Humanizing Research with Asian American Youth and Families: Centering Intergenerational Diasporic Experiences

• In Event: “Looking Back, Looking Forward:” Envisioning Asian Diasporas as Methodologies for “Thriving Futures”

Abstract

This presentation examines how humanizing Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) methodologies transform traditional research paradigms by centering Asian American youth as knowledge producers while honoring intergenerational wisdom and transnational epistemologies. Drawing from Asian diaspora theoretical frameworks (He et al., 2025), we explore how humanizing YPAR methodologies (Caraballo et al., 2017) enable transformative research practices that challenge the marginalization of Asian diasporic experiences. The study demonstrates how centering youth agency alongside family expertise generates sophisticated counter-narratives that disrupt racial stereotypes and inform socially just curriculum development (Author et al., 2024).

Our humanizing YPAR approach integrates Asian diaspora theorizing (He et al., 2024, 2025) with Asian American Critical Race Theory (AsianCrit; Iftikar & Museus, 2018) to extend traditional YPAR methodologies through humanizing practices. We particularly highlight the transnational funds of knowledge (Author et al., 2019) embedded within Asian diasporic families that include both foreign-born and U.S.-born individuals (He et al., 2024, 2025). This theoretical synthesis challenges methodological nationalism by situating youth experiences within global networks of migration, cultural preservation, and resistance rather than confining analysis to nation-state boundaries. Asian diaspora theorizing also provides frameworks for understanding how intergenerational knowledge systems defy dominant narratives while constructing alternative epistemologies that center diasporic ways of knowing.

Drawing on our YPAR project involving ten Asian/Asian American high school students from diverse ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds in Michigan, we discuss the humanizing approaches we enacted to recognize both youth and families as knowledge partners rather than research subjects. We also explain how taking such approaches created opportunities to center diasporic ways of knowing. Our orientation sessions engaged not only the participant youth but also their families, and they were positioned as experts capable of challenging deficit perspectives and dominant narratives about the Asian/Asian American community through their powerful stories and experiences. During this orientation, participants’ parents shared their experiences navigating transnational lives, preserving their cultures, and maintaining their intergenerational connections and community ties. We also found that collaborative knowledge construction emerged through structured workshops designed to equip youth with oral history methodologies and support them in conducting and sharing their oral histories. For example, one participant youth conducting an oral history project on his father traveled with his father to the house he first bought to collect artifacts, photographs, and to document his father’s experience of navigating his life as an immigrant. Other participants also shared how engaging in this project gave them opportunities to learn more about the Asian diaspora through engaging intergenerational dialogues and capturing their family members’ diasporic experiences through multiple languages and modes.

This research contributes to Asian diaspora methodologies by demonstrating how humanizing YPAR serves simultaneously as a research method and pedagogical practice. The study illustrates how humanizing methodologies transform participatory research while generating educational resources reflecting complex Asian diaspora experiences. Our study contributes to advancing YPAR methodologies and transnational approaches to understanding racialized experiences in educational contexts through methodological innovations prioritizing ethical engagement across intersectional identities while challenging traditional power dynamics in research relationships and educational curriculum development.

Authors

• Min Yu, Wayne State University

• Roland Sintos Coloma, Wayne State University

• Wenyang Sun, University of Utah

• Jungmin Kwon, Michigan State University

• Pyeongeun Kim, Michigan State University

• Seungwoo Hwang, Michigan State University