Homeless youth‐led activism and direct action: Lessons from a participatory research project in Tio'tia:ke/Montréal

Abstract

This article explores the involvement of youth with lived experience (LE) in activism and research aimed at addressing youth homelessness in Canada. Based within a youth‐participatory action research project in Tio'tiá:ke/Montréal, Canada, we reflect on how young people described their own activist organising, as well as the practical ways we may harness actions that homelessness youth are already doing to create communities and solidarity. The authors are members of Youth Action Research Revolution (YARR), a research team primarily made up of youth with LE of homelessness. We position the analysis at an intersection of our own experiences and 63 interviews with youth aged 16–29 conducted by YARR from 2018 to 2021. Conceiving of participatory, youth‐led research as a form of direct action we outline lessons learned from our own research and LE. Young people within our team and participants in YARR's research shared critiques of State systems while outlining the work that they undertook with their peers to act on issues of housing precarity, often eschewing activism aimed at State processes or institutional reform in favour of direct action. This article proposes a mode of fostering youth‐led, socially just change around homelessness—one that shifts conversations from inclusion to solidarity, and recognises the radical potential of research by‐and‐for young people. The authors conclude that research and advocacy on homelessness is always inherently political for young people with LE, and that harnessing the direct action that youth already do to survive is not only a socially just form of mobilising, but can contribute to broader activism towards housing justice.