GROW:UP – Grow Up in Border Regions in Portugal

GROW:UP – Grow Up in Border Regions in Portugal: Young People, Educational Pathways and Agendas

 

Funding

Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and by national funds, through the Foundation for Science and Technology, IP (FCT)

 

Project number

PTDC/CED-EDG/29943/2017
POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029943

 

Coordinating institution

CIIE/Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the University of Porto

 

Partner

Instituto Politécnico do Cávado e Ave (IPCA)

 

Principal Researcher (PI): Sofia Marques da Silva
Co-PI: Helena C. Araújo

 

Research team

Sofia Marques da Silva, CIIE/FPCEUP (IR)
Helena C. Araújo, CIIE/FPCEUP (Co-IR)
Armando Loureiro, CIIE/FPCEUP e UTAD
Gil Nata, CIIE/FPCEUP
Rui Serôdio, FPCEUP
Isabel Costa, UTAD
Eva Oliveira, IPCA
Joana Freitas, APCER (Associação Portuguesa de Certificação)
Vitor Baltazar Dias, IPDJ (Instituto Português do Desporto e Juventude)
Ana Milheiro Silva, CIIE/FPCEUP
Marta Sampaio
Thiago Freires, CIIE/FPCEUP (Investigador doutorado contratado)
Nicolas Martins da Silva, CIIE/FPCEUP
Sara Pinheiro, CIIE/FPCEUP
Sara Faria (Bolseira de investigação - BI)
Raquel Magano (Colaboradora)
Vanessa Silva (Colaboradora)

 

Duration

48 months
Start date: 16 July 2018
End date: 15 July 2022

 

Web

https://growup.up.pt/index.html 

 

Description

Regional development of peripheral regions is a persistent challenge. Border regions in Portugal, often overlapping with rural and remote areas, suffer from a spatial differentiation. These are places with structural inequalities together with a perception gap on regions prospects and resources. Accordingly to the Agency for Development and Cohesion, Portugal has territorial asymmetries and potentialities with impact in individual, institutions and regions development, with challenges for multilevel governance. Unequal access to local services and opportunities among vulnerable groups and a combination of exclusion and poverty are concentrated in specific territories with low access to educational opportunities or qualified jobs.

Young people growing up in those regions are particularly affected by this situation in their trajectories and future plans. Do young people consider border regions as spaces to leave? An exploratory case study in a Portuguese border region indicated that young people express apprehension when imagine leaving their regions, reveling a positive connectedness with their homeland identifying, however, constrains.

GROW:UP proposes to investigate in border regions contexts the mutually influential relations between individual, contextual/institutional and systemic factors in young people biographies, and to analyse how communities are proactively counteracting inequalities, fostering young people engagement in positive pathways.

This project aims to investigate communities promising approaches to support young people pathways, preventing risk factors, such as school disengagement, lack of participation or life prospects.

GROW.UP will analyze European and national policies and its territorial articulation with programs and practices at local level, understanding the stability and strengths of initiatives to support young people and identifying potentialindicators and key competences of resilient communities.

GROW.UP is engaged in a comprehensive approach and will bring together theoretical contributions from Sociology of Education, Youth Studies, Border Studies and Network Analysis. It will use a methodology that combines policy analysis and local experts interviews to understand levels of integration of formal policies into local programmes; a survey to understand the key role of sense of belonging, resilience and engagement in young people biographies; case studies (i) to develop and in depth understanding on processes and dynamics influencing young people pathways design, (ii) to analyse how communities are proactively addressing challenges affecting young people in border regions, either encouraging young people positive pathways or equipping them to amplify opportunities. A mobile app, an auditing programme and youth agendas are participatory-based activities, empirically supported, aiming to promote capacity building of young people and communities.