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Paper short abstract:

My paper sheds light on the gap between asylum-seeking children's status and their parents' status, in relation to their rights and their active role in the Norwegian society. How are children's and parents' statuses changing when settling as a refugee family and how is this experienced by children?

Paper long abstract:

My paper takes part in a discussion in the field of childhood studies about the concept of citizenship and how we may refer to children as citizens, as active members of a society. What form of citizenship can asylum-seeking children access; children whose parents are not themselves part of that social ensemble of citizens of the state? I suggest looking at that question while taking as a starting point the status of refugee children in the Norwegian welfare state, from the time they live in reception centres for asylum-seekers to the time they settle as refugees in a community. It can be said that, by virtue of children's international rights and of the incorporation of the UNCRC in the Norwegian domestic law, asylum-seeking children's rights are better recognized by the Norwegian welfare state than those of their parents. Can the same be said once families have received a residence permit and they settle as refugees? Children are generally perceived as dependent on their parents, but, in the light of empirical data on the theme, interdependence between children and parents appears to be more accurate. I will shed light on the status shift of refugee children and parents taking place at the time of settlement. This paper will discuss how family members' status may change in the welfare state and how it may interfere in children's experience of settlement within their family and their new community.

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Paper short abstract:

Using Norway as case, this paper deals with how migration flows, as well as the improvement strategies of migrant families, are shaped by the immigration and asylum legislation.The paper will discuss what kind of challenges arise from international migration, and in which ways it affects children's everyday life and citizenship.

Paper long abstract:

Using Norway as case, this paper deals with how migration flows, as well as the improvement strategies of migrant families, are shaped by the immigration and asylum legislation. Immigration policies construct specific notions of family. They thereby define legitimate citizenship in gendered-biased and generational biased ways (Bhabha 2007, deHart 2007, van Walsum and Spijkerboer 2007). The welfare state, characterized by universal access, generous benefits, a high degree of public involvement and comparatively high levels of redistribution, is both a means of integration, and a potential source of conflict. In Norway, as in other Nordic countries, family policy emphasises gender equality and assumes that families do have two incomes to meet living expenses. The implicit expectations of the welfare state can be read between the lines of the regulations for transnational marriages and family immigration. It will be shown that family reunification is limited to the closest family members, which has significant implications for relationships of care and normative expectations involving extended family members. The paper will discuss how migrants negotiate the legal, social and economic barriers they encounter when facing the regulations of the welfare state. In which ways do these challenges affect children and their citizenship?

The complexity of family relations in migration and improvement strategies will be analysed on the basis of interviews with family members as well as documents from the applications and decisions by the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration.

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Paper short abstract:

We discuss the challenges posed by transnational family histories and dispersed living to a sense of belonging. We propose that anthropology of childhood and transnationalism needs to shift the focus from discussing ethnic identities to transnational subjectivities and multi-sited life-paths.

Paper long abstract:

We draw attention to an under researched topic in the anthropology of childhood: growing up in transnational families. While parents need to make important decisions about caring for their children in the context of family diaspora, the perspective of children also needs to be given attention. The challenges that children face may be related to an absence of one or both parents from home or with their own mobility, related to the multi-sited location of the families. With whom or with which place do the children feel connected to, who do they see as their significant caretakers? How do children find their comforts? How do children imagine their life situations and life chances? Children with transnational life paths may also face challenges from surrounding society, regardless of the safety provided to them by the homes.

We propose that anthropology of childhood and transnationalism needs to shift the focus from discussing ethnic identities to transnational subjectivities and multi-sited life-paths. The paper is based on our ethnographic and theoretical work . Vuorela speaks of lessons learned about immigrant childhood in Finland, children tended by NGOS between Russia and Western Europe and of the ways in which childcare has been organized by transnational families based in Pakistan. Rastas has studied various kinds of racism encountered by Finnish children with transnational roots;

We address methodological and conceptual challenges in doing research on multi-sited childhood; how to consider the breath-taking variety of transnational families and the kind of agencies that circumscribe their lives.

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Paper short abstract:

Transnational children are actively influencing cultural transitions and can no longer be treated merely as extentions to adult studies. When parents decide to 'go abroad' the concern for their children's welfare, education, and healthcare are salient considerations. 'Labour migrants' unsure of what lies ahead often leave their children with parents or spouse in their countries of origin while 'expats' move with their children and dreams to southern climates.

Paper long abstract:

Based on qualitative studies of 'labour migrants' and expat families in Mallorca, Spain this paper will discuss the difficult issues of parenting transnational children. Cultural differences in the meaning of childhood become evident as parents from varied social, geographical, economic and ethnic backgrounds reveal their perceptions of parenting, education, family, social inclusion and exclusion, and cultural priorities, Children have become increasingly important in social policy issues as their position in society is seen to become more precarious with increased mobility, migration, divorce, domestic violence, single parenting, poverty, etc. Transnational children are actively influencing cultural transitions and can no longer be treated merely as extentions to adult studies.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses perceptions of self and lived experience among Russians crossing national boundaries as they are articulated through adult informants’ recalling of displacements and emplacements in their childhood. It also compares these perceptions with existential and practical consequences of care of children within families in a present transnational context in the Finnish Russian borderland.

Paper long abstract:

My current research on perceptions on self and lived experience among Russians crossing national boundaries delves deep into an analysis of the ways in which cultural knowledge is memory related. Memory, ‘an activity in the present’ and, primarily, not concerned with the ‘truth’ rather emphasizes the role of social consequences of lived experience. The creation of otherness on the one hand, and the creation of belonging, on the other, are two sides of the same coin and thus central themes in shaping perceptions and imaginations in border crossing, be it cognitive or physical. In this paper I will discuss the way elderly and middle aged informants recall displacements and emplacements in their childhood, and in what sense they consider it a meaningful experience. I will explore in what way their perceptions on powerful events in early childhood affect their sense of belonging during their life span. I will also examine existential and practical consequences of care of children within families in a present transnational context in the Finnish Russian borderland. The focus is on informants’ interpretations of related experiences. Methodologically my presentation emphasizes juxtaposition and mobility, moving between different time perspectives and with different social actors exploring central notions of forms of culture within specific contexts. Furthermore, individual enactment of belonging originates in the consciousness of the self and in its relationship to society.

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Paper short abstract:

My research considers adoption and immigration as a means of child circulation. My objective is to see how a child, born in Russia, is ¨taken”, “separated” from one culture, family, country, citizenship and “incorporated” into another culture, family, country, citizenship; how he or she participates in the process of constituting a transnational family.

Paper long abstract:

In the modern world children become frequent migrants in and between countries. Along with increasing number of immigrants the percentage of adopted from different countries is on rise. Although immigrants and transnationally adopted might share the same country of origin, they are treated differently. While immigrants have problems with crossing borders and obtaining rights, transnationally adopted "quietly" proceed to receivers countries and have no problems of obtaining rights.

Russian children are the ones of the most circulated in the world. The share of children and teenagers from Russia is extremely high in the emigration flow to the economically developed countries. 40% of the emigration flow from Russia to the USA was children and teenagers. It reveals two tendencies. The first is that the departure for permanent residence has a family character - parents leave with children, and the second - Russia became an "export" country of children for adoption. (Rybakovsky, Ryazantsev, 2005).

My research considers adoption and immigration as a means of child circulation. My objective is to see how a child, born in Russia, is ¨taken", "separated" from one culture, family, country, citizenship and "incorporated" into another culture, family, country, citizenship; how he or she participates in the process of constituting a transnational family. I believe that this cross-cultural analysis will be fruitful for cross-cultural migration studies in Europe, in general, and for the EASA 2008 conference, in particular.

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Paper short abstract:

Structurally disadvantaged adolescents with immigrant background are confronted with steadily increasing inequality on the labour market. Our paper provides ethnographic insights into the coping strategies of disadvantaged adolescents in Austria. These strategies respond to the new premises of capitalism and constitute a socialisation into, and a reproduction of precarity.

Paper long abstract:

Structurally disadvantaged adolescents are confronted with steadily increasing inequality on the labour market. The devalorisation of diplomas, due to stark competition for the rare tangible positions produces a reservoir of precarious young adults / adolescents who find themselves in a paradoxical moratorium which is labelled as temporary but in reality offers few long-term perspectives on the labour market. The contemporary social transformations and the setup of a managerial ethos of the individual life project - whose success depends more and more on social, economical and cultural capitals - reinforce the existing social cleavages.

The new employability ideology leads to the individualisation of responsibility for social success or failure. Hence, what is brought about by a macro-social process is masked and thrown back into the realm of individual conscience.

Our paper provides ethnographic insights into the coping strategies of disadvantaged adolescents from different immigrant backgrounds in an Austrian city, how they feel about the exigencies of the new capitalism, how they deal with their hopeless social situation and how they manage or do not manage to integrate into precarious forms of labour. We argue that the strategies they develop - relying on family structures, gambling, online sales, delinquent forms of transnational entrepreneurship, illegal trafficking, and frequent changes of unstable employment even across continents - respond to the new premises of capitalism and constitute a socialisation into, and a reproduction of precarity.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper aims to analyse focus group discussions with Swiss and migrant children and youths in schools in Switzerland. The data illustrates the participants' strategies to cope with mutuality and diversity.

Paper long abstract:

Switzerland experiences very high rates of immigration, which subsequently becomes visible in public schools. The intersectionality of ethnicity with other categories of difference is obvious. The data, collected in focus group discussions with nine to sixteen years old school children and youths give ground for a broad range of constructions into insiders and outsiders. In the discussions with Swiss and migrant children/youths the following questions arose: Who is ascribed to be a foreigner in Switzerland? Which national or ethnic categories do count? How can ascriptions of inside or outside be maintained in schools as an "arena of agency"? What is about the gender stereotypes within the category of Muslims: are all boys violent and all girls victims? And who is a "true" Muslim at all? Is it different to live as a Hindu in an urban or in a rural area? The composition of the group in terms of heterogeneity seems to be crucial for the participants' strategies to build alliances and to deal with dominance or subordination.

In order to get a better understanding of the processes and experiences as lived by the children we propose to conceptualise the various categories of difference and their intersections. Given the increasing significance of identity politics in the public domain, it could be the task of social science research to highlight the multiple dimensions of belonging of children and youths. This perspective will help to prevent rush measures that consider only one notion of difference such as religion, ethnicity or gender.

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Paper short abstract:

This research is focused on the Bosnian immigrant adolescents in Croatia. This very sensitive population was affected by the refugee experience in the early age of their lives, but nowadays, they have to cope with demanding challenges: simultaneous integration of past experiences and the construction and definition of its own identity in the new social and cultural environment.

Paper long abstract:

By their origin the Bosnian adolescent immigrants in Croatia do not belong to ethnically and religiously homogeneous population. On the contrary, a number of them are Muslims by religion; and the rest are Catholics. In spite of numerous cultural similarities with host population in Croatia, immigrant adolescent groups and the host population originate from culturally different traditions. Depending on how these cultural differences are perceived by the host community members, the construction of ethnic identity of the adolescent immigrants may be influenced by the concealed or pronounced, institutional or personal discriminatory practices. Based on that discrepancy in the perception and comprehension of the "other", the construction of immigrant adolescent ethnic identity during the acculturation process is strongly influenced by the stereotypes, prejudices, and finally discrimination.

The goal of this paper is to show how multidimensional ethnic identification of Bosnian immigrant adolescents indicates different acculturation strategies in everyday practice and how these strategies corresponded with current acculturation orientation of host adolescent population. In that context, we will show how different cultural symbols like language or dialect become meaningful in the construction of ethnic identity and how ethnic identification could be indicator of psychological and social outcomes.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper shows how immigrant youth of different origins negotiate with the implicit notion of ideal student promoted in Catalan schools and the youth citizenship created in those processes.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will analyze how immigrant youth negotiate between diverse models of femininity and masculinity in relation to a notion of the ideal student and the identity of youth citizenship that is specific to a local school culture, as part of a particular society, and penetrates the relationship between the process of identity construction, performance and strategies for social integration. We want to know which kind of citizenships are offered and possible for immigrant girls and boys in a context where most practices and values in the school create a gendered ideal student that promote a quiet, silent and non participative identity and, simultaneously, where social popularity is based in anti-school culture and peer solidarity. The analysis draws on ethnographic data gathered in my fieldwork with immigrant youth from different origins (Bangladesh, China, Morocco, Ecuador and Venezuela) around Barcelona (Spain) and is illuminated by a theoretical framework including literature from the anthropology of education, feminist and gender research in working class and minority youth.

Key words: school experience, ideal student, youth citizenship, gender identities, immigrant youth

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Paper short abstract:

The paper aims to analyze the construction of cultural distance between Primary schools and the children and families of immigration, in connection with the reproduction of a hierarchy of inclusion/exclusion of new citizenships that has consequences both on the differential attention and expectations schools give and on the strategies children display in response to this differential treatment.

Paper long abstract:

One of the main features that characterizes Primary state schools placed on the Mediterranean coast in Catalonia (Spain) is the reception of pupils coming from migrant families of very different sociocultural backgrounds: on one side, those from extra-communitarian poor African, Latin American and Asian countries; on the other side, "luxury" migrants from European Union countries..

Using the findings of a comparative ethnographic fieldwork carried out in two Primary schools of El Maresme, an area on the coast near Barcelona (one with a majority of pupils of working-class extra-communitarian families -mainly from North and West Africa-, the other welcoming children from diverse national and social origins), this paper will show how social prestige attributed to the local placement where schools are located, as well as social class composition, national origin, and linguistic diversity among pupils of the two chosen schools, contributed to a differential construction of the "distance" between family culture and school culture.

Consequently, on the one hand we will point up that the conceptualization of children in a hierarchy of inclusion/exclusion of new citizenships, extraneous to but reproduced by schools, is on the basis of the differential responses they give in terms of educational expectations and attention to pupils. On the other hand, we will analyze the consequences these experiences have for the children and their conditions of incorporation to the reception society, considering the differential strategies of engagement and disengagement they display both at the academic and social level.