Empowering Participation Within Structures of Dependency

TL;DR

This paper explores how participatory design can empower vulnerable groups within dependent structures by leveraging their existing assets, highlighting practical strategies for fostering agency and participation.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for supporting empowerment in dependency contexts through collective exploration and strategic design decisions based on a five-year case study.

Findings

Design decisions can enhance survivor agency within dependency structures.

Collaborative entanglements are crucial for effective participatory design.

Provisional collectives foster resilience and empowerment.

Abstract

Participatory Design (PD) seeks political change to support people's democratic control over processes, solutions, and, in general, matters of concern to them. A particular challenge remains in supporting vulnerable groups to gain power and control when they are dependent on organizations and external structures. We reflect on our five-year engagement with survivors of sex trafficking in Nepal and an anti-trafficking organization that supports the survivors. Arguing that the prevalence of deficit perspective in the setting promotes dependency and robs the survivors' agency, we sought to bring change by exploring possibilities based on the survivors' existing assets. Three configurations illuminate how our design decisions and collective exploration operate to empower participation while attending to the substantial power implicitly and explicitly manifest in existing structures. We highlight the challenges we faced, uncovering actions that PD practitioners can take, including an emphasis on collaborative entanglements, attending to contingent factors, and encouraging provisional collectives.