Despite their increasing numbers across the Global Majority, young people on the move
(YPOM) remain underserved by youth-focused interventions that inadequately account for
the relational networks that shape their wellbeing. Migration driven by economic aspirations,
environmental precarity, and social instability has intensified rural-to-urban movement across
Tanzania, with cities like Dar es Salaam drawing growing numbers of YPOM in search of
better opportunities. Yet in navigating unfamiliar, and often exclusionary, urban environments,
YPOM often rely on informal, peer-driven networks of care that provide emotional, social, and
material support. While these networks are central to young people’s wellbeing, they are
rarely acknowledged in academic literature, programme design, or policy responses.
Dominant paradigms often adopt deficit-based framings, reducing YPOM to passive
recipients of protection or risk mitigation. Such approaches can obscure the strengths, agency,
and interdependent networks through which young people manage the complexities of
mobility and marginalisation (Camfield, 2012; Corcoran, 2018; White & Jha, 2023). As a
result, interventions risk becoming misaligned with the lived experiences of youth and may
fail to support sustainable pathways for wellbeing. The research questions are as follows:

1. How do YPOM construct, sustain, and navigate networks of care in contexts of urban
   migration?
2. In what ways do relational, structural, and environmental factors influence YPOM’s
   experiences of wellbeing?
3. How can participatory methodologies co-produce a grounded theory of RWB with
   and for YPOM?

This research aims to develop a grounded theory of relational wellbeing (RWB) for young people on the move (YPOM) in Tanzania by mapping and understanding their invisible networks of care and how they inform wellbeing. Utilising a five-stage research process that integrates Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Social Network Analysis (SNA), this study positions YPOM as co-creators of knowledge, engaging them from the design phase through to the interpretation and application of findings.

This research explores how personal, structural, and environmental dimensions of wellbeing interact to shape RWB for YPOM. The study employs iterative cycles of deep listening, sense-making, and action through participatory methods such as PhotoVoice and World Café, fostering a nuanced understanding of RWB as a co-constructed process.

Through SNA, the study will identify key actors within YPOM’s invisible networks of care, tracking whether and how networks evolve by involvement within the Railway Children Africa (RCA) Youth Association (YA) model. This approach leverages the strengths and agency of YPOM, ensuring that interventions are grounded in their lived realities and relational needs. By amplifying young people’s voices and integrating their experiences into the research process, this study aims to generate sustainable, contextually relevant insights that inform more effective and responsive interventions. The grounded theory of RWB developed through this research will provide a robust framework for understanding how relational dynamics contribute to the wellbeing of YPOM, ultimately informing the design of more inclusive, relationally-focused youth interventions and policies.

This research aims to develop a grounded theory of RWB for YPOM in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, with broader applicability across the Global Majority. Through an integrated PAR and SNA approach, the research will map and interpret the informal, often invisible, networks of care that underpin YPOM’s wellbeing. These networks include peers, practitioners, caregivers, and community actors who constitute the relational scaffolding of support in contexts of mobility, precarity, and transition.

Through identifying the structure, form and key actors inherent to these networks through the use of SNA, and engaging them in participatory inquiry, the study will explore how individual experiences, structural and interpersonal dynamics, and environmental conditions interact to shape YPOM’s wellbeing.

This study hypothesises that YPOM’s wellbeing is co-constructed through relational thinking, gathering and working. These dimensions underpin the adaptive, informal systems of care that YPOM draw upon, but are frequently overlooked in conventional youth programming. By engaging YPOM as co-researchers and knowledge producers, this research seeks to illuminate the relational dynamics underpinning wellbeing.

The primary aim is to create a grounded theory of RWB that is co-constructed alongside YPOM, rooted within their lived experiences, and that directly informs the redesign of the RCA YA model, contributing to the development of more contextually responsive and relationally informed intervention models that centre youth agency, and integrate lived experience into programme design and implementation.

Impact: Improved understanding of how to strengthen Relational Wellbeing among Young People on the Move, through youth-led evidence, co-produced theory, and relational practice insights.

Outcomes:

1. Young People on the Move’s invisible networks of care mapped, analysed, and understood
2. Youth-led evidence informs the redesign of Railway Children Africa's Youth Association model
3. Youth leadership strengthened through embedded roles in research governance, co-analysis, and participatory methods (i.e. Participatory Action Research and Grounded Theory), establishing a model for ethical, youth-led inquiry.

This study employs a PAR approach in conjunction with SNA to examine the RWB of YPOM in Tanzania. These methods provide both qualitative engagement and structural mapping of support networks, enabling a comprehensive understanding of the ways in which YPOM construct and navigate their networks of care.