Supporting AAPI Youth Civic Engagement: Youth Perspectives on Key Facilitators and Barriers

Background:

Civic engagement (CE) is an important mechanism through which young people use their voices and address social issues, enabling youth experiencing marginalization to challenge systemic inequalities and inform policy development to better meet their needs. Yet, structural challenges to civic access can impede the engagement of both ethnic minority and immigrant youth, including AAPI youth; e.g., racial exclusion, negative racial interactions, and negative perceptions and stereotypes about their American identity may affect whether and how AAPI communities engage civically.

Designed in collaboration with a community organization that fosters CE among diverse AAPI communities, this study sought to address the limited literature focused on Asian youth CE in the U.S. We focus on two research questions:

1. How do AAPI adolescents describe facilitators of their CE?
2. How do AAPI adolescents describe barriers to their CE?

Methods:

Using a youth participatory research approach to amplify AAPI teens’ voices about their lived experiences, six AAPI-serving organizational partners recruited 10 teens across a major metropolitan region to serve as “youth expert” co-researchers (YEs). YEs participated in study activities throughout the research process, including a youth-specific human subjects training, co-developing study protocols, guiding recruitment strategies, leading participant recruitment, facilitating focus groups, and data analyses. YEs led data collection, using qualitative focus group methodologies to prioritize youth voice. To reflect the diversity of AAPI communities across the region, 33 virtual focus groups with Asian teens (n=146) were held, all facilitated by a YE.

To ensure analyses were grounded in youth participants’ words and experiences, we coded participants’ actual words and phrases. To maintain trustworthiness and amplify participant voices, core elements of thematic and qualitative content analysis were integrated into a multi-phase analysis process, with analyses at each stage reviewed and confirmed by YEs.

Results:

Seven thematic facilitator categories emerged: Asian togetherness and belonging; overcoming struggle; openness to different cultures and viewpoints; feeling supported; having role models; wanting to make a difference; incentives.

Seven thematic barrier categories emerged: Impacts of white ethnocentrism; negative treatment of Asians; isolation and lack of unity; cultural expectations and exceptionalism; not being heard or taken seriously; problems feeling too big; not interested or prioritized.

Implications:

In the context of a growing AAPI youth population in the U.S., this study was designed with the specific goals of strengthening knowledge around addressing civic inequalities impacting Asian adolescents and directly informing the practices of grassroot organizations that seek to create supportive environments for AAPI youth CE. Findings illuminate a range of supports and motivators for AAPI youth CE, as well as key challenges that provide a deeper understanding of factors that may keep AAPI teens from active CE.

The study design intentionally incorporates youth-guided dissemination in concert with the study’s six organizational partners, with YEs utilizing findings to inform (and then disseminate) concrete, actionable data-grounded recommendations that can be incorporated into programs and practices of community-based organizations and schools. Consistent with increasing efforts over the last decade to identify policy recommendations to grow AAPI CE, findings will also inform youth-generated policy recommendations.