CHICAM

Home is where the heart is:
family relations of migrant children in six European countries

Research Findings

The children showed “elasticity” in their definitions of home and family. Definitions of family are changed by the displacement process and may differ substantially from the host society’s definitions as well as prior experience of the migrants themselves. Domestic groups of several kinds were of crucial importance for these children, and were often deliberately created in order to secure basic necessities and to provide an otherwise lacking framework.

Various forms of media play a special role in how children and families conceptualise the past and in remembering the family history. Photographs were especially used to keep memories of their family in their former location alive and enabled them tell stories of people and the place that were important to them. However, for many refugees such concrete memories are lacking because they have not been able to bring such media.

The use that children and families made of media is directly related to their purpose and social context. Three different categories were identified:

Diaspora - where media products from the home country or region are used to maintain cultural, emotional and linguistic links with both the past and current changes occurring in countries of origin;
National - where the emphasis may be on using media products to facilitate integration, make friends, negotiate new identities or acquire a new language;
Global - which was particularly important for accessing global youth culture as well as news

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