Young People at a Crossroads
Young people at a crossroads (YPX): Negotiations of environmental knowledges, practices and subjectivities in immigrant homes at a time of climate crisis
About this project
The Young People at a Crossroads project, funded by the ESRC from January 2021 to February 2023, delved into the responses of second-generation immigrant youth and their parents to climate change in Manchester and Melbourne.
Researchers at the University of Manchester partnered with 14-18-year-olds with family migration backgrounds to explore their views on climate change and understand how these perspectives align with their families' experiences of adapting to environmental uncertainties in the UK, Australia, and globally.
Project background
As youth climate activism grows around the world, this project aimed to generate unique understandings into how families composed of first- and second-generation immigrants from the Global South (GS) are responding to lived experiences of climate crisis in two ethnically diverse cities: Manchester and Melbourne.
As well as growing up at an historic crossroads in terms of political and societal responses to the climate crisis, second-generation immigrants are at an additional crossroads in their family life, between different sets of political and cultural values, economic possibilities and environmental characteristics that have roots in (at least) two countries.
This pioneering project was the first of its kind to conduct research with this often overlooked group of young people, generating insights from two cities, with young people from a range of ethnic backgrounds. The question at the heart of the project was how second-generation immigrants - part of the most ‘climate change-aware’ generation alive today - discuss and negotiate responses to the climate crisis with parents who may have first-hand experience of living with resource and climate uncertainty, yet whose knowledge is often not valued in Global North (GN) contexts.
This area of research is both timely and important because at a time when deep-rooted adaptations are still urgently needed in societies already feeling the effects of climate change, existing research by the project team and other researchers has found that GS immigrants hold valuable knowledge that is often not known to or fully appreciated by the public and by policymakers in the GN contexts where they are living.
At the time of starting the project, no research had yet explored the crucial role - actual or potential - that the children of immigrants play in carrying and exchanging environmental knowledges between the private space of the home and public and institutional spaces such as schools, as well as symbolically between different generations and cultural backgrounds.
The project aimed to advance understanding of how intergenerational and cross-cultural tensions and opportunities for learning play out in immigrant homes and in schools in Manchester and Melbourne.
'Young People at a Crossroads' creative book
The project team is thrilled to introduce the 'Young People at a Crossroads' creative book:
Download 'Young People at a Crossroads' (PDF 3.4MB)
Catherine Walker, the lead researcher on the YPAC project, has curated this book, featuring original contributions from YPAC Young Researchers, as well as environmental educators Kit Marie Rackley and Nerida Thompson.
The illustrations are by Maisy Summer. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for the work presented in this book.
Please note that this book is intended as an educational resource and is not to be sold. If you would like to request a printed copy of the book for teaching purposes, please contact catherine.walker@ncl.ac.uk
Educators’ guide to the creative book
If you're an educator, this guide to the Young People at a Crossroads creative book is tailored just for you. The guide:
- Provides a concise 'setting the scene' review of research and policy developments to clarify why adopting a whole school approach to climate change is not only necessary but also achievable;
- Guides you through the process of initiating a whole school approach by garnering support from school leadership and colleagues. This ensures that educators from various subjects can teach about climate change with effectiveness and confidence;
- Introduces spark ideas and activities for utilizing the YPAC creative book. These are crafted to be adaptable across different year levels, subjects, and curricular contexts, sparking your own ideas and variations effortlessly. While our primary focus is on secondary schools, this guide can be easily adapted for a primary school setting.
Download the Educators guide to the YPAC creative book (PDF: 3.2MB)
‘Moving beyond the crossroads’ practical guide
The Young People at a Crossroads (YPX) project investigates the intersection between personal and societal ‘crossroads’ concerning migration and climate change. For young people who migrate, this experience marks a significant crossroads in their personal and family story. On a much larger scale, we are often told that ‘humanity is at a crossroads’ when it comes to addressing climate change.
Of course, we cannot stay ‘at a crossroads’ forever. So, at the end of the project, we invited the young researchers and others from their schools and colleges to engage in intergenerational conversations about responding to climate change alongside adults in Manchester and Melbourne.
This practical guide for schools and community settings showcases visual and textual snapshots from these conversations. It ends with tips on moving beyond the climate crossroads based on participants’ responses. Download the eight-page resource:
Download the ‘Moving beyond the crossroads’ practical guide (PDF 3.5MB)
The guide includes a number of word clouds created using wordart.com. You can access all of the links to the word clouds in the following document:
Download ‘Moving beyond the crossroads’ word art (PDF 0.3MB)
‘Stories of climate education, action and adaptation’ video
This video tells three stories from the YPX project using animated illustrations by Maisy Summer, originally commissioned for the YPX creative book.
Watch the YPX stories video on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNL3dq5B6bE
The video was produced by Kit Marie Rackley (Geogramblings.com). Narrators of the video are Kit Marie Rackley, YPX participants Rebecca, Edward and Haripriya, and Topo Mokokwane.
See more of Kit Marie’s work at https://geogramblings.com/
See more of Maisy’s work at https://www.maisysummer.com/
Interview training resources
Many of the young researchers who took part in the YPX research interviewed one or more parent or grandparent and wrote about these interviews for the YPX creative book.
Before they did this, the young researchers took part in two hours of interview training.
The handouts that we used in training are available to download here:
- Pre-training handout (PDF: 173KB)
- Recap of part 1 (PDF: 257KB)
- Recap of part 2 (PDF: 184KB)
These handouts were developed by: Catherine Walker, Ellen van Holstein, Adelin Gabriel-Balan, Leonardo Faedo, Kauser Hussein, and Diana Rodriguez.
‘Mind, Body and Soul: Understanding eco-anxiety’ workshop resources
These workshop resources have been adapted and shared by activist and educator Kit Marie Rackley, who worked as an educational consultant to the Young People at a Crossroads project.
Find out more about Kit Marie’s work at https://geogramblings.com/
The resources consist of:
- Presentation slides (PDF 1.5MB) - estimated 45 - 60 minutes duration
- A transcript of a guided meditation (PDF 44KB) to be read in the ‘Body’ section (slide 17)
The slides feature an interview between Kit Marie and White Raven Woman Candace Lloyd taken from the Coffee and Geography Podcast (20 November 2021). You can listen to this clip and download a transcript at the following links:
- Download the sound file at https://geogramblings.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/coffee-geography-clip-02-s01e26-candace.mp3
- Download the transcript at https://geogramblings.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/coffeegeog-candace-transcript.pdf
Kit Marie originally developed these resources with Kate Russell and Emma Lindsay for the University of East Anglia’s Project Change.
Further information and contact
The project was led by Principal Investigator Catherine Walker while at The University of Manchester and was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
Catherine Walker
Catherine is an NUAcT Fellow in Cities and Place, specialising in research around young people, climate justice and education and lead the YPX project at the University of Manchester.
Catherine is interested in how climate change can exacerbate intersecting social inequalities for young people and their families and the opportunities young people have to respond to this in families, schools and communities.