Hello readers!

So, we picked a tough one for our second issue to appear only online. Coming to a decision on a particular theme for Coyote always involves listening to the views of many people passionate about youth work, hearing what they think is important and then prioritising the main ideas. This time, the priority was clear almost immediately: to bring together a range of viewpoints drawn from research, policy and practice reflecting on multiple discrimination and young people; and in this way to raise readers’ awareness about the fact that multiple discriminations exist, what they are, why it can be so challenging to cope with them AND to suggest actions to take.

To help us all to get a grasp of the issues and gain a useful entry point, the editorial team attended – and two members helped facilitate – the United for Dignity conference, organised by the Council of Europe as a forum to discuss and to find solutions to situations of multiple discrimination affecting young Roma. Looking at the contents of this issue, it is possible to see many of the conference topics and processes reflected here and see how our visions have progressed with inputs coming from pretty diverse sources. As this issue progressed, we had quite some debate as it is hard to write about these things which have such a massive impact on so many people’s lives. As Marine Manucharian pointed out in one of our discussions, “tackling the challenge of multiple discrimination is an especially daunting task”.

Undaunted, we attempt here to explore those challenges:

• How to begin to understand the concepts – especially as they are still evolving?
• What can we find out about the situations, causes and effects of different
• types of discrimination?
• What kinds of responses do we find in institutions?
• What are the ways that youth NGOs can combat multiple discrimination
• and what are the questions to ask ourselves in taking action?

There are many social, economic and legal factors at work here. What are your reactions to what is in Coyote? Does it help you to take in the complexity and come out fighting?

Read more >>