Introduction, motivation and literature review

Children and young people with experiences of migration in South Africa are building their lives in contexts of deep insecurity (Magqibelo et al. 2016, Willie and Mfubu 2016, Opfermann 2019). Research is needed on the impact of the present context on young people’s wellbeing and sense of belonging (Shahrokh and Treves 2020). The process of finding a sense of home in their new environments is complex, and through this research, we aim to build an understanding of the barriers to and facilitators of this. This will include the intersection between young people’s past and the effects of trauma, loss and dislocation that inform how they navigate their present.

Over the past few years, the Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa (SIHMA) and the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town (SCCT) and other organisations like Adonis Musati Project (AMP) have conducted research, conversations and other interventions to investigate experiences of migrant youth1 in Cape Town. The creation of this project came as a response to a group of young participants who asked for more spaces to articulate their experiences and share that with others. As a result, Pathways of Wellbeing and Belonging is a continuation of previous enquiries into migrant youth experiences in order to build on previous work and open up opportunities for future projects.

This research will include work with children and young people with experience of South Africa’s child protection system. This may entail children in formal placement in CYCC or alternative placement and/or those subject to monitoring by the Children’s Court and Social workers. Experience from within these settings that is not limited to child and youth care systems has shown that children and young people with migrant backgrounds face many challenges related to their care (Sloth-Nielsen and Ackermann 2015). Examples include challenges in obtaining and renewing parents’ documentation, state failures in issuing birth certificates and years of waiting before receiving official immigration status (that may or may not happen before they reach 18) (Ackermann 2018). Children and young people who are both in and outside of formal care settings experience similar challenges that go under investigated. As such, we are particularly interested in the impact of these challenges on young people, how it may harm them, and interacts with their integration, sense of belonging and sense of future in South Africa.

Studies globally have shown the impact of this form of institutionally produced waiting, and uncertainty, on young people’s sense of self and sense of future is detrimental to their mental wellbeing (Chase and Allsopp 2021, Gonzales, Suárez- Orozco, and Dedios-Sanguineti 2013). This can be argued as a form of administrative violence, which acts to de-legitimise children and young people’s claims to legal documentation and immigration status (Beaugrand 2011, Mayblin, Wake, and Kazemi 2020). Within this time, young people live with fear of destitution, exploitation, detention and/or deportation as they transition to adulthood. It also impacts on their sense of identity in society, leading to feelings of lacking acceptance and not having belonging, or a place to call ‘home’ (Smit 2015). Our experience shows that many carry the trauma caused through this time into their future lives, which deeply impacts their sense of self-worth, and the resources they have to draw on to build their lives, even when legal immigration or documentation status is secured.

Research Question

The enquiry and question for this project is guided by a set of aims and objectives that will be further shaped by the young people’s input during the research process. This ‘openness’ is a critical aspect to our participatory approach, which will be further delineated later on.

Overarching question:

How are young people with direct or indirect2 migration experiences navigating structural (political, legal, social, and economic) constraints and how is their sense of wellbeing and belonging impacted?

Sub question: In what ways are migrant young people’s lives and sense of belonging shaped, limited and facilitated by processes of documentation, related care and protection of the state?

Research objectives and aims: 

The overarching aim is to explore the interaction between individual, social and structural factors in the construction of wellbeing and belonging for young people with migration experiences in the South African context. This research is oriented towards advocacy, so that we can work with legal and social work professionals to drive change. Target audiences for influencing include numerous Government Departments3 including the Department of Social Development (DSD) and the Department of Home Affairs. This advocacy work is oriented towards, but not limited to, the proposed amendments to the Children’s Act. The aim is to explicitly name unaccompanied children in section 150 – the provision regarding when a child is deemed to be in need of care and protection and ensuring the broadest possible provisions allowing for inclusion of any and all migrant children’s access to the Child Protection System4. Targeting DSD is about reinforcing and improving on internal guidelines and standard operating procedures in relation to unaccompanied and separated foreign children.

The specific objectives identified in this project are to:

1. Examine what factors impact and shape migrant children and young people’s sense of wellbeing and belonging as they build their lives in South Africa, how and why?

a. At what societal levels - personal, social, institutional - are these influences located?

2. Understand what the specific impact of the immigration system and decision- making has on the mental wellbeing of children and young people in the protection system.

3. Identify where children and young people experience positive pathways towards wellbeing and belonging, and explore how and why this has happened.

4. Consider spaces like the Department for Social Development (DSD) and other policy stakeholders’ conception of migrant youth in legal policy and how these may contribute to misunderstandings/inadequate understandings of spaces like the DSD with regards to the care of undocumented youth.

5.   What are the implications for policy, practice and advocacy in South Africa?

Further insights may emerge from young participants’ experiences during our research process. With their insight, we hope to refine our objectives that adequately shape an enquiry that will benefit the lives of young migrant youth. Moreover, we intend to co- develop a final outcome with youth participants (in the form of Zines, critical questions for policy stakeholders and written work) that will directly engage policy and policy- making.

With the support of SIHMA and the Scalabrini Centre’s research and advocacy departments, the knowledge generated through this research will be related to ongoing legal and policy analysis in order to:

1. Make sense of how youth are put into care systems, the processes that underpin the child’s movement and who is accountable for the procedural ethics of their care.

2. Trace and understand how care is written into legislation once undocumented children who grow up in and out of care systems turn 18 (the adult legal age) and remain undocumented. CYCCs may continue to house and care for children under the age of 21 so there is a second phase of uncertainty and change in care dynamic.

3. Engage with current legislation regarding migrant and undocumented youth as a specific group. What implications do current legislation and policy have on their quality of life? In addition, what changes need to happen to safeguard their experiences?

Research paradigm

“Creating space for arts-based methodologies, for people to tell their stories of exile, displacement and belonging in collaborative, co-productive and genuinely participatory ways, in an ethical and political act”. (Lenette, 2019: vii).

This research project will use a participatory research and arts-based methods approach. This approach is motivated by its inherent ability to challenge traditional forms of knowledge production, unsettle dynamics of power in research, yield more opportunities for different ways of knowing and sharing with others, foster agency in knowledge holder5’s decision-making within the project and ultimately presents an alternative research paradigm that deals with lived realities. This research will employ participatory visual methods which help facilitate intuitive and intimate stories, shared in more informal ways, and which are particularly appropriate when working with young people (Black, Derakshani, Liedeman, Wheeler, & Members of the Delft Safety Group, 2016; Blackbeard & Lindegger, 2015; Luttrell, Restler, & Fontaine, 2012; Mitchell, de Lange, & Moletsane, 2016; Wilson & Milne, 2016). The participatory visual approaches within this study enable a more flexible and adaptive approach necessary for working with children and young people. They also give recognition to the value of the knowledge of children and young people and importantly are inclusive of children’s perspectives (Aldridge 2014; Lomax 2012).

The participatory and arts-based approach is underpinned by a set of ethical principles that guide researchers and knowledge holders alike to form collaborations built on trust that is frequently and openly negotiated. We will make use of a reciprocal research model which “based on the notion of exchange focuses on ensuring mutually- beneficial outcomes for both Knowledge Holders [our participants] and academic researchers” (Lenette, 2019; 89). This research will focus on the lived realities and experiences of children and young persons with migrant backgrounds living in care systems or navigating daily life outside of a formal care system. As researchers, we will fully uphold the legal and ethical obligations towards minors in our interaction.

As previously mentioned, a participatory approach values the way minors and youth have agency to negotiate their experience of research. Young knowledge holders choose what they want to speak about, how they want to represent themselves/their work, how they want to negotiate anonymity therein and be part of the decision- making processes regarding interpretation of data and dissemination. Responsible facilitation and organisation of the research project must include an “ethical, responsible and self-determining process” (RISE: Refugees, Survivors and Ex-detainees, 2015) as an ethical principle of participation. As a result, power dynamics between researchers/facilitators and participants shift from a tendency towards ‘extractive and top-down methods’ often used in research with minors to negotiated and collaborative forms of knowledge production. Maintaining these values in principle and process makes the research meaningful for everyone involved.

According to Lenette (2019: 43), arts-based tools “honour the diverse ways that knowledge holders may use to express, co-create and disseminate representations of their lived realities via culturally safe research approaches”. In other words, while the mediums of expression, data collection and research outcomes may vary between different multi-media, the process itself is bound to ethical interactions and judgements. The ‘looseness’ with which this approach presents itself does not exclude confidentiality, consideration of power dynamics and analytical rigor. Arts-based methods are situated in advocacy, activism and societal changes that attempt to change problematic narratives, shift positionality for refugees from being depicted as homogenously vulnerable to agentive and contextually vulnerable and overall challenges disempowering research practices6. The combination of storytelling and art making “may foster a more radically democratic imaginary that challenges exclusionary discourses and leads to a more relational way of doing and promoting social justice through praxis (purposeful knowledge).”

The overall aim of a participatory and arts-based approach is to make knowledge production and sharing accessible between researcher, knowledge holders, stakeholders and audiences that may form part of the larger public we wish to access. The process is temporally spaced over longer periods and how we come together is negotiated practically between people’s capacity for commitment. The responsibility of the researcher(s) is to position themselves in relation to their practice and knowledge holders by adopting a reflexive approach (Guillemin & Gillam, 2004). In doing so we try to make sense of strengths and limitations inherent to ourselves as people with various backgrounds, skills and lived experiences that may affect the research processes. It is in this reflexivity and accountability that makes the participatory approach most suited to a youth-centred project.

Research design/Approach/Procedures

This research is split between two phases and carried out through a series of short workshops. See the diagram below for a summary of our project journey.

Phase 1 - Zinespiration: The aim is for researchers and young people to collectively respond to a series of prompts informed by a feminist “power” framework (RuthRauff, 2004) and develop individual or collective Zines. The framework looks at various configurations of power that have both negative and positive connotations. As a result, we do not focus on negative lived experiences but look at how power is presented externally and internally within our daily lives. The Expressions of Power starts with power over that is recognised to have negative connotations associated with oppression, discrimination or abuse. In response to this first form of power, alternatives are presented as power with (finding common interest with others and building collective strength), power to (refers to the unique potential we have to shape our lives) and power within (recognising self-worth and self-knowledge and respecting the differences in all). By incorporating these configurations of power within our research process, we address forms of power that are prevalent in our lives and also within the research process itself.

The creative method we will suggest within the arts-based process with adolescents and young adults is Zine-making. Zines are “a bricolage of various images, texts and messages” (Akbari & Bhatt, 2018) that amount to a self-published work in the interests of those who create it. The young knowledge holders lead the focus of the Zine’s content and themes, process of making and final outcome during the research process. As the researchers, the extent of our role is to develop; the prompts facilitate thought around the overarching inquiry and facilitate the knowledge produced towards the Zines through discussion and guidance.

The value of Zines is that young knowledge holders can choose how much of their story is explicit in the Zine. They can decide if it will be visual, textual, and textural or a mixture of everything to convey meaning and choose whether they are willing to share their zines outside of the research process. Zine-making speaks to an audience and works towards public engagement. Other attributes include,

● Addressing and countering stereotypes

● Making visible impact on wellbeing

● Allows for the nuance and complexity of people’s stories

At the end of the Zines process, together with young knowledge holders, we will develop a set of critical questions that pertain to the overarching topic of the research project. The critical questions will refine the inquiry into phase 2 and will become central to the process itself.

Post workshops youth event: After phase 1 we will host a youth dialogue session where all the groups come together and reflect on their experiences and what emerged from the 4-day workshop.

Phase 2: in the second phase of the research, we will, together with a volunteer group of young adults (youth over 18) carried through from phase one, identify specific stakeholders to interview and include in the research enquiry. Part of doing this is to take this group of young knowledge holders and run a short series of workshops towards “research readiness”. The aim is to include the young people in the continuation of the research outside of phase one right into data analysis, interpretation and dissemination. In this phase, our researchers will become mentors of research and assist young people in data collection.

The image above represents the research journey that will be open to change depending on how the process unfolds. ‘Private’ refers to outputs of the workshops that young people can keep as personal belongings and is not for research dissemination. ‘Public’ refers to outputs that are for public engagement and research dissemination. Consent will be discussed regarding public outputs and any changes to dissemination will be taken to them first.

Participants (aka study population):

The participants will be recruited from three organisations/homes namely, Lawrence House, The Homestead and another organisation (hopefully Adonis Musati Project (AMP)). Our team includes managerial staff who have close relationships with potential young people and are responsible for informing them of the research project and approaching them to take part in the project. In addition, each person in the research team, depending on their relationship to the young people, will be responsible for their care and well-being during the process from start to finish (and after).

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

The criteria for young people selection is as follows:

- Direct or indirect migrant or refugee backgrounds that live in one of the homes mentioned previously or are actively part of regular youth programmes and therefore familiar with participatory-type projects.

- Their ages cut across different phases of life to get a sense of how they navigate senses of belonging and daily life within certain age groups. This also aligns with our research approach that values agency of youth within research and does not immediately exclude any young person due to age.

- Participants speak and understand English instruction since the workshops will be facilitated in English. Given their level of education, we are confident that English will be accessible. If translators are required, these will be carefully chosen.

- The groups are purposefully divided according to age and levels of maturity, the ethics of interaction between young people of different ages as well as processes of the research that is age appropriate. Our responsibility in grouping our participants is to mitigate harm, feelings of exclusion and put emphasis on young people feeling safe with their fellow young people. The groupings and their research processes are as follows:

Ages 12 and under: This age group will come from Lawrence House and will undergo a separate process to the older participants. They will go through a carefully facilitated arts-based process that centre on the exploration of their views on “legal status”. This will be done by a qualified and experienced art-therapist that has previously explored similar questions with young children from Sophia Town and with the LHR. According to our facilitator, Glynis Clacherty, the process must conform to strict regulations of facilitation and care that prioritise the emotional well-being and stability of these children. The following criteria will guide this process:

o The size of the group: between 8-10 children (only 1 group of children will participate)

o The ages in the group: 6-11 years old

o The group sex/gender: a mixture of males and females

o Ensure that any abstract concepts are made explicit to their comprehension

o Carefully developed questions that help children explore their life stories

o Develop a process that is emotionally protective of children participants by using materials and workshop rituals of art-making that ensures their work is safe and put away at the end of each session

o   Ensure that children who are recruited are part of an existing support programme or can become part of one after the research process

o Ensure that time spent in the process is not long and taxing. It is best to complete this process over two days and incorporate relaxation, play and fun into their experience.

o Ensure that the process includes doing artwork together and sharing their insights of their work is done in smaller groups of 2-3 with facilitator while the other children play elsewhere.

o The facilitators are carefully chosen and remain present from the start to finish ensuring consistent presence of people during the process.

Justification of extending age range:

We understand the and ethical concerns when doing research with children. However, excluding children’s perspective about their own well-being and experiences would not justify a project that is directly concerned with them. To mitigate concerns we will include children who come from an existing support network and care setting.

The criteria for inclusion:

• they are deemed to have capacity to be able to give informed consent

• a caregiver/ guardian has also agreed consent

• It is not going to be detrimental to the young person involved but will have a positive gain/ outcome. To ensure this we have qualified and vetted people that will interact with these children.

Ages 13 and older: This age group will be a recruited from Lawrence House, the Homestead and another organisation.

o The size of the group: between 8-10 young people

o The ages in the group: 12-18 years old (most of the young people identified as potential participants are between 15-18 years old)

▪   Group 1: Mixture between Lawrence House and the Homestead. Since the young people are familiar with others in their own home, a second aim of mixing participants across these two homes is to facilitate bonding and connection.

▪   Group 2: Young people that is part of an additional organisation’s youth programmes

o The group sex/gender: a mixture of male and females

o Each group will take part in the phase 1 Zines process

o The aims: Develop set of critical questions for a further research enquiry

●     Consider potential ways we could engage with the public through dissemination of zines – If this is desired or not.

Ages 18 and over: This age group will be a mixture of young people affiliated with our research team members and their respective organisations

o The size of the group: between 10-15 people

o The ages in the group: 18 – 25 years old

o The group sex/gender: Mixture of male and female participants

o This group will take part in the phase 1 Zines process

o Develop set of critical questions for a further research enquiry

● Identify specific stakeholders and organisations we should approach for further insight during phase 2

o Since this group will comprise of young working people, the research process will be reflexive and open to alternative forms of participation. An initial meeting with participants will pre-empt the research process so that time dedicated to this process does not hinder time for work and income

o This group will receive a stipend as required since they will travel from different parts of Cape Town to our workshop space.

Data collection and procedures

As previously mentioned, the research process will be done through a series of short workshops that will use arts-based methods towards the development of Zines. The workshops will run mainly at Scalabrini Centre. If an organisation prefers their own frequented venue for travel and safety purposes of young participants, we are open to hosting the workshops in an alternative venue. Participants will receive transport or transport stipends to travel to and from the research venue.

The data collected from this process will include written responses to in-workshop reflections, discussions, interviews and the Zines themselves (The extent of which will be determined together by the knowledge holders and research team). Researchers (Yusra Price) and participants will collect all the data content. All contents of work will be stored with the head researcher after every workshop in their private home to ensure that all the workshop content is stored in one place. Who is able to access to the data during and at the end of the workshop will be discussed as a group. As previously mentioned, this is not a once-off agreement but discussed in light of changing circumstances and contexts in which data will be used or shared.

The research team

Project holder/preparatory phase team lead: James Chapman.

General profession: Project Manager and Human Rights Attorney at the Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa (SIHMA).

Project role: Oversee the general function and organisation of the research project is responsible for any SIHMA related enquiries. Additionally, Chapman is responsible for handling the funding in the project and ensuring the ethical conduct of the team. Additionally, Chapman will provide support in the workshops facilitation and assist with the final reports and outcome of the research project. Lastly, concerning ethics, Chapman is responsible for putting together a panel of peers for vigorous assessment of the project’s ethics and process and for finalising an additional application for ethics clearance to a tertiary institution.

Research lead/Facilitator: Yusra Price.

General profession: Independent anthropologist, researcher and facilitator.

Project role: Design the research process, generate and compile the necessary documents for ethics review and facilitate the workshops with young people. Price will also be responsible for working with co-facilitators to record their observations of the methods and participation. Lastly, she will be part of the final report writing and other outcomes of the project to its finality.

Advisory group member: Rd. Thea Shahrokh.

General profession: Research associate in the department of Sociological Studies at Sheffield University.

Project role: Provide guidance and support for project research design and overall process based on previous experience in participatory work with young people with migrant and refugee backgrounds. Other responsibilities include liaising with team and relevant people/organisations related to this project to keep them informed with projects phases and any research related impacts.

Advisory group member/co-facilitator: Jade Henderson

General profession: Psychologist specialised in child trauma counselling and currently the manager of Lawrence House

Project role: Henderson will be in charge of recruiting young participants from Lawrence house and overseeing the logistics related to this group. Henderson will also be available as a trauma counsellor if young participants require this attention. Lastly, Henderson will be a co-facilitator for the 12-18 year old workshops and assist Price in the overall Zine-making process.

Research Overseer and advisory group member: Giulia Treves.

General profession: Executive director of Scalabrini with 10 years’ experience of working within child protection of unprotected minors and refugee children.