture-centered model to understand the narratives of HIV self-testing preferences among young people in Nigeria. We conducted a crowdsourcing contest to solicit ideas surrounding HIV self-testing promotion among young people (10–24 years) in Nigeria from October to November 2018 as part of the 2018 World AIDS Day event. We received 903 submissions and employed thematic content analysis to evaluate 769 eligible youth narratives. Thematic content analysis of the statements from the youth narratives was guided by the PEN-3 cultural model to examine the positive, existential, and negative perceptions (beliefs and values), enablers (resources), and nurturers (roles of friends and family) of HIV self-testing promotion among young people in Nigeria. Several themes emerged as factors that influence the uptake of HIV self-testing among young people in Nigeria. Specifically, seven themes emerged as perceptions: HIV testing accessibility, stigma reduction, and autonomy (positive); HIV self-testing kit packaging and advertisements (existential); lack of knowledge and increased stigma (negative). Seven themes emerged as enablers: social media, school, and government promotion (positive); gamification and animation (existential); high cost and access to linkage to care services (negative); And seven themes emerged as nurturers: peer, families, and faith-based communities (positive); parents and family-centered approach (existential); and partners and family (negative). Our data suggests that increased awareness around HIV self-testing on current youth-friendly platforms, de-stigmatization of HIV and HIV self-testing, decreased prices for HIV self-testing kits, reliability of testing kits, increased linkage to care services, and promotion of self-testing among family members and the community will be beneficial for HIV self-testing scale-up measures among young people in Nigeria.

Storytelling and Proleptic Gaps: Reimagining Inequities in the Mount

We describe the work of two groups of middle school youth as they authored stories set in their community, based on superhero and absurdist storytelling genres. Their storytelling was part of a weekly ELA project that took place from February through May 2017 in a public middle school in a neighborhood where economic inequality defines many facets of everyday life. Drawing on audio and video recordings from ten weekly storytelling events, field notes, interviews, and close readings of youth narratives, we describe how youth created and initiated proleptic bids and, thereby, opened proleptic gaps for improvising on and producing new material with the potential to rescript the meanings of childhood and equity in their communities. We argue that these bids and gaps made space for youth to not only critique but also move beyond dominant readings of their neighborhood, and we suggest that such openings are therefore necessary for transformative literacy pedagogy and practice. We further argue that proleptic pedagogy, in the form of joint storytelling, affords a compelling and sustainable space for youth to experience joy, friendship, and artist-authoring identities, all of which have been systematically eroded by federal, state, and district policies oriented to testing and closed meanings.

Good as gone: narratives of rural youth who intend to leave their communities

ABSTRACT Youth out-migration is an issue for rural communities. When youth leave their communities, rural areas face an aging workforce, diminished social capital, and injured local economy. Some youth leave the community to pursue college or careers with the intent to return, and some return even though they had no intentions to when they left. Decisions to migrate may be heavily influenced by the gendered nature of rural life and the imbalance of expectations around family, career, and caretaking experienced by women. Informed by feminist theory, this qualitative research explores structural and cultural forces that motivate rural young women to out-migrate. It addresses implications of rural youth out-migration for individual trajectories, such as career options or relationship to family, and community trajectories, such as the loss of the new workforce. Participants identified family, non-familial relationships, boredom, small-town politics, community, market, and negative experiences as motivations to leave or return.

Haitian and Haitian American experiences of racism and socioethnic discrimination in Miami-Dade county: At-risk and court-involved youth.

We examine how juvenile justice-involved youth of Haitian descent in Miami-Dade County cope with structural racism and its impact on their mental health. Drawing on longitudinal ethnography, psychosocial assessment data, and a family-based clinical intervention funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, this article explores youth narratives of discrimination prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use critical race theory and theory of practice to understand youths' perceptions as racialized bodies and stigmatized selves, highlighting the experiences and perspectives of a particular black immigrant group, ethnic beings caught up in the everyday practices of racialization, sociocultural marginalization, and racism. We frame these experiences as a variation of the complex continuum of structural racism and racial domination in the US. These experiences have caused anger, fear, anxiety, chronic anticipatory distress, and hopelessness among youth of Haitian descent. We conclude with some recommendations for therapeutic support that encourages youth to process their experiences, promotes their development of a positive self-concept, and provides them with mind-body techniques to attenuate the physical impacts of discriminatory events. The clinical trial registration number for this study intervention is NCT03876171.

“In México, I was someone, but here I am a nobody:” an immigrant mother and daughter moving beyond love to facilitate new ways of being

In this article, we present parallel narratives of an immigrant youth and her mother who have had to maneuver continual and abrupt interruptions in family cohesiveness and other daily experiences due to anti-immigrant policies and the materialization of being cast beyond love. We highlight how they created spaces of self-transformational love and coalitional love to resist measures of exclusion and redraw how they participated in a divided world. We also argue how educators must encourage these spaces of love and work against practices that contribute to the alienation and suppression of immigrant students and their families. Rather, educators must put a human face to these human struggles and break free from any pretense that this work should solely occur outside the bounds of a school’s borders.

"My Bad Experiences Are Not the Only Things Shaping Me Anymore": Thematic Analysis of Youth Trauma Narratives.

The purpose of this study was to better understand how youth with poly-trauma histories appraise and make meaning of their traumatic experiences within the trauma narrative and processing components of Trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), and to explore the results of the meaning-making process. Thematic analysis was employed to explore the trauma narratives of youth (N = 16) ages 8 - 16 that were created during TF-CBT. Participants experienced a mean of 5.38 types of trauma that predominantly included various forms of child maltreatment. With regard to how youth appraise and interpret their traumatic experiences, four themes emerged, including I Am Not Safe, which denotes a lack of physical and psychological safety; It's My Fault, which symbolizes misattributions of responsibility; I Am Changed, which captures alterations in systems of meaning; and Why Did This Happen to Me?, which denotes the struggle to comprehend why the traumatic events occurred and their significance. With regard to the products of the meaning-making process, three themes emerged, including Now I Know, which denotes reappraisals; I Am Safe/r, which signifies increases in perceptions of safety, and I Can Do It, which includes the participant's perceptions of growth. Results from this study provide a deeper understanding of youth's experiences during these components of treatment, and illuminate the meaning-making process. Findings can help guide clinical-decision making, and highlight the importance of explicitly attending to specific components of the meaning-making process during trauma narration and processing.

Transcultural capital and emergent identities among migrant youth

The everyday practices and socio-cultural identities of migrant youth have become a focal point of contemporary sociological research in Western countries of immigration. This article engages with the concept of transcultural capital to frame the possibilities and opportunities embodied in young migrants’ multi-layered identities and cross-cultural competencies in the context of an increasingly interconnected and diverse world. By re-conceptualising diversity and difference as agentic, transformational capitals to be valued, fostered and mobilised, this transcultural approach brings to the fore the multitude of skills, networks and knowledge that migrant youth access and develop through multiple cultural repertoires. Drawing on the narratives of migrant youth in Melbourne (Australia), this article argues that access to different – and not necessarily oppositional – cultural systems opens up a space for understanding the ability of migrant youth to instigate, negotiate and maintain valuable socio-cultural connections in ways that recognise, disrupt and transform social hierarchies.

Youth Creative Agency Toward Art Museum Futurity: Re-imagining Inclusive Practices Through Youth Participatory Action Research

ABSTRACT Teen-centric programs have proliferated in art museums across the U.S. and much of Europe, and scores of these programs target young people—and youth of color, specifically—as a way to grow museum audiences and relevance to a diverse public. However, few studies examine how teen-centric programs impact the youth involved and how they make sense of their experiences. In this article, teen and adult co-authors show how they used youth participatory action research as a critical pedagogical and methodological framework to (1) co-create spaces for youth participation and (2) generate youth narratives and research analyses within the context of an art museum teen advisory program in the U.S. The findings and reflections on practice offer critical insights on youth agency and the possibilities and limitations of inclusivity discourses within neoliberal art museums.

Understanding factors that promote uptake of HIV self-testing among young people in Nigeria: Framing youth narratives using the PEN-3 cultural model

Understanding factors that promote uptake of HIV self-testing among young people in Nigeria: Framing youth narratives using the PEN-3 cultural model

“Where I Can Be Myself”: Black Youth Narratives of Their Future Careers

This qualitative study centers on the career narratives of seven Black youth enrolled at an urban public school in the Midwest. We used critical race theory to analyze participants’ responses to a narrative career counseling intervention, My Career Story (Savickas & Hartung, 2012). The four interconnected themes found were (a) persistence against all odds, (b) unconditional acceptance and connections, (c) self-advocacy, and (d) tranquility. We discuss direct implications for school/career counselors and school counselor educators.

Values, lifestyles, and narratives of prejudices amongst Finnish youth

ABSTRACT Prejudices are innate to the human condition and at the base of most conflicts between social groups. Yet, despite much local and global educational effort to promote equality and peace, expressions of hate and violence are omnipresent across the globe. For gaining more understanding about the complex relationship between values and beliefs that influence people’s prejudiced attitudes towards others, this study investigates how Finnish upper-secondary level students (16- to 20-year-olds), on the one hand, affiliate themselves with self-transcendent values, and on the other hand, narrate prejudices towards others. The complementary quantitative (n = 2873) and qualitative (n = 2200) survey responses show that the young people regarded equality and the promotion of peace as the most important values for themselves but, despite this explicit appreciation of these self-transcendent values, they also exhibit several types of prejudice towards others. The findings show that the youth narratives of prejudices are mainly justified with their prior experiences, their imaginaries related to insecurity, disturbances, and conflicts with people who they deem to have lifestyles different from their own. This study expands existing knowledge by suggesting that the main rationales behind young people’s prejudices are not based on traditional social categorisations, or core values, but on differences expressed through individual lifestyles.

Coming out in a ‘faux-lesbian comedy’: authenticity and queer identity in MTV’s Faking it

ABSTRACT In a special report for Entertainment Weekly in January 2011, Jennifer Armstrong noted that ‘gay characters have gone from one time guest stars, whispered tragedies, and silly sidekicks to not just an accepted but an expected part of teen-centric television’ (36, original emphasis). Within this genre, the coming out narrative has gained prominence as the dominant means of articulating and representing LGBTIQ+ identities and experience. This article traces a lineage of teen texts that negotiate authenticity and queer identity through LGBTIQ+ coming out stories where queer-coded characters attempt to pass as heterosexual, performing ‘fakery’ for personal safety and as a means of fitting in to the teen social milieu. MTV’s Faking It (2014–2016) flips the script on this queer teen narrative, following two unpopular best friends, Karma (Katie Stevens) and Amy (Rita Volk), who pretend to be lesbians to climb the high school hierarchy. While controversial upon its release, Faking It has since been credited with ‘changing the nature of queer representation on TV’ through its novel representations of gender and sexual diversity. This article examines how teen sexualities are articulated and understood in the series. Through close textual analysis, this article demonstrates how Faking It engages the theme of fakery to undermine classical notions of the coming out narrative as an expression of authenticity, which have long been central to LGBTIQ+ youth narratives in film and television.

Locating a pedagogy of love: (re)framing pedagogies of loss in popular-media narratives of African immigrant communities

Recent contexts of migration for immigrant communities from African countries have comprised what sociologist April Gordon discussed as a “new diaspora of black Africans to the U.S.” (p. 84). Yet amid contemporary contexts of migration, popularized narratives of African immigrant youth consistently linger on deficit framings and “emphasize what a particular student, family, or community is lacking”. As the ongoing work of rendering visible narratives of possibility, we analyzed how the cultural and linguistic strengths of African immigrant communities are named (or not named) in popular-media narratives of African immigrant communities. We utilized King and Swartz frameworks for “Afrocentric praxis,” as discussed by Johnson et al. in evoking a “pedagogy of love” (p. 47), together with the theoretical lens of BlackCrit to examine popular-media narratives. In particular, we examine complex meanings of locating a pedagogy of love in popular-media narratives of African immigrant communities in the interplay of three themes: “eldering and communal responsibility,” “language as a colonial modality of loss,” and “envisioning a pedagogy of love as speculative seeing.” We conclude with productive implications for teaching, teacher education, and educational research.

Migranthood: Youth in a new era of deportationbyLaurenHeidbrink (2020) Stanford: Stanford University Press, ISBN 9781503612075, 240 pp., $25 (paperback).

Migranthood: Youth in a new era of deportationbyLaurenHeidbrink (2020) Stanford: Stanford University Press, ISBN 9781503612075, 240 pp., $25 (paperback).

Narratives of Rwandan youth on post-genocide reconciliation: contesting discourses and identities in the making

ABSTRACT Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in 2019 with secondary school students in Kigali, Rwanda, this paper aims to shed light on the stance of Rwandan youth on recent policies and discussions about post-genocide reconciliation and peacebuilding. This article discusses the narratives articulated by Rwandan youth on three levels: positioning in relation to the Rwandan government, positioning the self and others in their communities and positioning the self in relation to ‘Ndi Umunyarwanda’ (I am Rwandan). The discussion of these narratives is based on the concepts of participatory spaces and positioning theory. The findings show that the legacy of the genocide, as well as the reconciliation process, is being performed through everyday actions by the youth. However, the limitations of participatory spaces prevent Rwandan youth from having their positions communicated, negotiated and diversified.

Narrativas (des)construídas como tarefa política da pesquisa participativa decolonial / (Un)constructed narratives as a political task of decolonial participatory research

This article aims to reflect on epistemic-methodological issues in the construction of narratives in participatory research. We place our reflections based on three researches carried out in the doctoral process, of two researchers and one researcher who are part of different Institutions, but participate in the same research group - GEPCOL-UFPE, the same GT-ANPEPP, and developed their studies with a focus on youth narratives. We highlight in these studies that for the execution of participatory research that seeks to build narratives, it is necessary to the emergence of an alternative path to hegemonic models, which requires a change in the researcher's posture, in the sense this considers the social markers that constitute it in the relationship with the participants and in the construction of information. It is also necessary to use methodological epistemic references that make it possible to value the experiences of the subjects, that allow them to speak, to be heard, and to have their voices visible in the texts. We believe that the narrative is political for being shared, for seeking to make visible the situations of oppression and inequality in society, and also for contributing to the construction of decolonial practices and resistance.

Teaching how to love your country in schools?: a study of Japanese youth narratives on patriotic education

ABSTRACT In 2018, the Japanese government introduced a controversial education policy, which made moral education (dōtoku) a formal (as opposed to supplementary) subject in elementary schools, and the new scheme intends to teach, foster, and grade patriotic feelings among school children. By referring to semi-autobiographical narratives of 80 Japanese college students, this exploratory study delves into the question of how the Japanese college youth perceive the efficacy of patriotic education. Do we need to teach school children how to love Japan? If so, how? If not, why? This study suggests that the youth narratives do not necessarily align with this shift.