Using photovoice to amplify the voices of young migrants and refugees in Chile

Escuela de Investigadores (School of Researchers) collaborates with a diverse group of young people aged 13 to 19 who have moved to Chile from Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Peru. Their research intervention, using photovoice methodology, centres on the young people’s lived experience of resettling in Chile and living in irregular settlements shaped by stigma and marginalisation. Through art and strengths-based research, participants collectively navigate and make sense of their integration into Chilean social contexts.

What is photovoice?

Photovoice was developed in the popular education tradition of Paulo Freire. He sought to facilitate transformative change in marginalised communities through group dialogue reflecting on experiences of oppression and the development of critical consciousness (conscientização). Caroline Wang and Mary Ann Burris designed photovoice to address gendered exclusions in research by making women’s experiences visible through documentary photography and critical dialogue (Wang & Burris, 1997). The methodology has three primary goals:

1. enabling participants to document and reflect on their community’s strengths and challenges,
2. fostering critical dialogue through group discussion of photographs, and
3. communicating participants’ perspectives to policymakers and broader audiences.

Escuela de Investigadores: A case study in youth agency and education

Escuela de Investigadores adapted photovoice to young people by focusing on agency and education. Young people are acknowledged as active agents of change and co-researchers who decide the focus of the project and choose the tools used to explore it. The adult researchers or facilitators are fully committed to an inclusive practice grounded in trust and rapport.

The project involved young people who attended public secondary schools in the communities of Alto Hospicio, Iquique, and Cerro Chuño in northern Chile, which are often framed through narratives of stigma and deficit by the public and Chilean media. Over four months, weekly sessions built participants’ social science research skills while documenting lived experiences through photography and engaging in critical dialogue and writing. Researchers held sessions at local schools and community spaces. They also built on existing community strengths, by collaborating with local artists and photographers to lead arts-based workshops, and invited local academics to share their research experiences. Reflection and practice were integrated in the sessions with young people, creating space to examine identity and context, alongside learning the foundations of qualitative research and photovoice. Young people were introduced to analogue photography and spent four weeks photographing their communities. They then categorised their images through collective reflection and poetic writing, a distinctive feature of the project.

© Fotolibro- Escuela de Investigadores, 2025Camino al Futuro (Path to the Future)

Young people’s knowledge, identity, and creative expression

The young people took inspiration from their daily lived experiences to categorise their photographs, with categories such as Espacios Recreativos (Recreational Spaces), Relaciones Sociales en el Barrio (Social Relations in the Neighbourhood), Belleza en Resistencia (Beauty in Resistance), Camino al Futuro (Path to the Future), Me Siento Abandonado (I Feel Abandoned), and Paisajes Urbanos (Urban Landscapes). A mixed-media art form combining photography and embroidery emerged as youth partnered with a local artist to stitch their visions of a better future directly onto their photographs, as shown in the image below:

Embroidered landscape

By creating opportunities to reflect together, participants were able to challenge deficit-based narratives associated with migration and build confidence in themselves, expressing their perspectives with clarity and creativity through photographs, collective categorisation, and poetry. As one participant wrote:

IDENTIDAD

algo que se nos quieren quitar,

pero no podrán y con mucho orgullo

vamos a levantar la mano y a luchar

por una patria más.

--

IDENTITY

something they want to take away from us,

but they won’t be able to, and with great pride

we will raise our hands and fight

for one more homeland.

Each project culminated in a unique final event led by the participants and hosted at local universities. It included an art-exhibition, research panel, and policy presentation in which the young people shared photography, poetry, policy and advocacy, and the research process with local leaders, academics, family, and community members.

Challenges, learning, and future possibilities

A key challenge in the project was connecting young people with influential actors in their communities. Bourdieu & Wacquant (1992) highlight how this challenge is partly shaped by structural conditions tied to migratory experiences, including discrimination and clashes of habitus which constrain opportunities for social integration. In this context, photovoice supported the young people to develop foundational public participation skills, such as public speaking, articulating ideas, and presenting to groups. It also created space for young people to build self-confidence, practice critical thinking, and develop their own perspectives on their communities, key dimensions of agency and social participation.

The popularity of photovoice among the youth was evident as some chose to participate in three iterations of the photovoice projects in Alto Hospicio. The experience they gained allowed more experienced participants to share knowledge with new cohorts, enabling young people to engage as leaders and facilitators with their less experienced peers.

Escuela de Investigadores demonstrates how photovoice-based research can be replicated across different contexts of migration and displacement where dialogue and community-building is central to social development and integration, such as refugee camps, irregular settlements, urban areas and other spaces of protracted displacement. By working as co-creators of knowledge, researchers and young people engage in a non-extractive process that values participation and reciprocity. Escuela de Investigadores became not only a research initiative, but also a space of trust, where critical consciousness and community solidarity could develop.

The Escuela de Investigadores research-intervention was conducted between 2023 and 2025, under the umbrella of MIGRA Millenium Nucleus. A further three-year project is due to start in 2026.

View the full Escuela de Investigadores Photovoice Publication (in Spanish)

About the authors: 

Zachary Sessa is completing an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at the University of Oxford. He has a background in social work and education with immigrant and refugee communities in the U.S. He brings experience in case management, community organizing, multilingual and multicultural teaching, graduate research, and immigration policy analysis. He has international work experience in México as a Fulbright Scholar and Chile as a research assistant on projects focused on immigrant youths’ access to education and the well-being of migrant mothers and children.

Grace Amigo holds a Master’s degree in Social Work from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and serves as the research lead of the photovoice-based research–intervention Escuela de Investigadores, developed in collaboration with Núcleo Milenio MIGRA (Chile). She is currently based in Iquique, in the north of Chile.