Outline of Expert Group: Rural Change Captured Through a Youthful Lens

Objectives

The project’s overall aim is to enhance the understanding of social change and social impacts of rural-urban transformation on younger adults and adolescent community members in Cameroon and Brazil at the local level. We use an approach to spatial video narratives, produced by younger adult or adolescent community members to obtain and present knowledge about their lived experiences of rural-urban transformation and access to food.

Related work and rationale

The project is motivated by the issue of food security and food access resulting from transformations of rural spaces, with which also come socioeconomic challenges:

• Youths leave rural environs for more opportunities in the cities.
• While rural-urban transformation may attract tourists, this transformation often means higher prices, exclusion, and higher crime rates, to the extreme.
• Food prices increase, leading to food insecurity.
•  Rural-urban transformation may reduce poverty, but also can engender inequalities.
• A depopulated countryside may affect the resources devoted for such areas.
• While a 75 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, policies and resources continue to be biased in favour of urban development with detrimental effects for both rural and urban populations.

Material and Methods

We use an approach to spatial video narratives, produced by younger adult or adolescent community members to obtain and present knowledge about their lived experiences of rural-urban transformation and access to food . Adolescents (n=10) in Cameroon and Brazil produce video narratives from their daily life to understand how rural-urban transformation impacts socially on their lives. Data will be gathered during two occasions.