Promoting an Understanding of Forced Migration Among Host Country Children and Exploring Their Views on Refugee Children’s Needs

• We know that refugee children are vulnerable to develop mental health problems, particularly post-traumatic stress [1]. Yet, social relationships including the number of friends and quality of friendship appear to play an important protective role [2]. Feeling accepted and supported by peers reportedly promotes wellbeing among refugee children [3, 4], and is associated with lower levels of psychological distress [4], emotional difficulties [5] and aggression [6]. Conversely, perceived discrimination by peers is related to emotional problems and aggressive behaviour [6]. Given the significant role peers play for refugee children, efforts should be made to engage host country children with the topic of refugee children’s needs. This brief report describes a film-based activity carried out at a children’s science festival in Uppsala, Sweden. Uppsala is a university town with a general education level higher than the national average, but also with less affluent areas from which schools visited the science festival. A short film conveyed a typical experience of a refugee child to provide the children with contextual knowledge and a qualitative survey was used to collect the children’s views on what they think refugee children might need when they arrive in a new country. The qualitative design was selected to give the children space to provide detail about their reasoning in their own words and to enable the nuanced perspectives of children across various ages to be captured. As the survey was explorative, there were no specific hypotheses.

Ämnesord

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Klinisk medicin -- Pediatrik (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Clinical Medicine -- Pediatrics (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Folkhälsovetenskap, global hälsa, socialmedicin och epidemiologi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Public Health, Global Health, Social Medicine and Epidemiology (hsv//eng)

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

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