Participatory Action Research or Research Extractivism? Creating Brave and Equitable Research with Striking Workers through Art

This paper presents an interdisciplinary methodology that combines art-making with Participatory Action Research (PAR) to explore the strikes and organisation of precarious, low-paid, and migrant workers in the UK's independent grass-roots trade unions. These workers—cleaners, porters, carers, security guards, couriers, and gig economy workers—face insecure employment, limited rights, low pay, and unpaid labour. Despite their small size, these new independent unions have gained significant attention for their militant strikes and high-profile victories in "David and Goliath" battles (Hardy 2021; Pero 2020).

Our research methodology draws on the principles of popular education and PAR developed by Paulo Freire and Orlando Fals Borda to co-create knowledge with precarious workers, union activists, and organizers. Although PAR is intended to promote collaboration, it is often constrained by academic funding structures that perpetuate inequalities. Terms like "co-researchers" and "peer-researchers" can obscure the lack of fair compensation for participants, leading to the ethical risk of research extractivism—“taking without consent, without thought, care, or knowledge of its impacts” (Viswanath et al. 2023).

Our project counters these risks by integrating art-making focus groups, storytelling, portrait sittings and embraided banner making, creating a collaborative process that sensitively captures the lived experiences of low-paid workers. These art-focus groups serve as brave spaces where difficult emotions can be expressed, tensions can surface, and the effects of gender, race, and ethnicity on workers’ collective action can be explored, fostering solidarity among diverse groups of workers.

Despite securing funding to remunerate participants and creating art to support workers’ strikes, achieving equal pay in knowledge creation remains a challenge. Hence, in this paper, we also interrogate what constitutes fair remuneration for participants who are low-paid and time-poor.

Both authors bring a dual researcher positionality—rooted in academia while involved with these grassroots unions, creating the foundations of trust and care essential for conducting PAR research.