Transforming childhood and youth: increasing diversity in European cities

14TH IMISCOE ANNUAL CONFERENCE (ROTTERDAM, JUNE 28-30, 2017)
'Migration, Diversity and the City
RESEARCH PANEL on behalf of Contested Childhood Research Group
Working title
Transforming childhood and youth: increasing diversity in European cities
Chair and discussant : Rashmi Singla* and Marie Louise Seeberg**
This panel focuses on the changing dynamics of integration of various categories of children and young people, be they moving across borders, or settled in cities of immigration. The papers propose to cover diverse settings in Europe primarily through empirical studies. Moving beyond the narrow understandings of children and youth as “first or second generation immigrants”, a range of ascribed categories such as children ‘left behind’ or youth and families in transnational settings, international exchange students, mobile youth, are included in these papers. Despite differences, there are inherent commonalties in integrational dynamics such as adaptation processes, complex identities, increasing societal polarisation, xenophobic tendencies, changing involvement of policy makers and service providers, and the centrality of digitalisation.
Papers presented in this panel emphasise different social and geographic scales - the individual life world and face-to-face interaction, local city life including the station as venue of migration, the football ground as well as larger institutional, transnational, and state contexts - and ideally include the interplay between different scales. Differently emerging conceptualizations of childhood and youth are made explicit as the papers cover various settings, disciplines and theoretical and methodological approaches. However, all the papers foreground children and youth primarily representing the future of the societies they are involved in, with family, peers, educational- and social institutions in the background. Presented findings have implications for service provisions and policies in local European urban settings as well on national, regional, and transnational scales, thus contribute to development of good practice models and relevant policies.
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* Associate Professor
Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Denmark
** Research professor
Department of childhood studies, co-ordinator the research group on migration and transnationality , NOVA (Norwegian Social Research), Norway


Panel: Transforming childhood and youth: increasing diversity in European cities (1)
"Chair: Rashmi Singla (Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Denmark)

"Discussant: Professor Marie Louise Seeberg (NOVA, Oslo, Norway)
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Papers:
Izabella Main (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland), 'Contested understanding of childhood among Polish migrants in Norway'
"Elzbieta M. Gozdziak (Georgetown University, USA), 'Keleti Pályaudvar: Past and Present Child Refugee Crises in Hungary'
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"Carmen Draghici University Paris 13-Sorbonne Paris Cite, France), 'Transforming childhood and youth: increasing diversity in European cities'

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"Tracey Reynolds (University of Greenwich , UK) and Elisabetta Zontini (University of Nottingham, UK), 'Increasing diversity in European cities: mapping the role of ‘transnational family habitus’ in the lives of young people and children'

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session 56, Thursday 29 June 15.30 -17.00 room
Panel: Transforming childhood and youth: increasing diversity in European cities (2)
"Chair: Rashmi Singla (Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Denmark)

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"Discussant: Marie Louise Seeberg (NOVA)
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Papers:
"Vera Peshkova (Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia), 'Transnational Migration and Childhood: On children of migrants from the Central Asia in Russia'
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"Eva Janska, Zdeněk Čermák and Andrea Svobodova (Charles University, Prague, Czechia), 'Migration to Cities: decision making process and identity changes of young Vietnamese in Czechia'
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"Mari Rysst (Inland University College/SIFO, Norway), 'Minority boys in Lillehammer: the importance of participation in football'
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"Emma Stinne Engstrøm and Weibke Sandermann (Roskilde University, Denmark), 'International students’ experiences and challenges in Denmark'