Enabling participation for disabled young people: study protocol.

BACKGROUND: Participation in community life is vital for health and wellbeing, promoting a sense of belonging, networks of social support and opportunities for physical activity. Disabled young people have lower levels of mobility and participation in recreational activities (physical, social and cultural), education and employment, than their peers without disabilities. This has implications for their health and wellbeing and life course opportunities. Previous research on the participation levels of disabled young people has primarily relied on parent/caregiver reports and been oriented to home and school environments. This study investigates how physical and social environmental factors cohere to support or restrict the everyday mobility and participation of disabled young people. METHODS/DESIGN: The study is located in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand (NZ). Participants comprise 35 young people aged 12-25 years with mobility, vision or hearing impairments. A mixed-methods research design combines objective (global positioning systems, accelerometers, geographical information systems) and self-report measures (travel diaries, and questionnaires) to assess young people's mobility and levels of participation in leisure/educational and employment activities with in-depth interviews exploring their everyday experiences of inclusion/exclusion, and factors enabling or constraining community participation. Parents/caregivers and disability sector key informant viewpoints on the community participation of disabled young people have also been gathered through in-depth interviews. Follow-up workshops with young people and parents/caregivers will identify pathways to increase participation and challenge current disabling practices. DISCUSSION: This study looks beyond barriers in the physical environment to the interplay of personal, social and physical factors that enable or constrain the community participation of disabled young people. In keeping with the study's overarching goal of increasing opportunities for effective community participation and full citizenship of disabled young people, research methods were applied flexibily - negotiated and adapted to maximise each young person's participation in light of their abilities and preferences.

Authentic feminist? Authenticity and feminist identity in teenage feminists' talk.

This article explores how young people's feminist identities take shape in conjunction with a contemporary ideal of personal authenticity: to know and to express the 'real me'. Drawing from interviews with 18 teenagers living in Auckland, New Zealand, we examine a novel convergence of authenticity and feminism in participants' identity talk. For social psychologists interested in identity and politics, this convergence is intriguing: individualizing values such as authenticity are generally associated with disengagement with structural critique and with a repudiation of politicized and activist identities. Rather than seeking to categorize authentic feminism as an instance of either 'good/collective' or 'bad/individualized' feminist politics, we use discourse analysis to examine how the identity position of authentic feminist was constructed and to explore implications for feminist politics. On one hand, interviewees mobilized authentic feminism to affirm their commitment to normative liberal values of authenticity and self-expression. At the same time, the position of authentic feminist appeared to authorize risky feminist identifications and to justify counter-normative feelings, desires, and actions. To conclude, we explore how encountering others' intolerance of authentic feminism exposed interviewees to the limits of authenticity discourse, propelling some towards new understandings of the social world and their space for action within it.