5 “Come to my house!”: Homing practices of children in Swiss asylum camps
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Clara Bombach
Abstract
Children living in a Swiss cantonal asylum centre repeatedly asked the researcher studying their everyday lives to ‘come to my house’ and were also often talking about that they did not belong and couldn’t feel at home. What does it mean for children to live in a place where they don’t want to and cannot feel home? In order to answer this question, this chapter explores the ‘houses’ of the ‘camp’ – rooms that children live with their parent(s). The children’s homing strategies (Winther, 2009) in a non-place (Augé, 1995/2010) will be examined using examples from an ethnographic study that took place between 2019 and 2020 in a ‘cantonal center’ – or as the children put it ‘camp’. This examination reveals how homing strategies are deployed within the adversarial structural conditions of Swiss cantonal camps.
Abstract
Children living in a Swiss cantonal asylum centre repeatedly asked the researcher studying their everyday lives to ‘come to my house’ and were also often talking about that they did not belong and couldn’t feel at home. What does it mean for children to live in a place where they don’t want to and cannot feel home? In order to answer this question, this chapter explores the ‘houses’ of the ‘camp’ – rooms that children live with their parent(s). The children’s homing strategies (Winther, 2009) in a non-place (Augé, 1995/2010) will be examined using examples from an ethnographic study that took place between 2019 and 2020 in a ‘cantonal center’ – or as the children put it ‘camp’. This examination reveals how homing strategies are deployed within the adversarial structural conditions of Swiss cantonal camps.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents vii
- List of figures ix
- Notes on contributors x
- Introduction 1
- The contribution of social work research to promote migration and asylum policies in Europe 5
- Participatory art in social work: from humanitarianism to humanisation of people on the move 25
- Grasping at straws: social work in reception and identification centres in Greece 47
- Migrant girls’ experiences of integration and social care in Sweden 64
- “Come to my house!”: Homing practices of children in Swiss asylum camps 80
- Transnational dynamics of family reunification: reassembling social work with refugees in Belgium 95
- Open or closed doors? Accessibility of Italian social work organisations towards ethnic minorities 112
- Refugee children and families in the Republic of Ireland: the response of social work 126
- Sense of place, migrant integration and social work 146
- “If not now, when?”: Reclaiming activism into social work education – the case of an intercultural student-academic project with refugees in the UK and Greece 161
- EU border migration policy and unaccompanied refugee minors in Greece: the example of Lesvos and Samos hotspots 177
- Epilogue: Time to listen, time to learn, time to challenge … because there is hope 198
- Index 201
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents vii
- List of figures ix
- Notes on contributors x
- Introduction 1
- The contribution of social work research to promote migration and asylum policies in Europe 5
- Participatory art in social work: from humanitarianism to humanisation of people on the move 25
- Grasping at straws: social work in reception and identification centres in Greece 47
- Migrant girls’ experiences of integration and social care in Sweden 64
- “Come to my house!”: Homing practices of children in Swiss asylum camps 80
- Transnational dynamics of family reunification: reassembling social work with refugees in Belgium 95
- Open or closed doors? Accessibility of Italian social work organisations towards ethnic minorities 112
- Refugee children and families in the Republic of Ireland: the response of social work 126
- Sense of place, migrant integration and social work 146
- “If not now, when?”: Reclaiming activism into social work education – the case of an intercultural student-academic project with refugees in the UK and Greece 161
- EU border migration policy and unaccompanied refugee minors in Greece: the example of Lesvos and Samos hotspots 177
- Epilogue: Time to listen, time to learn, time to challenge … because there is hope 198
- Index 201
