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While institutional ethical procedures are critically important, the relevance and applicability of these procedures on the ground create tensions that are sometimes at odds with what is considered 'ethical'. In this paper, we reflect on the dissonances between formal institutional ethics procedures and community-based research practices by drawing on our experiences of a project involving co-production with young people in India and Brazil. The project is an international collaboration between partners from both Majority and Minority World contexts, across universities, community organisations and government bodies. Young people were involved in advisory and co-researcher capacities, and played a vital role advising the project team, conducting research projects, and developing engagement and advocacy strategies. The project was planned prior to, but started during, the Covid-19 pandemic, and therefore required methodological adjustments.In this paper, we situate the role of institutional ethics procedures to reflect on the tensions and power imbalances in: (1) research co-production with young people, (2) collaborative crosscountry research with partners, as well as considering (3) the relevance of ethical guidelines in different research contexts. We problematise the top-down nature of these procedures, and highlight the importance of reflexivity, conversations, and relationships in ethics. With growing research in the Majority world (funded by the Minority world), there is an urgent need to recognise and build on the expertise of experienced local civic society organisations in ethical research and safeguarding, to work in genuine, respectful partnership with those we do research with.

Amid shifting political and social contracts in India, young people are viewed both as a labor force that can propel economic growth and as a potentially problematic demographic to be restrained from questioning and dissent. Within this context, this essay advances a theory of urban youth protagonism in India, focusing on young people marginalized by caste, religion, and material deprivation. Based on examples of collective agency from youth groups in India supported by a local nonprofit, Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA), it explores how young people construct their own understandings and practices of citizenship. Despite a narrow focus on civic behavior in formal citizenship education, it is possible to enable action and agency for urban youth. This may be achieved through strengthening collectives, working toward community transformations, and utilizing a critical pedagogy of protagonism, in the process constructing substantive forms of citizenship.