Roundtable on Participatory Action Research with Racialised Girls in Victoria

1. Roundtable on Participatory Action Research with Racialised Girls in Victoria Dr. Jo-Anne Lee, University of Victoria Sandrina de Finney, University of Victoria Winnie Chow, Anti-dote Rani Sandhu, Anti-dote Sartu Sudi

2. Anti-dote History with PAR

3. Present Initiatives • Immigrant Sibling Research Project • Bridging the Intergenerational Comunication Gap: Violence Prevention Project with Racialised Girls and Women • International Students Project • Capacity Building Project

4. Conceptual Framework and Starting Assumptions • Post-structural perspectives on multiple subjectivities • Post-modernist social theories, the ‘social’ as emergent and contingent • Transnational Feminist Frameworks • Concerns with colonialism, nationalism, globalized capitalism and citizenship,as they deploy race, class, gender, age, language to shape the conditions of racialised immigrant and indigenous girls lives • “Scattered hegemonies”- ie how patriarchies are recast in diasporic conditions of post-modernity • Girls and women have agency and take action to shape themselves in relation to others

5. Lessons Learned with PAR in Victoria • Feminist participatory action research integrated with community development methods have tremendous potential for bringing about positive and immediate change because these processes integrate and support processes of citizenship identity formation, critical consciousness, knowledge production, social linkages and network, social action and self-empowerment, and building community capacity. • However there are particular challenges for PAR when undertaken when group is socially isolated, silenced, and hidden from view.

6. Key Working Concepts • Diasporic transnational communities • Hybrid subjects • Negotiation and cultural citizenship • Categories of Identity are left open, intersecting, multi-layered, refusal of essentialism, • Learning by doing, cultural practices of everyday life • Girls as co-researchers, active agents of their life • Intergenerational support is needed to bring girls voices to the table: Sisters and Aunties also part of building capacity

7. Some Key Issues • Whiteness needs to be named and theorized as a structural formation that mediates racialised girls’ lives • Practices of social exclusion are not acknowledged by service providers and state officials • Specific policies and programs are needed that address the context of less diverse cities like Victoria • Programs that offer girls language to understand and name their experiences and realities are needed so they do not feel so isolated and estranged from their lives and each other. Such programs need to be developed in collaboration with girls themselves and in relation to context. Ie. Buddy programs with “normal” Canadians not useful, but programs that support and build networks around “difference” is helpful.

8. Some Key Issues Cont’d. • Cultural knowledge that girls possess needs to be acknowledged, validated and valued. They have knowledge of how to live as multicultural subjects in a changing, globalized society • Immigrant families face economic challenges in adapting to new site by reworking gender norms, ie, requiring caring labor from girls. Sometimes this intensives gender roles for girls, limiting their opportunities for the future.

9. Central Themes and Concepts • Sense of social isolation in Victoria • Numerous interacting factors: whiteness as cultural formation, numbers, lack of awareness of needs of racialised immigrant girls, lack of opportunities for solidarity around difference. • Girls have considerable cultural knowledge and skills for negotiating multiple cultural worlds.