Artistic methods as triggers for migrant children’s subjectivities in transit: A study in barcelona’s public schools

Abstract

This article is part of the European Migrant Children and Communities in a Transforming Europe (MiCreate) project. The text is intended to a) explore and describe how young migrants describe their experiences and life trajectories through artistic methods; b) investigate how the students’ subjectivities in transit blur socio-cultural, political and identity barriers; and c) question the notion of migrant childhood from a critical perspective. To do so, we focus on three situations that occurred during our fieldwork in public schools in Barcelona, conducted in two stages. The first stage consisted of an ethnographic approach that included participant observa-tion, interviews and conversation groups with the educational community of each school (teachers, families and neighborhood organizations). The second stage involved meetings with groups of students aged 10 to 12, in which different artistic methods were used (life lines, cartographies, inter-active narration, video stories, drawings and subjective photography) in order to create spaces for relationships that would trigger their biographical narratives. The contribution of this study lies in the fact that it allows us to focus on children’s subjectivity and authorship in migration studies and to account for how they live their subjectivities in transit, confront their multiple identities, and give meaning to their transnational experiences. Furthermore, the research makes it possible to review the meaning of what might constitute a performative ethical relationship in research with young people.