Paper short abstract:

This presentation looks at the practices of children’s participation in rural Sierra Leone and examines children’s voices in the complex and contested context of gendered socio-cultural norms related to child rearing and wider glocal discourses related to children’s rights.

Paper long abstract:

It is widely recognized that the social and political participation of children and young people plays an important role in progress towards the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals. However young people face multiple barriers that restrict their ability to participate in decision-making processes at the local, national and international level. This presentation looks at the practices of children’s participation in rural Sierra Leone and examines children’s voices in the complex and contested context of gendered socio-cultural norms related to child rearing and wider glocal discourses related to children’s rights. It examines interconnections between poverty, gender and generational orders and shows that in Sierra Leone traditional generational and patriarchal orders place male elders at the top of the social hierarchy, in charge of political, economic, and educational decisions in communities and households. However, the proliferation of new practices, often introduced from the ‘outside’ opens up new opportunities for young people to raise their voices about their issues of concern, challenging traditional social structures. These dynamics take place within a wider context of extreme poverty and health crises. The presentation is based on an extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Northern Sierra Leone.

Paper short abstract:

This paper presents a longitudinal postdoctoral research proposal that draws on intersectionality to examine the livelihood strategies of migrant youth in Addis Ababa in a post-pandemic urban context and a post-conflict national setting.

Paper long abstract:

The covid-19 pandemic is likely to have a lasting, detrimental effect on the livelihoods of vulnerable adolescent workers in cities across sub-Saharan Africa. In Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, few policy and programming initiatives have targeted the growing number of domestic workers, petty street traders and streetwalkers in the city who are young and rural. This proposal argues for an intersectional analysis of adolescent livelihoods as a means of, first, understanding how the factors behind their motives to migrate relate to their decisions to stay and, second, as a way of deconstructing the power relations that shapes adolescents' agency and disenfranchises their ability to improve their lives. This contribution will highlight the value an intersectional perspective offers in generating new knowledge on subjective experiences of urban space, while emphasising the importance of such knowledge in integrating the voices of vulnerable youth into development interventions.

Paper short abstract:

Presentation of research that applies an intersectional lens to examine the effects of physical and sociocultural urban spaces on the economic empowerment of marginalised adolescent girls and young women in Mozambique.

Paper long abstract:

The speakers would like to contribute towards deepening our understanding of how urbanisation is affecting the economic empowerment of marginalised adolescent girls and young women, through presenting analysis that applies a multi-spatial and multi-sectoral lens to the experiences of urban youth in Mozambique. The paper presents research conducted by the UKAid funded, and Oxford Policy Management implemented, MUVA programme. Between 2015 and 2022, MUVA supported the economic empowerment of marginalised adolescent girls and young women in several urban centres across Mozambique, with a focus on increasing their access to quality jobs.

The research applies an intersectional lens to interpret how the physical and sociocultural features of the city impact upon the agency of adolescent girls and young women in Mozambique’s more disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods. Using qualitative and quantitative data on the perceptions and lives of urban youth, the research examines the opportunities and barriers for economic empowerment associated with urbanisation. The research presents encouraging outcomes in the area of education and support for women in leadership positions amongst urban youth. At the same time, young women appear to be in a much more disadvantaged position compared to young men when it comes to employment, where they continue to face barriers in accessing quality jobs. The research shows how these less encouraging outcomes are connected to constraints on their agency and participation due lower levels of physical mobility, social capital and digital inclusion for marginalised young women in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods.

Paper short abstract:

We would like to share the tools with colleagues and get feedback on whether these new tools can be adopted/modified/improved for application as part of intersectional approaches to adolescent voice and agency in the context of multiple crises

Paper long abstract:

We would like to share the tools and to get a reality check from other scholars and practitioners about the applicability of these tools with adolescents and in crises. The ‘participation cube’ was recently published in the Sage Handbook of Participatory Research Methods. It provides a simple framework for conducting three-dimensional analysis of (a) who has what (b) level of voice and agency at which (c) stages in any development process. By tracing the participation of all actors through the project cycle it is possible to document who has more/less voice and agency at each stage of a process. Since publication of the participation cube, we have since used it to conduct retrospective ‘participation tracing’ on projects with young people in Uganda and Zambia, where it proved useful in highlighting some gender and intersectional issues. We anticipate that the tools could be used in project design, monitoring, and evaluation. Project actors could potentially use these tools as a participatory workshop method to conduct their own participation analysis. We have drafted a full journal article ready for submission.