Young Palestinians' Responses to House Demolitions: Youth Agency for Sustainable Development?

Focusing on young people, this project investigates the kinds of agency and citizenship that emerge in the context of house demolitions. The team is working to actively engage young people in the research process while also addressing policymakers and practitioners through an innovative interdisciplinary approach and extensive stakeholder engagement and co-production activities.

The project has five objectives:

1. Identify how NGOs and schools working with young Palestinians in rural and urban areas of the West Bank understand, represent and engage with the histories and presents of demolitions and young people affected by them;

2. Analyse how young people make sense of their experiences, memories and anticipation of demolitions;

3. Document young Palestinians’ informal, everyday cultural responses (e.g. music, food, visual media, spontaneous acts of solidarity and care, informal networks) to demolitions;

4. Conceptualise the forms of agency that emerge through these responses and analyse how these shape young people’s capacities to maintain their health and well-being, develop lifelong learning and build peaceful and more inclusive and just institutions;

5. Use the findings to facilitate dialogues between NGOs, schools and young people to co-develop policies and practices for well-being, lifelong learning and inclusion that reflect young people’s agency and informal and creative responses to demolitions.