Helping Homeless Youth: Epistemological Implications of Power in a YPAR Project

Abstract

Text from Nasma: 'I’ve started moving my things out of the house. I’m putting it in your office for now.' Thus began the story of how one of the youth I had worked with for four years on various YPAR projects became homeless and turned to me for help. Entering this crisis with Nasma took time and an emotional toll, and it affected the power dynamics of our relationship when finishing our YPAR project. Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) works to rebalance power in inequitable relationships based on roles, age, race, gender, etc. Providing care to Nasma as she confronted the traumatic situation of homelessness affected our collaborative relationship as she became dependent on me for basic economic resources. Through this process, the inequities in age and material resources between Nasma and me were centred, displacing the more equitable interactions that we had constructed through YPAR projects. This article employs critical autoethnography to examine the epistemological ‘risks of care’ and argues that the calls for ‘care-full’ scholarship still need to contend with the pitfalls of differential power dynamics in YPAR.