Critically examining a community-based participatory action research project with forced migrant youth

This paper pertains to a project which began with an academic research team being recruited by a YMCA management team to help understand how to retain forced migrant youth in YMCA sport programs. Owing to experience working with diverse cultural groups through praxis-oriented approaches, the project team recognized a need to develop an understanding of how forced migrant youth wished to engage in sport where the onus was not exclusively theirs to shoulder the navigation of cultural differences. We present a critical analysis, interspersed with creative non-fiction accounts, to show how forced migrant youth, their families, YMCA settlement staff members, and an academic research team collaborated to increase awareness of the diverse cultural ‘realities’ present in our community and social inequalities faced by forced migrant youth. We conclude with lessons related to community capacity building and the development of contextually relevant sport programs.