See RAPAR's unfolding response to COVID-19 HERE.
About Our Research
Power differences exist and, within this economic period, grow. They are material and ideological, formal and formal, and they both inhibit and complicate participatory processes. Power is expressed within physical environments through human activity that occurs inside of structural and organisational hierarchies. It is we, human beings, who generate and reproduce power relations through regulations and policies designed to apply those regulations within our service development and delivery.
At the same time, it is also we who can interrogate, challenge and even alter those power relations within our individual and group interactions – but, first of all, we have to decide that we want to make changes happen.
RAPAR began to reach the national media with our research about what was happening to people seeking asylum from both Iraq (2003) and Somalia (2004) and to their local communities here. However, during 2004-5, RAPAR faced highly concentrated - and highly placed - efforts to stop its work in its tracks; see 2011 University of Oxford PhD thesis by Joshua Hatton entitled How and why did migration and refugee studies (MARS) facilitate migration control? (click here for pdf) particularly section 4.3. on power and practice (pp.254-278).
Sustaining RAPAR’s commitment to ‘participation as equals’ within our practice demands that, as practitioners ourselves, we continuously reflect-in-action. In our approach with participants, we aim to model the very attitudes, behaviours and actions that enable participatory learning to begin and grow: do as I do, not as I say you should do! RAPAR's work led to the publishing of the first ever book anywhere in the world on Doing Research With Refugees. This included a set of guidelines funded by the ESRC. With our commissioners and participants, we co-construct and then sustain temporarily safe environments within which to:
At the same time, it is also we who can interrogate, challenge and even alter those power relations within our individual and group interactions – but, first of all, we have to decide that we want to make changes happen.
RAPAR began to reach the national media with our research about what was happening to people seeking asylum from both Iraq (2003) and Somalia (2004) and to their local communities here. However, during 2004-5, RAPAR faced highly concentrated - and highly placed - efforts to stop its work in its tracks; see 2011 University of Oxford PhD thesis by Joshua Hatton entitled How and why did migration and refugee studies (MARS) facilitate migration control? (click here for pdf) particularly section 4.3. on power and practice (pp.254-278).
Sustaining RAPAR’s commitment to ‘participation as equals’ within our practice demands that, as practitioners ourselves, we continuously reflect-in-action. In our approach with participants, we aim to model the very attitudes, behaviours and actions that enable participatory learning to begin and grow: do as I do, not as I say you should do! RAPAR's work led to the publishing of the first ever book anywhere in the world on Doing Research With Refugees. This included a set of guidelines funded by the ESRC. With our commissioners and participants, we co-construct and then sustain temporarily safe environments within which to:
- unpack the challenges together: What are they? Where are they coming from? What about them do we want to be different?
- make explicit our individual and collective, professional and personal, relationships to these challenges: Whose interests do they serve? Why do we need to tackle these challenges?
- explore what we want to do - and can do - to work around them and through them to reach our goals.
Our Methodologies
Our Participatory Action Research approach (the 'PAR' of 'RAPAR') combines the principles of Action Research first expressed by Lewin (1946) with those of Action Learning, as explained by Revans in his ABC of Action Learning (1998). Lewin asserts that ways of doing action research - as opposed to purely academic research - should be consciously developed so that constructive changes can take place in the real world during the life of the research itself. Revans focuses on the inseparability of action and learning and he identifies that participation in action learning processes is “the child, not of power, but of communal need" (1976).
However, becoming able to participate in culturally sensitive ways is vital. In RAPAR we adapt the techniques developed through participatory rural appraisal in ‘developing’ countries and the modifications of that approach which have been explored through asset based community development in the ‘developed’ world.
People participate when they realise that they have to if they want positive changes to take place. Ideally, that participation should include representatives of all the different groups that are involved in the thing that needs to change.
However, becoming able to participate in culturally sensitive ways is vital. In RAPAR we adapt the techniques developed through participatory rural appraisal in ‘developing’ countries and the modifications of that approach which have been explored through asset based community development in the ‘developed’ world.
People participate when they realise that they have to if they want positive changes to take place. Ideally, that participation should include representatives of all the different groups that are involved in the thing that needs to change.
What we do in research
Our approach is centred on finding out about any issue important and relevant to our members, by involving the people who are affected by it, throughout the research process. These people can include clients and practitioners as well as managers, policy writers, and policy ratifiers. We focus on the lived experience discrimination, human rights violations, and systemic oppression
How does RAPAR research work?
We centre the people who are directly affected by the issue under study, be they the subjects of that issue (for example young people excluded from education or families exposed to violent attack) or workers who are grappling with that issue. RAPAR enables everyone's involvement in designing, developing and delivering research and then, utilising the findings, deciding what is most important for our learning and how that learning can and should be communicated.
We very much enjoy working in collaborative research partnerships with other organizations and are always open to approaches for joint bidding.
For further information, or to discuss an idea, please Contact Us.
Research capacities:
How does RAPAR research work?
We centre the people who are directly affected by the issue under study, be they the subjects of that issue (for example young people excluded from education or families exposed to violent attack) or workers who are grappling with that issue. RAPAR enables everyone's involvement in designing, developing and delivering research and then, utilising the findings, deciding what is most important for our learning and how that learning can and should be communicated.
We very much enjoy working in collaborative research partnerships with other organizations and are always open to approaches for joint bidding.
For further information, or to discuss an idea, please Contact Us.
Research capacities:
- Extensive language resources.
- Particularly good at connecting with exclusively vulnerable.
- Mediate trans-cultural flows.
- Able to deliver qualitative/ quantitative methodologies.
- Particular expertise around participatory action oriented action research.
- Very interested in relationship between theory and practise.
Research publications
RAPAR is a researching organisation. Since our inception we have published articles, book chapters, research reports and books about our participatory action research. Click here to read more.
Meet the research team
Interested in developing research with and about, not for or on, vulnerable people, we range from highly academically qualified researchers, to deeply experienced and rooted, community based researchers.
We are women and men, ranging in age from our early 20s to over 70, and we come from a wide range of different cultural, religious and social backgrounds. Between us, we can speak and write in a number of different languages.
Some of us have particular expertise in research that is transcultural. Others are very experienced in research that is action-orientated. Our research skills, abilities, experiences, and networks mean that, in practice, RAPAR can research issues that involve people who may be very hard to reach and, themselves, involved in very complex issues.
Dr Gráinne McMahon is the Research Lead for RAPAR. Grainne is developing RAPAR’s research and is working with RAPAR members to evolve research-based campaigning projects and campaign-focused research projects.
The research team also includes Dr Rhetta Moran, Billy Gardner, Ivy Makani, Amy Marsden, and James Taylor.
MEET THE TEAM.
We are women and men, ranging in age from our early 20s to over 70, and we come from a wide range of different cultural, religious and social backgrounds. Between us, we can speak and write in a number of different languages.
Some of us have particular expertise in research that is transcultural. Others are very experienced in research that is action-orientated. Our research skills, abilities, experiences, and networks mean that, in practice, RAPAR can research issues that involve people who may be very hard to reach and, themselves, involved in very complex issues.
Dr Gráinne McMahon is the Research Lead for RAPAR. Grainne is developing RAPAR’s research and is working with RAPAR members to evolve research-based campaigning projects and campaign-focused research projects.
The research team also includes Dr Rhetta Moran, Billy Gardner, Ivy Makani, Amy Marsden, and James Taylor.
MEET THE TEAM.
Our current research
RAPAR is currently involved in three main large research projects:
- COME:ON (Culture – Occupation – Mobility – Europe : Operational Network!), funded by the European Union's Erasmus+ European Youth Together programme
- OUYE (Opening Universities for Youth in Europe), funded by the European Union's Erasmus+ European Youth Together programme
- Building Networks of Resilience project, funded by the Coronavirus Community Support Fund, distributed by The National Lottery Community Fund, which is a collaboration between RAPAR, Migrant Voice and Kanlungan Filipino Consortium.