Paths and Impediments: Reflections on Conducting YPAR alongside Asian American Youth in the U.S. Northeast

• In Event: Youth Participatory Action Research with Asian American Communities: Methodological Innovations and Transformative Possibilities

Abstract

Objectives
Drawing on a virtual Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) study that we (a South Asian American faculty member, an Indian PhD student, and a Chinese PhD student) conducted alongside nine Asian American (AsAm) youth in a Northeastern metropolitan area, we will explore the following question: What were the methodological opportunities and predicaments of conducting YPAR alongside AsAm youth? Examining how YPAR generated specific democratic opportunities and challenges for our youth partners, we will illuminate how this method can better serve members of this civically marginalized, yet critical population.

Theoretical Framework
We build on AsianCrit (Iftikar & Museus, 2018), a lens centering AsAm’s civic experiences in the inequitable structures of U.S. public life. This helps clarify how youth pursued YPAR-based learning as specifically racialized civic actors. Next, we draw on Woman of Color feminism (Anzaldúa, 2021, hooks, 2000) to underscore youths’ valuable civic knowledge(s) that they summoned for YPAR-based learning. Finally, we extend YPAR lenses (Caraballo et al. 2017; Mirra & Garcia, 2017) to underscore how youth explored civic life through democratizing processes — and the tensions constraining those efforts.

Methods
Working alongside nine diverse high school-aged AsAm youth, we facilitated a virtual YPAR community from Summer 2024-Spring 2025. Following standard YPAR inquiry cycles, youth developed questions about social issues they deemed significant (e.g., anti-Asian racism; curricular representation); conducted original research into those issues; and, presenting their work to the wider public during a culminating May 2025 showcase.

Data Sources and Analysis
Our analysis drew on YPAR session recordings; youths’ artifacts (e.g., drawings, writing); and our scholar-facilitator field-notes. Drawing on our theoretical framework and research question, we used multiple rounds of coding and analytic memo-writing to explore how the structures and processes of YPAR enabled and foreclosed youths’ inquiries into the civic issues impacting their lives (Saldaña, 2013).

Results
We will first highlight how YPAR’s participatory structures created unique opportunities to uplift AsAm youths’ rich, multilayered civic knowledge(s). Across the program, youth directly drew on wisdom gleaned from their specifically racialized identities to explore democratic issues. This was clear when, for example, youths’ inquiries reflected the specific social injustices they faced (e.g., anti-Asian stereotypes). This shows how YPAR can nurture AsAm youths’ powerful civic perspectives and knowledges — vantage points and epistemic resources that are marginalized by civic institutions (Yu et al., 2024). Next, we will discuss how YPAR provided uneven participatory pathways. Since the program guided youth towards the final “product” of a research presentation for an English-speaking audience, this “destination” was not uniformly accessible to all youth — especially our two Chinese international student researchers. This tension reveals a salient equity issue even within a program committed to AsAm youth empowerment.

Significance
This paper will illuminate how YPAR enabled AsAm youth to surface powerful civic perspectives, thus underscoring its potential for nurturing their civic voices. It will illustrate, too, YPARs’ participatory limits for intersectionally marginalized AsAm youth. Overall, the paper will explore how YPAR is a promising, yet flawed tool for nurturing AsAm youths’ civic empowerment.

Authors

• Ankhi Guha Thakurta, Boston College

• Yueyang Shen, Boston College

• Deepshikha Banerjee, Boston College