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- Convenors:
-
Maria Reimann
(University of Warsaw)
Magdalena Radkowska-Walkowicz (University of Warsaw)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- BASE (Bodies, Affects, Senses, Emotions)
- Location:
- Room H-209
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 14 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel focuses on the ways in which children experience and think about crisis. We invite papers that look at children's perspectives on different crisis (divorce, migration, illness) in order to understand the meanings children attach to them and allow their voices become part of the debate.
Long Abstract:
This panel focuses on the ways in which children and teenagers experience, think about, and cope with crisis. We invite papers that look at children's perspectives on different forms of crisis such as for example parental divorce, migration, disability/illness, poverty, climate change, or pandemic. We would also like to redefine crisis by looking at it not only from ethic but also from emic perspective and therefore we invite papers which aim to understand what children themselves consider difficult and what is not necessarily seen as such by the adults.
Children are often conceptualized as helpless and at risk. Situation of crisis makes their position even more vulnerable. At the same time, the situation of crisis allows us to see different dimensions of children's agency. Crisis may reveal children's competences that are invisible on a daily basis, as well as new power relations.
In this panel we would like to look at children as competent actors with their own needs, views, and ethics, that should be heard and taken into account by adults and policymakers. We would like to re-think crisis by allowing children's voices and perspectives become part of the debate on crisis and finding solutions to it. We invite both empirical and methodological papers that try to shed light on the complex position of children in contemporary world.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 14 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
Based on two anthropological research, the paper analyze how chronic conditions (type 1 diabetes, asthma, Turner syndrome) constitute different experiences of the body and the sources of crisis and uncertainty for youth, and how they stabilize and control it through multiple social resources.
Paper long abstract:
Through two anthropological research, "PASMAC - Passages d'âges et maladie chronique : les trajectoires de soins des 12-21 ans atteints de diabète de type 1 ou d'asthme" (IRESP, INSERM) and "Grandir avec une maladie chronique ou une anomalie chromosomique : vers une anthropologie de l'incertitude" (IUF), we will analyze how chronic conditions constitute sources of uncertainty for teenagers and youth. The results refer to two diseases (type 1 diabetes, asthma) and one syndrome (Turner syndrome) that are profoundly different in their manifestations and evolution over time. Nevertheless, it is interesting to compare them for the type of crisis and uncertainty they raise and for the responses they provoke. The uncertainty takes shape in three experiences of the body: that of an opaque body, that of an unstable body and finally that of a body that betrays. We will analyze the contours of this bodily uncertainty, how it can be amplified or limited, and the ways to stabilize and control it through multiple social resources. The concept of "right distance" seems central. Uncertainty obliges youth to formulate what is not necessarily said, to decentralize, and to open up a distance where the signs of trouble multiply and where the illness seems to take up all the space. Following Luc Boltanski's distinction (2009), coping with uncertainty implies practical moments and moments of reflexivity which youth appropriate and take hold of in a socially diversified way.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores how children and adolescents are involved or not in their sibling's illness. Five forms of sibling relationships are higlighted based on a qualitativ research entitled "Age transitions and chronic disease, asthma and type 1 diabetes in 12-21 year olds in France".
Paper long abstract:
The paper explores how children and adolescents are involved or not in their sibling's illness. Indeed, in contemporary French family socialization, a tension exists between a demand for individualization of each member of the siblings (De Singly 2016), and the management of a collective marked by a desire for solidarity and for sharing a territory of intimacy (Favart 2003). When a chronic disease appears in a sibling, this tension is more acute and the place of the brothers and sisters in the management of the disease is uncertain. In the light of the work of Bluebond-Langner (1996), the aim is to reexamine the sibling relationship in the face of a child's illness. The paper si based on a qualitative research carried out in East of France from 2017 to 2021 with 90 adolescents and young adult of 12-21 years old. The paper will focus 12-18 adolescents years old.
Five forms of sibling relationships are highlighted : the invisibility of the siblings, the rivalries and inequalities, distancing the patient from siblings, the mutual aid between brothers and sisters with the same chronic disease. This research not only provides new data on sibling relationships in french adolescence, but also allows us to rethink how the crisis like an illness may reveal children's and adolescent competences that are invisible on a daily basis.
Paper short abstract:
The study of children's experiences of pain generates knowledge that does not always recognize their voices. An essential element for exploring this experience is to consider the role children play in building their own reality and to developed an approach derived from their own perspectives.
Paper long abstract:
The study of children's experiences of illness and pain generates knowledge that does not always recognize voices and practices that give rise to the feelings, emotions and experiences of children who are in a situation of suffering. This requires being able to move to other spaces that allow not only the recognition of children and their ways of seeing and living reality, but also to co-construct a plural knowledge about those experiences. In this way, there is a need for an epistemological reflexivity that influences the production of knowledge, that addresses the relationship between its contexts of discovery and of justification. Thus, an essential element for exploring the experience of children regarding illness and suffering is to take into account the role children play in building their own reality. An approach to health and pain experiences derived from the children’s own perspectives should be developed, considering them not only as discoverers of the meanings that come from their reality but also as creators of these meanings through their own understandings and interpretations. Active participation and a significant role of children in the research are important when we investigate their health and pain experiences. The use of narratives and categories from children themselves allow us to deepen our knowledge on their everyday experiences, focusing the analysis on children’s perspective and recognizing them as narrators of these experiences.
Paper short abstract:
The paper aims to present the results of a research on a group of teenagers from the metropolitan area of northern Italy, with the purpose of exploring their experiences during Covid-19 pandemic and analysing their perspectives about the changes in their lives and the strategies adopted to cope with
Paper long abstract:
The Covid-19 emergency forced societies to undergo profound structural changes and to modify the nature and modalities of many of their organised forms of social life. These alterations have had significant effects on the lives of children and young people not only because of the disruptions of their daily routines and habits, but also for the impact on the key relational contexts contributing to the development of individual and collective identities. This paper aims to present some of the findings of a research designed to explore the everyday experiences of 134 adolescents aged 16–18 years studying and living in the metropolitan area of Turin (Northern Italy). The study, realized between May and June 2021, adopted a qualitative method with the realization of 18 online focus groups analysing participants’ perspectives concerning the changes that occurred in their lives and their opinions about the virus and strategies for facing the emergency.
This contribution, aiming to understand how the Covid-19 has changed the world of this group of adolescents and their ability to cope with these transformations. Specifically, it will focus on the perceptions about Covid-related risk and on the pandemic's impact on key relational settings (home, school and peers).
Paper short abstract:
The presentation will highlight themes from interviews conducted with adolescents 14-17 from the capital area of Reykjavik by bringing insights into the views and experiences expressed during times an invisible threat, along with narratives of coping, and means of which they exercised their agency.
Paper long abstract:
Adolescence is an important time where our personalities grow and our sense of self becomes more established. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the government interventions have impacted children and young people’s daily routines, such as with closing of schools, limiting activities of after-school programmes, sporting events, and other types of social gatherings. Due to this, adolescents have been obliged to adjust to a new reality whilst negotiating important elements such as peer-relationships, their own individuality, and personhood. This presentation is a part of a larger PhD project which aims to give insight into the experiences of adolescents in Iceland by using mixed methods; participatory research, interviews, and analysis of survey data. It is the hope of the project that voices and experiences of children and youth will be taken into account in future government policy-making against global health threats. The presentation will report on highlights from interviews conducted with adolescents 14-17 from the capital area of Reykjavik by bringing insights into the views and experiences expressed during times an invisible threat, along with narratives of coping, and means of which they exercised their agency.