This is an ethnographic study of children's everyday life in a reception center – together with children we are creating knowledge through playing, talking and arts to understand the challenges, joys and opportunities for action, the meanings of places and spaces, and the experiences of time and waiting.
Reception centres are intended as temporary accommodation for persons arriving in Finland to seek asylum or who have been granted temporary protection. The number of children living in reception centres and the time they spent there have increased in the 21st century. Due to the slow tracks of the asylum processes, some children have spent their entire early childhood in reception centers. Reception centres are intermediate spaces, transit points between the former and the future - this is at least generally thought of, but how do children who have lived in such their whole lives experience these places?
In this study, I produce information with one marginalized group of children; under school aged children living in a reception centre. We will try to figure out what meanings the liminal space produced by the unfinished asylum process brings to children's everyday experiences, what kind of childhoods are possible within the material and discoursive framework of the reception center, and what the everyday places of children are. I compile research material using participatory observation and art-based workshops at the reception centre.
My PhD research provides an opportunity for society to hear children’s experiences of what it’s like to spend their childhood at a reception centre. The information produced helps reception centres, third sector actors and municipalities to develop both a child-consulting approach and services for children.
Funding source
Kone Foundation, Oskar Öflund Foundation