Narrating Refuge

As I complete this essay, people across the world are protesting a recent Executive Order banning refugees from entering the United States. Millions of people, organizations, other collectives, and even some corporations are crying out in solidarity that it is a human responsibility to provide refuge to those fleeing inhuman conditions. A detailed analysis of the ban and the reaction is beyond the scope of this essay, but my argument is deeply related to the issue at the center of the protests – refuge. I will argue that considering refuge brings to the analysis of contemporary conflict and displacement a focus on human capacity and responsibility. Millions of people protesting government bans against welcoming those most in need highlights the importance of understanding refuge – what it involves and who participates. This essay presents an argument about refuge as an urgent and practical concept for understanding challenges and interventions, especially for children and youth affected by war and displacement. I introduce the related processes of refuge, symbolic refuge, and narrating refuge with a vignette of how a family in Yemen is coping with daily life in the midst of war. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, I build the definition of “refuge” as a political analysis of material and symbolic zones of purpose and responsibility. With this foundation, my central point is that research and practice in child and youth development should be supporting young people’s uses of language, in particular narrative, to mediate interactions in challenging environments and to foreground their perspectives on the issues. To illustrate this process of “narrating refuge”, I draw on examples from a study of dynamic storytelling by children and communities involved in conflict and displacement during and after the 1990s wars of the former Yugoslavia. Narrating refuge involves young people in interactions to make sense of what is going on in their environments, how they fit, and what they would like to achieve. The argument concludes by explaining how involving young people in such dynamic storytelling activities is an activist approach to practice and research in displacement

The Appeal of Narrative in Research

I saw the bird flattened on the ground outside my door . One of the kindergarten child walked toward me slowly, crying. That\u27s when I knew it was time to act. The very brief narrative above occurs amid myriad spheres of social relations. These relations are not all apparent, but understanding narrative meaning requires understanding narrating as an interactive process. As researchers we enhance our Methods if we know how to read narratives as complex social processes. This openi11g narrative expresses a sequence of two past events.1 The narrative involves action ( walked, act ) and consciousness ( saw, crying, knew ). From the little bit that is there, one can imagine possible settings: Kindergarten suggests a school context; characters include the implicit narrator I, apparently in a position of responsibility and power ( it was time to act ). This bit of narrative also sits amid possible plots- some kind of conflict on a school playground - with characters, the child, the I character, and the bird (depending on how the story develops). This brief narrative seems to convey life quite naturally with a story of an encounter involving a person, nature, and an institution-a child, a bird, and a teacher, school principal, or other adult-within a broader series of imaginable events. The ending it was time to act implies that the bird\u27s demise involved something more than disease or old age, compelling the I character to intervene. Details like the dead bird, the crying child , and the urgency to act hint at some sort of trouble, piquing the reader\u27s desire to know what happened. That 30 words invoke so much meaning demands a dynamic narrative approach

Beyond the Youth Gap in Understanding Political Violence

Youth are never taken seriously, and we sometimes have ideas that would be good for all people. ~ Alex, Croatia ... Some things do depend on us; war, consequences of the war, poverty; the influence of the church interfering with the state affairs, which must not be so. ~ Ljubicia, Serbia As we hear in these comments by two teenagers who have grown up in the shadow of political violence, their generation is aware of the past and its legacies. These brief quotes mention many details that young people in easier situations may not notice: consequences of the war, the influence of the church interfering with the state affairs, youth responsibility for the future ( some things do depend on us ), and their capacity to contribute to the benefit of society ( we sometimes have ideas that would be good for all people ). These reflections echo the letter we read by Visnja in the Preface, pointing out, ironically, that youth perspectives are usually ignored: Who would be open to listening to the \u27complaints of youth\u27 and take them seriously? On the other hand, those in power are stymied about how to create a future: The old guard politicians are still shaking their heads, and they tell us \u27it will be better\u27 .... Yeah, right! Scholars have contributed information about children and youth as the objects of study in situations of political violence, but the literature has offered little from the perspectives of young people themselves. Previous research and practice have focused, in particular, on two types of responses by young people growing up during or after armed conflict: pathology and risk. After a brief review of these approaches, I discuss the need for inquiry into youth perspectives on political violence to fill the remaining gap in research and practice

Creative Uses of Cultural Genres

Telling - or writing - a story about an event in your life is telling a social story. Autobiographical narrations are also, to be sure, personal and unique, but the social nature of narrating is often overlooked in research and education. In particular, to appreciate what young people are doing when we ask them to share their personal experiences in public institutions like school, we need a theory to guide our reading of narratives as conversations. This chapter focuses on how young narrators juggle the demanding yet potentially rewarding activity of narrating in public settings, and it offers insights for research and educational designs sensitive to the tensions children feel between fitting in and expressing some of their personal diversity. I draw on data from a study of 7- through 10-year-old children\u27s autobiographical and fictional narrating in a multiyear study about discrimination conflicts in the context of a violence prevention program (Walker, 1998). Autobiographical and fictional narrating proved to be valuable developmental media for children\u27s analysis of social issues, and children\u27s narrating practices in this context taught me a lot about the nature of narrating as an adaptive and subversive process. The results of the study suggest that as researchers and educators we should redefine narrating to account for issues of power and creativity

Narrating refuge

As I complete this essay, people across the world are protesting a recent Executive Order banning refugees from entering the United States. Millions of people, organizations, other collectives, and even some corporations are crying out in solidarity that it is a human responsibility to provide refuge to those fleeing inhuman conditions. A detailed analysis of the ban and the reaction is beyond the scope of this essay, but my argument is deeply related to the issue at the center of the protests – refuge. I will argue that considering refuge brings to the analysis of contemporary conflict and displacement a focus on human capacity and responsibility. Millions of people protesting government bans against welcoming those most in need highlights the importance of understanding refuge – what it involves and who participates. This essay presents an argument about refuge as an urgent and practical concept for understanding challenges and interventions, especially for children and youth affected by war and displacement. I introduce the related processes of refuge, symbolic refuge, and narrating refuge with a vignette of how a family in Yemen is coping with daily life in the midst of war. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, I build the definition of “refuge” as a political analysis of material and symbolic zones of purpose and responsibility. With this foundation, my central point is that research and practice in child and youth development should be supporting young people’s uses of language, in particular narrative, to mediate interactions in challenging environments and to foreground their perspectives on the issues. To illustrate this process of “narrating refuge”, I draw on examples from a study of dynamic storytelling by children and communities involved in conflict and displacement during and after the 1990s wars of the former Yugoslavia. Narrating refuge involves young people in interactions to make sense of what is going on in their environments, how they fit, and what they would like to achieve. The argument concludes by explaining how involving young people in such dynamic storytelling activities is an activist approach to practice and research in displacement

Narrating Refuge

No abstract available

Applying qualitative youth and adult perspectives to investigate quantitative survey components with a novel “crosswalk” analysis

This paper presents an innovative qualitative “crosswalk” analysis that extends sociocultural narrative theory and method to evaluate data obtained from survey measures in a mixed methods approach. This offers a unique method, centered within an activity-meaning system, to apply qualitative narrative analytic techniques to questions posed by quantitative survey measures, coding survey questions by using values that emerged from participants’ narratives of experience. In this way, this novel technique allows for interpretation of surveys via a lens that privileges participant-generated qualitative data. This research is situated in a broader study that sought to examine the intersection of social-emotional learning and school climate constructs in lived experiences. Results of this analysis extend the complexity of relational understandings of human development by including surveys as institutional narratives, with theoretical and methodological implications for future research

Assessing study abroad students\u2019 intercultural sensitivity with narratives

This study analyzed study abroad students\u2019 orientations to cultural differences as assessed with mixed methods, including traditional intercultural sensitivity measures and oral narratives of critical incidents in the foreign culture. Sixty students participated, 32 US study abroad students, and 28 Erasmus Mundus students, all studying in English-speaking programmes in Italy. Data about students\u2019 acculturation orientation were collected through a self-report questionnaire, and students were asked to narrate a cultural experience that \u201cpuzzled\u201d them in a video log format. Statistical analyses were designed to integrate the intercultural orientation (acculturation strategy) and the video log narrative analyses (plot analysis and cultural relevance definitions). Results indicated that Erasmus Mundus students expressed more ethnorelative orientations than the US study abroad students. For example, Erasmus Mundus students emphasized the setting and the ending of their experiences more than the US students did. Erasmus Mundus students presented lower identification scores with their co-nationals than US study abroad students did. We operationalize those concepts with an analysis of narrative video logs, as tools for students, as well as for researchers and educators involved in study abroad programmes