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Within feminist geography, there is a growing consensus on the need for research to contribute to social change and transformation beyond the academy, and increased emphasis on the co‐production of impact. In this paper I critically reflect and report on how I co‐produced impact with a participatory audio‐visual research project, conducted in collaboration with women in Bogotá and Medellín and researchers and filmmakers based in the UK and Colombia. I focus particularly on co‐producing 'impact‐in‐process', which builds participants' capacities, creates spaces of reciprocal learning and increases participants' confidence and sense of ownership both during and beyond the research process. Yet, while co‐producing impact‐in‐process benefits research participants and has the potential to contribute to social change and transformation, this form of impact is rarely recognised as such. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I outline an innovative remote participatory video (PV) methodology that makes use of participants' smartphones. It was developed as an alternative to co-production research and can be employed when face-to-face contact is impossible or undesirable. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face research interactions have been disrupted or become impossible. Yet it is vital to reach those who are most affected by emergencies and to include their voices. The research reported here was a collaboration between women in Medellín, Colombia, and a team of filmmakers and researchers. We developed an innovative remote PV methodology using participants' smartphones, researching how women from poorer neighbourhoods were affected by the pandemic in their everyday lives. Here, I reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the remote PV methodology, arguing that it offers new avenues for participants to take control of the filming and editing process, and builds technical skills and capacities that have value beyond the timeframe of the project. I conclude that the remote PV method has great potential as a stand-alone method, moving the landscape of co-production research away from a requirement for geographical co-presence and potentially shifting power and ownership towards local co-researchers and participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I extend the discussion of aspirations as a conceptual tool by exploring how young Colombians plan to pursue them and by seeking to understand their aspirations as a way of navigating towards what they see as a good life. Drawing upon insights from fieldwork, I use Vigh's concept of social navigation to emphasise the importance of the social environment, and the available opportunity structures and resources, which shape young people's aspirations and their ideas of a good life but which, more importantly, influence their navigational strategies to pursue them. I argue that Colombian young people from poor backgrounds do have aspirations and that these go beyond educational and occupational goals. Their aspirations provide information about their desire for a more stable future in an uncertain world but do not necessarily match the opportunities available to them. The young Cartagenians featuring in this study, therefore, struggle to overcome contextual and structural constraints in their social navigation, which is aimed at achieving a good life. I conclude that the young people featured in this study live amid uncertainty about their future and follow a form of doxa in formulating their aspirations. However, while the combination of economic constraints and doxic aspirations that are usually unachievable create barriers to their imagined futures, the young people socially navigate according to the opportunities that emerge and become available to them, to achieve a form of what they perceive as a good life, whereby educational and occupational goals became a means to an end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how belonging and aspirations interact to shape marginalized young Colombians' strategies for upward social mobility. Recent literature has argued that in the context of inequality and poverty, social mobility is constrained by people's inability to aspire to and/or achieve their aspirations. The majority of this literature is from the economics field and looks at the way poverty acts as a brake on social mobility. This paper provides an additional interdisciplinary analysis of the role of 'belonging' (to places and social class) in influencing aspirations of young Colombians. Findings are based on ethnographic fieldwork with young people from two marginalized neighborhoods in Cartagena. It is argued that aspirations are closely linked to belonging and the extent to which young people feel integral to or distanced from their localities. Using a Bourdieusian perspective, the paper examines how belonging is developed and how it influences behavior, orientations and future prospects. This approach generates insights into young people's apparent low aspirations beyond the explanation of internal behavioral poverty traps. In so doing, it provides a more comprehensive understanding of how societal structures limit aspiration development and achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]