Are They Always Child-Friendly? Successes and Pitfalls of Multi-Method Research Using Art-Based Methods with Migrant Children

This paper offers a critical reflection of a multi-method arts-based research with migrant children. The research made use of multiple art-based “child-friendly” data elicitation techniques including walking tours with photo elicitation, and draw and tell, as a way of empowering children to give an account of their life and experiences, using diverse methods that could tap int their varied competences and inclinations.

Scholars of childhood studies have described many of the above-mentioned tools as “child-friendly”. However, during some of the research projects in which I implemented these approaches, a number of opportunities and constraints emerged. Drawing from examples from a research on migrant children’s experiences in in Morocco, I will argue that while child-friendly and art-based research techniques are important in empowering children, it is equally important to reflect on children’s position within the research encounter as well as within the spaces and places where data collection takes place. Within the school, the playground, the football pitch, the home, children can be afforded diverse degree of agency. Therefore, the same child-friendly method can be more, or less, child friendly based on the meaning that the child attributes to the tool in relation to the place within which it is utilised.

Without such considerations, we hinder effective child participation, and we risk turning the research from one with children to one on children. Starting from a reflection on the successes and pitfalls on the use of art-based, child friendly methods within diverse sites, I will problematize the inherent child-friendliness of these approaches and emphasize the need for a deeper engagement on children’s position in the space and places of the research encounter.