The Dialogue Café as a Participatory Method in Research—Potentials and Challenges

Abstract

This chapter outlines and reflects upon how the method of dialogue café can function to promote young people’s active participation in research regarding young people in vulnerable life situations. The aim is to address the research question What are the potentials and challenges of using the dialogue café as an approach in a participatory action research context? After presenting experiences from one of the dialogue cafés in the interdisciplinary and participatory action project Youth in flight, the chapter will introduce an epistemological and conceptual framework for the idea of a dialogue café as a research approach. Based on the experiences from the café, informed by Bakhtin and Freire’s theoretical perspectives on dialogue, the chapter identifies and discusses core tensions, dilemmas and conflicts that can occur as a result of this approach; Power imbalance, the tension between the idea of empowerment in the encounter with claims of controlling the research process, protecting vulnerability and ensuring privacy constraints. The chapter reflects upon what might be the researcher’s particular responsibility when involving vulnerable young people in this kind of meeting, and suggests its potential: The dialogue café can be seen as a laboratory, where dilemmas and power relations are exposed, and which in turn makes it possible to explore, expand and exceed the distribution of power.