Children’s Social Relations in Peer Groups : Inclusion, exclusion and friendship

• We set up six media clubs for refugee and migrant children (ages 10-14) in six European countries. The clubs met weekly after school hours over a year with some extra full days during school holidays. The clubs made videos and exchanged them on the internet. In each participating country, researchers and media educators employed by the project collaborated with youth workers and teachers, already working with the children. The clubs became social centres as well as a place to learn about and make media. Using the internet we established a communications network to facilitate the sharing of children’s media productions, in order to generate dialogues between them. As a research project CHICAM addressed three major aspects of structural change in contemporary European society: the increase in global migration, the uses of new communication technologies, and the specifi c needs of children. Through the work of the clubs it focused on the social and cultural worlds of refugee and migrant children in centres across Europe; and was mainly concerned with fi rst generation refugees or migrants, for whom the experience of re-location is relatively recent. The children came from many different countries including Iraq, Sierra Leone, Angola, Somalia, Albania, Kosovo, Columbia, Turkey. We investigated how these children represent and express their experiences of migration into the different host countries, and how their use of new media might enable their perspectives to inform the development of European educational and cultural policies. In the process, we were seeking to identify how particular experiences of reception, educational practice, family re-unifi cation and community involvement may more effectively promote social inclusion and economic and cultural integration.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Medievetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Media Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Children

Social relations

Peer groups

Social sciences

Socialvetenskap

Publication and Content Type

pop (subject category)

rap (subject category)