PANEX-YOUTH: Adaptations of vulnerable young people during COVID-19

Overview

Panex-Youth is a large-scale research project (2022-2024) during which we want to understand how young people have adapted during the pandemic and assess the wider impact of such processes of adaptations in South Africa, Brazil and the UK (England). It is part of the Trans-Atlantic Platform (T-AP) Recovery, Renewal and Resilience in a Post-Pandemic World (RRR) Call, funded conjointly by the ESRC, the NRF and FAPESP.

Ambitions

It aims to understand and assess the impact of COVID-19 and associated policies on food, education, play/leisure of young people living in deprived settings and in conditions of poverty in the UK, Brazil and South Africa. To do so, we adopt a nexus approach, focusing on food, education, and play/leisure embedded within a wider understanding of the living settings (local places) and home/personal contexts (household composition and home/personal life). This project seeks to use an action research methodology to co-create this knowledge about such adaptations and generate wider recommendations, with young people, and the communities in which they live, and non-government bodies and non-profit organizations that focus on this age group. Our approach also allows to create a bridge between those affected by policy (young people) and those drafting and implementing policy (organizations). This projects resonates with issues of well-being, liveability and more importantly hidden voices, all at the core of planner’s priorities.

The Research Stages

• Stage 1: Global Mapping Exercise
• Aim: Map and develop typologies of the pandemic’s impact on the food/education/play-leisure nexus with a focus on young people’s vulnerabilities globally.
• Stage 2: National and Regional Mappings
• Aim: Situate and decrypt, in each of the three countries and regions ( West Midlands/Birmingham; Central RSA/Mangaung and Moqhaka; and São Paulo State/Paraisópolis), what have been the key impacts of pandemic-related policy towards the food, education, play/leisure nexus of issues facing young people during and after Covid, what policy/programmes/initiatives were developed, and how local places matter.
• Stage 3: Zoom-ins on local adaptations of young people in monetary-poor households
• Aim: Conduct an in-depth case study analysis in six case study areas, two/ three in each case study region with a focus on incremental and innovative strategies and the impact on those adaptations on everyday survival and recovery.
• Stage 4: Co-designing multi-scalar solutions to foster young people’s recovery, resilience

This project's aim is to-design with our community of young people and our community of practice solutions that will help vulnerable young people to recover and be prepared in the eventuality of future major health and socio-economic crisis in line with the food, education, play/leisure nexus.

This project runs from June 2022 to November 2024.

Go back to view all research projects

Photo by Lauren Andres