Maahanmuutosta, koulusta ja oman paikan hakemisesta

publishedVersionNon peer reviewe

The management of time and waiting by unaccompanied asylum-seeking girls in Finland

This article considers how asylum-seeking girls in residential care in Finland construct their everyday lives while waiting for asylum outcomes. These girls, from various African countries, are shown to experience waiting as both debilitating and productive. First, our findings confirm the established picture of asylum-seeking young people being in limbo, unable to influence the resolution of their claims. Second, we explore more hopeful ways in which they wait. We emphasize the complex responses and relationships they build in waiting times with each other and their carers. We suggest that waiting is not just ‘dead’ time, but is also lively in periods of uncertainty

Faceless, voiceless child – Ethics of visual anonymity in research with children and young people

The anonymisation of research participants is a standardised ethical practice, but researchers sometimes struggle to find an ethical balance between the practice of anonymisation and participants’ wishes to reveal their identities. In the Australian and Finnish studies utilising visuality, the participating asylum-seeking and refugee children and youths wished to reveal their faces and claim ownership for their work. The hindrance of this caused disappointment for the participants and inhibited them from telling their message. Unproblematised anonymisation may have unplanned consequences for children and present them not only as faceless but also as voiceless, thus leading to further ethical problems.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

‘This is our treehouse’ : Investigating play through a practice architectures lens

This article explores a child-led project of building a treehouse through the theory of practice architectures. It draws on video data collected by 13 children wearing microcameras (GoPro) in a multicultural Australian primary school. The data was co-analysed with the children. The article illuminates how play practices emerge, diffuse, persist and/or disappear with time. This knowledge is needed to understand the different facets of free play and build enabling conditions for its unfolding.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Osallisuus turvaa hakevan reunaehdoissa: Hätämajoitusyksikössä asuvien nuorten miesten kertomuksia arjesta

Artikkelissa käsitellään neljän hätämajoitusyksikössä asuvan nuoren turvapaikanhakijamiehen kokemuksia osallisuudesta omassa arjessaan. Tulosten perusteella osallisuus muotoutuu suhteessa tulevaisuuskuvaan, läheissuhteisiin, mahdollisuuksiin vaikuttaa omaan välittömään ja laajempaan ympäristöön, kohtaamisiin suomalaisten kanssa ja kokemuksiin omasta merkityksestä. Läpileikkaava teema osallisuutta parantavana tekijänä on tunne turvallisuudesta, johon kaikki osallisuuden tekijät palautuvat. Hätämajoitusyksikön välitilassa elävän, poliittista osallisuutta odottelevan turvapaikanhakijan ihmisarvoista elämää sekä toivoa tulevasta pitävät yllä sosiaalinen osallisuus, luottamukselliset suhteet ja turvallisuus

Migrant-Background Student Experiences of Facing and Overcoming Difficulties in Finnish Comprehensive Schools

This article considers what students with a migrant background in Finnish comprehensive schools report as difficult, and how they succeed in overcoming these difficulties. We draw on two sets of school wellbeing and learning surveys for migrant students, conducted in 2016 and 2021 in comprehensive schools (grades 1–9) in and around two major cities in Finland. We pay attention to student answers to three questions: What is difficult in school? How do you succeed in difficult tasks in school? and Who helps you in school? The datasets from the two points in time are compared to see whether changes in school demographic situation and the student length of stay in Finland had an impact on student experiences. Our findings show that theory-based school subjects that depend strongly on language, such as science subjects, maths, Finnish, Swedish and English, are considered difficult. Additionally, interaction with peers, which also relies on language, causes challenges. The students report turning to teachers, other professionals and peers for assistance and support, and also mention personal strategies they have developed to overcome school-related difficulties. Understanding what migrant students find difficult, as well as how, and with the help of whom, they overcome such difficulties is crucial for the development of effective and sensitive pedagogical practices.</p

Diversity beliefs are associated with orientations to teaching for diversity and social justice : A study among German and Finnish student teachers

This mixed methods study explored German (n = 477) and Finnish (n = 379) student teachers' color-blind, multiculturalist, and polyculturalist diversity beliefs. Statistical analyses identified polyculturalism and multiculturalism as the most prominent diversity beliefs among the student teachers and detected associations between diversity belief profiles and student teachers' orientations to teaching for diversity and social justice. Polyculturalism, in particular, emerged as significant predictor of student teachers’ orientations to teaching for diversity and social justice. Qualitative analysis of responses to open-ended questions revealed that polyculturalism was internalized by the student teachers superficially. The implications of the findings for further research and teacher education are discussed.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Keeping Each Other Safe : Young Refugees’ Navigation Towards a Good Life in Finland, Norway, and Scotland

The metaphor of navigation has been used to investigate the social and moral movements people make in changeable or fluctuating circumstances, as well as to shed light on the intersection of people, practices and the changing contexts and social forces around them. In this chapter, we first provide a short overview of navigation as a metaphor, and how the situations of young refugees might add to the multiple meanings of navigation. Using empirical data from the international NordForsk-funded project Drawing Together: Relational wellbeing in the lives of young refugees in Finland, Norway and Scotland, we explore how young refugees socially and morally navigate through the complex and unstable circumstances of building new lives and new social networks in host countries. Then, turning to our findings, we discuss how ‘living well’ involves not only movement towards individual goals, but also movement with, for the sake of, and in relation to important people locally and transnationally. We conclude the chapter by envisioning the destination of young refugees’ navigation as hinted at by the data: a world worth living in for all.Peer reviewe