This programme seeks to explore the creation of migrant youth identities in post-referendum Scotland. The programme will bring together academics and stakeholders concerned with research and work on immigration and immigrant integration, youth studies, youth media and cultural communications. Migration specialists will meet with social media practitioners, and youth organisations will engage with academic research in a new blend of scholarship and practicality that reflects the digital, connected world in which we now live. The project envisages four workshops:
- Exploring Methodologies
A range of research methodologies will be explored in order to facilitate studies that would allow greater understanding of the issue of migrant youth identities.
- Media, Technologies and Youth Identity Formation
Different kinds of media platforms and technologies, particularly digital, that influence the formation of identities of young people and help to express, organise and communicate these identities will be explored.
- Space, Place and Youth Identity
This theme will investigate how place and space - physical, virtual, social and cultural - impact on the shaping of identities and how they are created and used.
- Youth Interaction and Training
Using insights from the first three sessions, a day-long workshop for young migrants from a variety of cultural backgrounds, will comprise focus groups, discussion groups, interactive sessions on various topics such as cultural interactions and identity formation as well as creative media training sessions.
The programme has the potential to have both academic and policy impact, and to contribute to greater engagement from migrant young people as well as greater social cohesion in an increasingly multi-cultural/ethnic/faith and linguistic Scotland. This is expected to feed into current policy processes, enabling young people in Scotland to have a direct impact on the form and trajectory of these policies.