Transnational childhoods: building of significant relationships among Polish and Romanian migrant children after reunification with parents in Sweden

Purpose

This study focuses on children’s intra-EU mobility from Poland and Romania to Sweden, as they join their parents. The aim of this project is to explore the ways in which migrant children and young people, being reunited with their parents in Sweden, re-define and create significant social relationships in local and transnational social spaces.

Research questions

• How does parental and children’s own migration effect the ways in which children and young people build meaningful social relationships within families and in wider society?
• How and with whom do children create and maintain significant supportive networks postmigration in Sweden and across borders?
• What are the everyday places (physical or virtual) through which migrant children and youth extend and develop relationships based on love, care and solidarity?
• How does the intersection of age, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic situation influence children’s practices of making connections locally and transnationally? 

Execution

The empirical data consists of qualitative interviews in two steps with 25 migrant youth who were between 10 and 18 years old when they came to Sweden, and who have lived in the country for at least one year. Additionally, we use network-maps and life-lines to capture how significant relationships are kept, created and re-created post-migration. In our previous study of migrating parents from Poland and Romania, we found that migration disrupts care and family-relations long after family reunification in Sweden. In mobile Europe and in times of increasing refugee migration it is important to generate new knowledge on children’s own perception of the impact of migration upon their social relations and their active role in transnational social spaces .