Expanding youth participatory action research: a Foucauldian take on youth identities

• Published in: International multilingual research journal Vol. 13; no. 3; pp. 168 - 180
• Main Authors: Siffrinn, Nicole E., McGovern, Kathleen R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 03.07.2019; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Action Research; After School Programs; Audio Equipment; Change Agents; Disadvantaged; English; English (Second Language); Foucault; Graduate Students; Middle School Students; Middle Schools; Multilingualism; Negotiation; Nonstandard Dialects; Participatory Research; Photography; Poetry; Power Structure; Program Descriptions; Self Concept; Social Change; Social Networks; Spanish; Student Attitudes; Video Technology; Youth; youth identities; YPAR
• ISSN: 1931-3152; 1931-3160
• DOI: 10.1080/19313152.2019.1623636

This paper explores the identity construction of multilingual and multidialectal middle school students in a semester-long youth participatory action research (YPAR) project. In particular, it moves beyond an emancipatory discourse that views youth identity development from a point of marginalization by drawing on Foucauldian notions of discourse, power, and the subject to examine the complex discursive formations that enable and constrain the continual remaking of the self. Emergent understandings show how, regardless of whether youth took up or resisted positioning as social change agents, they deftly and creatively maneuvered across networks of power/discourse to constitute themselves in ways that were useful, even if not in line with the goals of the project. Implications include the need to reframe identity work in youth participatory action research in an effort to understand the nuances and complexities that inform the constant construction and negotiation of the self in ever-shifting networks of power/discourse.