Increasing Well-Being and Giving Voice Through Storycrafting to Children Who Are Refugees, Immigrants, or Asylum Seekers

Abstract

Research shows that it is challenging to obtain reliable information on the experiences of children living in tenuous circumstances, where they have faced daunting challenges and difficulties. The aim of this chapter is to explore the information provided by asylum-seeking children on their well-being, especially their feelings of security, through use of the Storycrafting method, in which children are given opportunities to tell stories. We also examine how the Storycrafting method functions as a means of creating narrative knowledge among children who live in difficult situations and within a culture of silence. The results show that, through Storycrafting, children tell intense and thick descriptions of their well-being, both positive and negative ones. The Storycrafting method is a valid method for encouraging children who are asylum seeking, immigrants and refugees, as well as other children living in difficult situations, to discuss their well-being and enable professionals to gather information that may be unobtainable in other ways.