Research

This project examines how narratives of housing insecurity on the individual, organizational, and societal level are constructed, conveyed, and embodied by multiple actors and the resulting implications for social policies and programs in Nigeria. Narratives are stories designed and presented by an author, with some stories and authors being more visible than others. Through an examination of multiple narratives, this project seeks to answer the following questions: How are housing insecure populations socially constructed by modern Nigerian discourse, by adults that work closely with these populations, and by adolescents who have experienced these conditions? What can adolescent narratives teach us about how housing insecurity shapes their identity development and education? How can these narratives inform our perspectives on and understanding of how social policies intersect with the private sector as it relates to supporting the education and development of housing insecure young people?

To answer my questions, I employ an interdisciplinary and multimethod approach that blends theoretical frameworks from developmental psychology and political science. I utilize a discourse analysis of news media articles from local Nigerian newspapers, focus group conversations and in-depth interviews with adolescents who have experienced housing insecurity, and in-depth interviews with adults who have worked/volunteered with a local NGO that supports housing insecure children, youth, and their communities. This project emphasizes the ways that stories, both real and imagined, shape the sociopolitical context that marginalized populations are made to exist within.  While it may be tempting to believe that numbers are more objective and provide a better overview of a situation, numbers are also influenced by narratives; the decision of what to see and what to count is a subjective process driven by the way a phenomenon is constructed. This project urges program directors and policymakers to consider the ways that they are influenced by narratives and look more closely into where the narratives that they base their programs/policies on emerge from.