Research Details
Research Interest and Design
Within the DoDzi-Project, we are investigating how children interpret and evaluate transnational family arrangements, as well as analyzing how children view transnational family arrangements in relation to a “normative pattern of good childhood” - a core concept of our project.
The project combines a sociological approach with a perspective from literature studies and consists of three parts:
A) Book-Analysis: Recent books for children on transnational families are the basis for the first part of the project. The qualitative analysis focuses on the question how transnational families are presented in books for children – as a deviation or a viable form of living?
B) Reception study: Elementary school children in Poland are read aloud to from a book about a child in a transnational family. Following this “reading journey,” they are invited to write a letter to this fictional child – giving advice, articulating wishes and comments. This part of the study focuses on the question of how children interpret the presented transnational families and how they position themselves towards such family arrangements.
C) Group discussions: A passage of a book about a transnational family is used as a stimulus for group discussions between children with parents living temporarily abroad and children without such an experience. This part of the study aims at reconstructing children’s conjunctive knowledge about normative and non-normative family arrangements.
Objectives
Scientifically, the project enriches:
- the sociological debate on the “normative pattern of good childhood” – from the perspective of children;
- the field of literature studies by offering insights into children‘s perception of family and transnationality;
- the interdisciplinary discourse within childhood studies;
- research at the crossroad of childhood- and migration studies by reconstructing children’s views on transnationality;
- and our understanding of the perspectives of children on growing up in transnational families.
Publicly, the project helps to inform the heated public discourse on children of transnational families by offering empirical findings on children’s perceptions of this type of childhood.
