Boundaries and crossing points : children, geography, and identity in Fish Hoek valley

Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation is based on an ethnographic study with children and young people between the ages of 11 and 19, who attend formerly 'white' state schools in the Cape peninsula, South Africa. Since 1994 these schools have seen an increase in the racial diversity of the student population, but children continue to live in a highly segregated landscape. I take a closer look at the way these schoolchildren work within and around divisions of class and race in this specific place and time in South African history, to understand which factors promote and obstruct the possibility of diversity and integration in their daily lives. How are they negotiating the landscape, discourse and practice around them? And how do they create and verbalise ways of being themselves? Data for the study was collected by a variety of methods, to enable children to express themselves in various ways by engaging them in the research project through visual, group and individual exercises, focus group discussions and interviews

Ethics and the everyday: reconsidering approaches to research involving children

Guidelines on ethical practice in research with children tend to focus on ways to protect children from potential economic and emotional exploitation. While such concerns deserve attention, we argue that they represent only a portion of the moral framework in which researchers and participants operate. Through an analysis of children's engagement in a long term ethnographic study, where their participation involved both providing and gathering data, we show the interconnections between so-called 'research activities' and young people's everyday decision-making. Children's participation in research takes place within existing and emerging relationships. Decision-making based on values - on the part of both children and adults - is part and parcel of these relationships. This paper demonstrates the need to engage with children's moral worlds seriously while planning and conducting social research

Boundaries and crossing points: children, geography and identity in the Fish Hoek valley

This paper is about children and young people who attend a formerly 'white' state school with an increasingly diverse student population, and live in a highly segregated environment. I take a closer look at the way these schoolchildren work within, around and against divisions of class and 'race'? in a specific place and time in South African history, to understand which factors promote and obstruct the possibility of diversity and integration in their everyday lives. How are they negotiating the landscape, discourse and practice around them? And how do they create and verbalise ways of being themselves? Data for the study was collected by a variety of methods, to enable children to express themselves by engaging them in the research project through visual, group and individual exercises, discussions and interviews. Initially, maps of the area drawn by and commented on by the children show that apartheid history and an environment shaped by this history has a deep impact on these children's daily lives, and general stereotypes about places and people prevail. However, as the research project progressed, a more nuanced picture emerged of a generation of young South Africans who express an ideal of non-racism and negotiate a racially defined physical and social environment in their own particular ways.

Growing up in the new South Africa: childhood and adolescence in post-apartheid Cape Town

How has the end of apartheid affected the experiences of South African children and adolescents? This pioneering study provides a compelling account of the realities of everyday life for the first generation of children and adolescents growing up in a democratic South Africa. The authors examine the lives of young people across historically divided communities at home, in the neighbourhoods where they live, and at school. This resource can be used be anyone interested in developing their knowledge on the experiences of children in post-apartheid South Africa