WORKING WITH REFUGEE YOUTH - ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY (WITH IBG) GUIDE
We are excited to share our contribution “Working with refugee youth” as part of the RGS-IBG Guide on “Working with voluntary and community groups”. This piece was led by Professor Sarah Mills, and co-authored by RYVU team members Professor Matt Baillie Smith, Dr Bianca Fadel and Dr Moses Okech.
The Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG) recognises how working with voluntary and community organisations is an important way to do geography, and that these organisations have various shapes and sizes and may also often be referred to as the third sector, the voluntary sector, not-for-profit organisations, community groups or the civic sector. In the RGS-IBG guides on “Working with voluntary and community groups”, researchers share diverse experiences of doing geography research in collaboration with community-based and voluntary organisations.
The RYVU team was invited to contribute to this guide with a piece on “Working with refugee youth”, led by Professor Sarah Mills. This contribution shares learning from the project about the work undertaken with groups of young refugees from the outset to shape the RYVU research, including to co-produce a definition of volunteering prior to designing the project’s large-scale survey and series of interview guides.
The piece shares examples, challenges and recommendations based on the experiences of the research team in this project, highlighting the importance of reflecting on the difference between, and ethics of, doing research on community and voluntary groups and doing research with community and voluntary groups.