This article reflects critically on the application of a participatory/collaborative methodology through the incorporation of community researchers (Crs), in a project entitled ‘Under- standing the practice and developing the concept of welfare bricolage’ (upweb), aiming to understand how residents of superdiverse neighbourhoods deal with their health concerns, searching for solutions and designing viable practices to solve them. We engage in a critical understanding of this method, reflecting on its methodological challenges (i.e. recruitment of Crs, providing & developing skills through training, the quality of the data collected, inter- pretation of findings and co-production of knowledge) hoping to contribute to the debate and to improve the applicability of specific forms of participatory/collaborative approaches in future research. In spite of challenges, the benefits of including Crs exceed its limitations as a paradigm and as a practice, enhancing its validity (in terms of community knowledge), its accountability (in terms of potential for intervention and social change), in strengthening superdiversity in terms of maximum diversity sampling.

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Participatory research,Community research,Superdiversity,Maximum variation sampling,Health

This publication is an output of the following project(s):

• Understanding the practice and developing the concept of welfare bricolage