Borch, Anita (2022) «Immigrant Children’s Connections to People and the World Around Them: A Critical Discourse Review of Academic Literature Social Inclusion» In: “New Approaches to the Study of Social Inclusion of Poor Children and Youth”.
“This project seeks to increase current knowledge of the practices causing marginalization and social exclusion of minority and majority children. It will analyze things, activities, and places of children.”
A primary goal of the welfare state is to ensure that children and young people get a good upbringing and that families can feel secure, both financially and socially. Several studies indicate, however, that the risk of marginalization and social exclusion increases, especially amongst children of low-income families and with immigrant backgrounds. Why this is, however, is poorly understood, diminishing the welfare state’s chance to discharge its responsibilities. The individual and societal costs of marginalization and social exclusion of children and young people in the form of dropouts from school and future unemployment, disablement, and low income are considerable. The potential impact of a project aiming to prevent such life trajectories to be realized is therefore high.
The basic idea of this project is to increase current knowledge of the practices causing marginalization and social exclusion of minority and majority children of low-income families by exploring them from a new theoretical angle addressing people’s ‘belonging’ – in brief, referring to a basic human need providing us with a sense of ontological security; of ‘home’; without which life would be difficult, if not impossible. In so doing, we will inform policy and move related research fields beyond state-of-the-art empirically, theoretically, and methodologically.
Empirically, we will provide alternative explanations of why some children are marginalized and excluded, while others are not. Theoretically, we will further develop a new concept gaining ground in the social sciences today: practices of belonging. Methodologically, we will advance novel techniques specially suited to capture these practices, such as visual ethnology, stakeholder-involvement, children as co-researchers, and a quasi-experiment.
The project consists of three different parts. First, literature reviews on belonging and belonging and social media are conducted to lay a solid ground for the project. Second, surveys based on findings from the literature review will be conducted. Third, the research team will collect data in Oslo.
The project is coordinated by Consumption Research Norway (SIFO) at OsloMet, in cooperation with Norwegian Social Research (NOVA) at OsloMet, Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI), and Institut für Sozialpädagogik und Erwachsenenbildung (WE V) at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt.
You can find more information on the project members and the members of the advisory board here.
The project is funded by the program VAM at Research Council Norway and will go on from the year 2021 to 2025.
We will be sharing our ongoing work process on our blog, social media channels, and in our newsletter. All our publications and upcoming presentations and talks will be updated on this website.
Please feel free to reach out to the project leader Anita Broch for general inquiries about the project. You are welcome to contact Clara J. Reich regarding any questions about this website.
