Drawing (Across) Borders: Reflections on the Use of Creative Visual Communication in Research with Young Refugees

This paper argues for greater engagement with ‘visuality’ and creative communication in research with/for linguistically and culturally diverse groups of young people, such as those who have been forcibly displaced across borders. It is based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork with displaced youth in Thessaloniki, Greece, during which I aimed to better understand their educational decision-making and the symbolic borders within/around their learning spaces. This involved participant observation as a volunteer teacher in various educational spaces (including language classes and arts workshops); focus group discussions with youth aged 15-25, involving creative methods (namely, drawing pathways to one's future and the barriers and supports along it); and interviews with educational ‘stakeholders’ such as teachers, parents and coordinators.

The paper addresses two ways in which visual communication (and more specifically, drawing) became a part of this project - as both a method and a form of dissemination - and reflects on its associated challenges and possibilities. Firstly, it describes how the ‘visual’ was incorporated into the process of data generation and analysis - from pictorial consent forms and creative methods to the researcher’s reflective sketches and photographs - and the ethical and practical implications of this. Secondly, it makes the case for creating a visual product of research with/for refugees, to enable youth to share their lives in colour, rather than as another bureaucratic or academic text. It concludes with a call for researchers to engage an audience beyond academia in their stories, while paying attention to their role in constructing generalised visual narratives. As such, it argues that visual communication - when done with critical reflection and flexibility - has the potential to transgress borders among youth, researchers and the wider public.