Migrant Children’s Home-Making Practises

This research delves into the multifaceted notions of home and their construction through migrant children's home-making practices. Departing from the often romanticized and depoliticized depictions of home in social research, this study challenges this concept as a purely positive and definite relationship, associated with experiences of joy, protection, attachment and belonging. A critical approach to the category of home reveals the complex interplay between comfort, oppression, security, marginalization, intimacy, and estrangement, for instance, where the life dynamics and public spheres interrelate. By viewing home as a dynamic assemblage of meanings, experiences, and practices, in combination with a wide variety of material, discursive, humans and nonhuman relationships, the study aims to examine how migrant children actively create and participate in home-making practices.

Drawing on a Childhood(s) Studies framework, the research recognizes children as agentic and interdependent social beings who actively participate in shaping the spaces they inhabit. By incorporating an intersectional perspective, the study acknowledges the structural oppressions that shape children's experiences and the ways in which they navigate their identities, power, and participation.

Through this exploration, the author seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex intersection between home, migration, and childhood(s) and to move beyond from an adult-centric research to transnational migration studies and home studies. Finally, the findings may also inform policy-making and advocacy efforts in areas such as housing and intercultural community development from children’s experiences.