Paper short abstract:

The paper presents the specifics of ethnographic field research on Romani children who are cared for by their grandparents in Bulgaria while their parents work abroad. Using a dialogical approach, I interviewed grandparents, teachers and students who are expected to talk about their problems.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents the impact of parental labour mobility on Romani children who are cared for by grandparents in Bulgaria and focuses specifically on how to do fieldwork among them. Children of migrant workers who remain in their home country are a well-studied group, and usually, the analyses refer to countries and regions that traditionally send large numbers of workers abroad such as the Caribbean, China, Romania, and others (Olwig, 1999; Robila, 2011; Chen, Yang, Zhou & Ren, 2019; and many others). However, the ethnographic work among children of migrant parents is a less discussed issue. For many kids whose fathers and mothers are working in European countries "home" means the absence of parents and missing supervision relationships between parents and children. There is a lack of direct care and upbringing on the part of parents, which causes problems in the school environment such as preparation for school and communication with teachers. Using a dialogical approach as the main strategy of fieldwork, I interviewed elderly people from different settlements, on the one hand, directors, homeroom teachers, and school staff, on the other. The topic of research is very sensitive because open-ended interviews are conducted with the students themselves, who are under 18 years of age and who are expected to talk about their problems. On the basis of the fieldwork results, I state that the approaches to students can be called 'mainstream' and 'specific' approaches, from which arise various challenges in the expectations of their progress in school and training.

Paper short abstract:

Children are a great influence on the parents’ behaviour, and especially when having a migrant background. The parents adapt activities of their host-culture, while giving their children a belonging environment in their new resident country.

Paper long abstract:

Migrants’ everyday life is filled with challenges in finding ways to integrate to the new yet unknown society, and in constructing a better way of living, better income, education, and health care. The change of their residence consequently impacts and partly even transforms their social everyday life and routines, as they engage in new educational and labor systems, atmospheres, and celebrations. Having this in mind, the focus of this paper lays on the group of Albanian migrants who fled to Vienna, and their process of coping/adapting (or not) with this new culture. Respectively, I will concentrate on how children and youth (Muslim) Albanians have impacted their parents’ engagement in Christmas Celebrations in Vienna. Commonly, the participation of these immigrant groups in Christians’ celebrations is a way of showing the dominant host culture their long-term engagement, as well as implies a kind of assimilation or acculturation to the new cultural society. Similarly, Albanian Muslim migrants partake in some Christmas events, which they find inevitable, while avoiding some religiously associated rituals.

Thus, I raise following questions: How do they engage in this festivity and what is their main reason for part-taking? What kind of rituals do they follow (e.g., food preparation, gift giving, decorating a tree, Christmas parties, etc.) and why? How do they cooperate with their different cultural and material surroundings in their new homes?

Paper short abstract:

The presentation analyzes the relationship between migration and children's schooling, the problems and uncertainties of socialisation and integration in the case of Csángó families with children living abroad as well as the problems the children face in the cases of forced returning.

Paper long abstract:

The main site of the research was a village located in the eastern part of Romania inhabited by Moldavian Roman Catholics, the so-called Csángós. The Csángos are a community with a specific ethnicity, the most important element of which consists of local cultural specificities stemming from their belonging to the Roman Catholic religion. They distinguish themselves from the inhabitants of the neighbouring orthodox Romanian settlements in various aspects of life. In the same way, they distinguish themselves from the Hungarian ethnic group, while members of the older generation use an archaic Hungarian dialect in private life. A large number of people from the village, migrate for work, mainly to Western European countries. The presentation analyzes the relationship between migration and children's schooling, the problems and uncertainties of socialisation and integration in the case of Csángó families with children living abroad as well as the problems the children face in the cases of forced returning. In the analytical part, the concrete situations that emerged from the interviews will be presented, and the strategies that families have developed to promote the child's school and language socialisation in situations of migration insecurity. However, the analysis also shows situations where, due to some crisis (illness, unemployment etc.), these families with children have to move home and there is a drastic break in the children's lives. The analysis shows the problems that cultural and linguistic alienation creates for children's integration in school and in the community, and how parents try to respond to this.

Paper short abstract:

On the example of young Sahrawis migrating to Spain, the paper describes both the structural difficulties, uncertainties and constraints of the migration regime and those resulting from the inequality and racism of the host society, as well as the agency of individuals and their relatives.

Paper long abstract:

Young Sahrawis born in refugee camps (Tindouf, Algeria) take part in numerous international mobility projects. For some of them, the journey lasts only two summer months (Vacaciones en Paz project), for others - several years of separation from family due to the possibility of continuing their education abroad.

In the paper, I would like to describe the story of several young Sahrawis who, although they came to Spain for a holiday project, for various reasons have remained there until now, several years later. The main axis of the analysis will be the concept of agency as proposed by Sherry Ortner, which makes it possible to describe both the structural difficulties, uncertainties and constraints of the migration regime and those resulting from the inequality and racism of the host society, as well as the agency of individuals and their relatives. An analysis of the dialectical relationship between structural constraints and people's practices as social actors is a way to access the human experience and allows us to understand the limitations affecting subjects, the transformation and creation of structures, and people's attempts to escape or change the existing order.

The paper is based on ethnographic research conducted in Spain (2019, 2021-2022) and Algeria (2022-2023) with the migrating Sahrawis living in Spain and non-migrant Sahrawis living in the refugee camps near Tindouf, Algeria. The interviews are based on the biographical research method, which gives the study an important element of longitudinal analysis.

Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on refugee children from Ukraine. It asks how their educational trajectory is set in different temporalities that determine their uncertain/contested childhood. I argue that the management of temporalities in relation to education contributes to their social landscape navigation.

Paper long abstract:

The lived temporalities of citizens take place coherently on many levels, and then the life of the citizen is constructed as a continuity. In contrast, migrants face 'critical temporalities' (Baas and Yeoh 2019). "Intersections between multiple 'timescales' - institutional, biographical and everyday - produce specific experiences of time" (Robertson 2022: 169). Continuities are disrupted and migrants live in regimes of discontinuities, simultaneities and ruptures experienced in the context of transnational migration (Acedera and Yeoh 2019).

The war in Ukraine has put millions of people on the move, especially mothers with children. These refugees were also heading to the Czech Republic. The dynamics of war events and its media images, the attitudes and practices of Czech society, and the legislation of the Czech and Ukrainian states transformed the planning of the near but also distant futures of migrants and their families (biographical time). They also framed their everyday routines. This situation was reflected in the education of refugee children.

This paper will focus on the schooling of refugee children. It will look at how differently parents and their children understood the temporality of their refugeehood versus the temporality of childhood or education. The aim is to show how these two temporalities were reflected in the process of educational decision-making, how they influenced children's school entry, engagement in learning and the maintenance of distance learning within Ukrainian schools. It will show how continuities, simultaneities and ruptures play a role in navigating the social landscape of childhood and education.

Paper short abstract:

This paper presents youth with Anglophone migrant backgrounds in the Czech Republic based on research on an afterschool drama club in English. I argue that the experiences of Anglophone children and youth are different to those of adults and not always privileged.

Paper long abstract:

The childhood of people with Anglophone migrant backgrounds is considered privileged. English as their mother tongue, with its position in the globalised world, is privileged (Seidlhofer et al. 2006). Their family background in the globalised North is privileged (Black and Stone 2005), as well as their passports, which lets them travel easily around the world (Croucher 2012). However, the environment of childhood and youth is "not necessarily, nor even principally, the cultural environment(s) relevant to adults "(Hirschfield 2002, p 615). Older children and youth live in a temporality where peers' acceptance is critical (Jenkins 1996) and adults' privileges fade of importance. In the context of post-socialist Czechia, the society in 2020/2021 was still very homogeneous, Anglophone teenagers are often considered different and their position in a peer group is contested. Egalitarian, local mainstream schools exoticise these children and create a feeling of exclusion, of 'otherness'.

I argue that the homogeneity of Czech society and the environment of youth peer pressure makes Anglophone teenagers vulnerable. The privileges of adults cannot be copied into the specific environments of youth. The youth environment needs to be studied separately from adult situations. How can this experience help them navigate their adult life?

Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the second generation of Muslims in Czechia and the negotiation of their identities. How do these young people of migrant origin cope with their otherness in the context of Czech society, and what uncertainties do they face in the different temporalities of their adolescence?

Paper long abstract:

Muslims are framed in public discourse as European "others" (Shaker, van Lanen, van Hoven, 2022). This is not the case in the Czech Republic, where Muslims have to cope with their ascribed foreignness, despite being actively involved in Czech civil society. The second generation of Muslims in the Czech Republic moved between multiple cultural frameworks, transnational fields. Their socialization took place in the context of a Muslim family, but they grew up primarily in the context of the Czech environment. We are talking about young Muslims, descendants of migrants who came to Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1990s as part of student and labour migration. They negotiate their identity situationally and have to come to terms with their relationship to the country of origin of their parents, with ethnicity, and with national identity. The otherness of their childhood and adolescence is shaped by an experience that their parents do not have. “Temporality is the product of both the transnationality of migrants' lives as well as the realities of the structures and systems of that they are part of” (Baas and Yeoh, 2019: 166). The key temporalities of institutional, religious, peer or familial that these young people go through generate uncertainties. Therefore, I ask what strategies they use to become socially relevant in the environment of the Czech, predominantly atheist society.