Ethnography of young people in confinement: on subjectivity, positionality and situated ethics in closed space

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 837-853
Author(s):  
Ann-Karina Henriksen ◽  
Anna Schliehe
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Emotional Challenges ◽  
Sensory Data ◽  
Voluntary Consent ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Penal Institutions ◽  
Residential Institutions ◽  
Situated Ethics

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.

Young Islam

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avi Max Spiegel
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Religious Ideology ◽  
Secular World ◽  
New Recruits ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Islamist Movements

Today, two-thirds of all Arab Muslims are under the age of thirty. This book takes readers inside the evolving competition for their support—a competition not simply between Islamism and the secular world, but between different and often conflicting visions of Islam itself. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research among rank-and-file activists in Morocco, the book shows how Islamist movements are encountering opposition from an unexpected source—each other. In vivid detail, the book describes the conflicts that arise as Islamist groups vie with one another for new recruits, and the unprecedented fragmentation that occurs as members wrangle over a shared urbanized base. Looking carefully at how political Islam is lived, expressed, and understood by young people, the book moves beyond the top-down focus of current research. Instead, it makes the compelling case that Islamist actors are shaped more by their relationships to each other than by their relationships to the state or even to religious ideology. By focusing not only on the texts of aging elites but also on the voices of diverse and sophisticated Muslim youths, the book exposes the shifting and contested nature of Islamist movements today—movements that are being reimagined from the bottom up by young Islam. This book, the first to shed light on this new and uncharted era of Islamist pluralism in the Middle East and North Africa, uncovers the rivalries that are redefining the next generation of political Islam.

scholarly journals Holding the Child (and Practitioner) in Mind? Youth Justice Practitioners’ Experiences Supervising Young People Displaying Sexually Harmful Behavior

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (9-10) ◽  
pp. 2055-2081 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Myles-Wright ◽  
Claire Nee
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Youth Justice ◽  
Vulnerable Group ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Relationship Problem ◽  
Semistructured Interviews ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Harmful Behavior ◽  
Future Practice

This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of youth justice practitioners supervising young people (below 18 years old) displaying sexually harmful behavior within the Youth Justice System (YJS) in the United Kingdom, as little is currently known about the challenges faced when working with this vulnerable group. Five practitioners from two Youth Offending Services (YOS) participated in individual semistructured interviews, which were subjected to thematic analysis while also analyzing the performative function of language used. The analysis identified an overarching theme of “systemic unease,” which contained two subthemes surrounding “unease with the self, and wider YOS personnel” and “unease working with partner agencies.” The findings illuminate critical issues regarding future practice with this underresearched group of young people within the broader context of youth justice, which require further exploration and investigation. The “dual relationship problem” involving tension between risk management and therapeutic alliance is explored in relation to this group. The moral acquaintance model and the model of dynamic adaptation are suggested as helpful approaches to support practitioners and multi-agency professionals going forward in this area.

MESSY FREE-FOR-ALL OR AN “AHA!” MOMENT?: REFLECTIONS ON AN HIV AWARENESS PROGRAM WITH AFRICAN NEWCOMER YOUTH

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-7
Author(s):  
Susan Frohlick ◽  
Adey Mohamed
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Knowledge To Action ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
White Settler ◽  
Awareness Program ◽  
Hiv Awareness ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This paper traces a collaboration between a White settler anthropologist and Black community liaison and researcher in the design and implementation of HIV awareness strategies. Based on ethnographic research with young people from African newcomer communities who settled in Winnipeg, Canada, their sense that HIV did not exist in Canada was the impetus for our movement of knowledge-to-action. Rather than deliver the facts to them as a passive audience, we created space and time for a series of youth-led conversations that were effective, emotional, corporeal, and socially dynamic. From our respective positionalities, we reflect on the impact of the awareness activity. What at times felt like “a free-for-all” fostered an awareness by the young people, as active agents, of the complexities of HIV as “more than a virus,” especially its racialized underpinnings.

scholarly journals Exploring the Lives of Vulnerable Young People in Relation to Their Food Choices and Practices

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karolina Gombert ◽  
Flora Douglas ◽  
Karen McArdle ◽  
Sandra Carlisle
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
Food Intake ◽  
Young People ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Food Choices ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Vulnerable Group ◽  
Youth Organization ◽  
Formerly Homeless

The interdisciplinary Foodways and Futures project (2013-2016) is based on a pilot study which found noimprovement in the nutritional state of formerly homeless young people (16-25), now in supported accommodationat a charitable youth organization. Because a healthy food intake during adolescence is important, and because youngpeople with socioeconomic lower backgrounds face difficulties in maintaining a healthy diet (Beasley at al., 2005), Iinvestigated how the young people themselves experience their relationship to food. In this paper I explore linksbetween the lived experience before and during their stay with the organization of this vulnerable group, and theirfood choices and practices. The study illustrates the ways in which those choices and practices may appearnutritionally undesirable, but are nevertheless linked to the young people’s search for ontological security and socialconnectedness, in their new living environment. In this, I draw on and extend Schlossberg’s (1981) transition theoryin order to better understand the rationales underlying an individual’s subjective food choices.

Young People Living at Risk of Huntington’s Disease: The Lived Experience

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 391-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miranda F. Lewit-Mendes ◽  
Georgia C. Lowe ◽  
Sharon Lewis ◽  
Louise A. Corben ◽  
Martin B. Delatycki
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Young People ◽  
Huntington's Disease ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Huntington’S Disease

scholarly journals Development of a Pathway for Multidisciplinary Neurodevelopmental Assessment and Diagnosis in Children and Young People

Children ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 1033
Author(s):  
Marion Rutherford ◽  
Donald Maciver ◽  
Lorna Johnston ◽  
Susan Prior ◽  
Kirsty Forsyth
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Waiting Times ◽  
Complex Interventions ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Advisory Group ◽  
Children And Young People ◽  
Implementation Team ◽  
Scottish Government ◽  
Assessment And Diagnosis

There is a variable standard of access to quality neurodevelopmental assessment and diagnosis. People may have negative experiences, encountering lengthy waiting times, and inconsistent practices. Practitioners need guidance on standards and practices for assessment and diagnosis matched to new ways of working. In this paper, we present a new pathway and recommendations for multidisciplinary neurodevelopmental assessment and diagnosis for children and young people (<19 years), developed by the Scottish Government funded National Autism Implementation Team (NAIT). Our research used the Medical Research Council guidance for the development of complex interventions and included several iterative stages. Stage 1: n = 44 stakeholders attended an event on developing new practices for diagnosis and assessment. Stage 2: a literature synthesis was completed by the research team of clinical guidelines and diagnosis and assessment tools. Stage 3: an event with n = 127 stakeholders included discussion and debate of the data from stages 1 and 2. Recommendations and a draft pathway were written. Stage 4: successive drafts of recommendations and the pathway documentation were circulated among an advisory group, including multidisciplinary clinical experts and people with lived experience, until the final pathway was agreed upon. The finalised pathway includes guidance on terminology, assessment, diagnosis, triage, time standards and engagement of people with lived experience. The new pathway has been adopted by the Scottish Government. The pathway and associated documentation are freely available online for use by others.

scholarly journals The taste of trauma: reflections of ageing Shoah survivors on food and how they (re)inscribe it with meaning

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 349-65
Author(s):  
Ben Kasstan
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Significant Relationships ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Home Food ◽  
Support Facility

Drawing on ethnographic research in the UK’s only support facility for ageing Jewish Shoah survivors, this paper charts the ‘foodways’ in a Centre where satiety is experienced as an emotional as well as a physical need. How the experience of genocidal violence and displacement give rise to particular tastes of trauma is explored, firstly through the symbolism of bread which is metaphorically leavened with meanings and memories of survival – both in Judaism and for the survivors interviewed. Bread is positioned as a true reflection of lived experience for survivors of both ghettoes and concentration camps, who construct a specific and salient relationship with food. This illustrates the perceived difference between them and members of the Centre who escaped the Nazi regime as refugees or by the Kindertransport. Foods associated with the concentration or extermination camps are (re)inscribed with new meanings, as a steaming bowl of Polish barley soup ultimately embodies the ingredients of memory but also the recipe of survival. It can also stew the nostalgia of pre-war lives for Eastern European Jews and their recollections of the heym (Yiddish, home). Food is a conscious strategy of care in the Centre that mediates the embodied trauma of participants, and this paper draws on comparative examples to argue that refugee and survivor communities more generally may possess culturally-significant relationships with food that remain poorly understood.

scholarly journals After the age of criminal responsibility: a defence for children who offend

2016 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-341
Author(s):  
Claire McDiarmid
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Mental Disorder ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Mens Rea ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Public

In Scotland, the age of criminal responsibility is 8, although children cannot be prosecuted until they are 12. In England and Wales, for all purposes, the age is 10. This article argues that a further mechanism is needed to protect the young who do wrong within the criminal process and it argues for a new, bespoke defence, to be available to young people from the age of criminal responsibility until they attain the age of 18. It looks firstly at criminal capacity – what it is that needs to be understood fairly to hold anyone criminally responsible – and draws on material from developmental psychology and neuro-science, as well as looking at the child’s lived experience, to provide some evidence that the young may, without fault, lack this capacity. It then examines the use of age generally in law, and the age of criminal responsibility within this. Next, it considers existing lack of capacity defences – nonage, diminished responsibility, insanity (or mental disorder) and absence of mens rea – to consider their suitability for use by young and immature defendants. Finally, it presents a proposal for the form of the new defence, taking into account the need for balance with the public interest in conviction of the guilty. Throughout, it notes and analyses the Law Commission’s proposals in this respect.

Dreaming across Borders

2019 ◽  
pp. 159-170
Author(s):  
Deborah A. Boehm
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Undocumented Migrant ◽  
Migrant Youth ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
National Membership

This chapter chronicles the in-between position of Dreamers, or undocumented migrant youth who were born outside of the United States, but have lived in the United States for many years and consider it home. Although these youth are undeniably transnational, they may find themselves trapped in the United States, unable to leave or safely return to the United States. This landscape changed to some extent with DACA, which created the possibility for young people to travel outside of the United States and return through a process called Advance Parole. However, even if approved, leaving the United States through Advance Parole could result in young people being denied reentry by U.S. officials and thus permanently excluded from the country. Based on ethnographic research with a group of DACAmented migrants who were invited by the Mexican government to visit “their homeland,” this chapter considers border crossings in a time of increasingly blocked movement for the majority of migrant youth. Although all youth were granted permission to travel to Mexico through Advance Parole, their returns—first to Mexico and then to the United States—demonstrate how DACA created a curious status of being both in certain legal categories, but persistently without access to formal national membership. Their liminal position underscores the insecurities of migrant youth more generally.

Youth Negotiate Deportation

2019 ◽  
pp. 135-146
Author(s):  
Lauren Heidbrink
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
Unaccompanied Children ◽  
Forced Return ◽  
The U.S

This chapter chronicles how young people experience deportation from the United States to Guatemala. It examines the policies and institutional practices that govern the removal of unaccompanied children and trace the ways in which young people and their families understand and navigate these policies and practices. Through multi-sited ethnographic research in the United States and Guatemala, the chapter reveals the various impacts of the forced “repatriation” of children, exacerbating the very conditions that spurred their migration and causing new interrelated uncertainties and related risks as “deportees.” As they are physically expelled from the United States, deported young people move out of U.S. legal systems. The effects of a forced “return” to their nations of origin produce new challenges such as feelings of isolation and vulnerability as well as danger, such that, in many ways, they continue to be in and moving through regimes of illegality. Demonstrating the long-term and geographically distant effects of the U.S. government’s deportation of children and youth, the chapter outlines the confining character of being out of a system, especially if once in it.

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