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VAM-Velferd, arbeid og migrasjon

Practices and Policies of Belonging among Minority and Majority Children of Low-income Families

Alternative title: Tilhørighet blant minoritets- og majoritetsbarn i lavinntektsfamilier

Awarded: NOK 12.0 mill.

Project Number:

314290

Application Type:

Project Period:

2021 - 2025

Funding received from:

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Belonging refers to a feeling of fitting in in our environment – to people, places, activities and things. To feel belonging is important for all human beings, especially for children whose everyday life and development largely depend on their social surroundings. Although belonging is a feeling without which life would be difficult if not impossible, our knowledge about it is scarce. The project BELONG explores children’s belonging through interviews and observations of children in their social surroundings – at home, at school and in leisure time. The results will make it easier for governments to develop efficient actions hindering marginalization and exclusion of children, especially children from low-income families and with an ethnic background. Web-page: https://uni.oslomet.no/belong-project/

A primary goal of the welfare state is to ensure that children and young people get a good upbringing and that families can feel secure, both financially and socially. Several studies indicate, however, that the risk of marginalisation and social exclusion increase, especially amongst children of low-income families and with immigrant background. Why this is, however, is poorly understood, diminishing the welfare state’s chance to discharge its responsibilities. The basic idea of this proposal is to increase current knowledge of the practices causing marginalisation and social exclusion of minority and majority children of low-income families by exploring them from a new theoretical angel addressing people’s ‘belonging’– in brief, referring to a basic human need providing us with a sense of ontological security; of ‘home’; without which life would be difficult, if not impossible. In so doing, we will not only inform policy, but also move related research fields beyond state of the art empirically, theoretically and methodologically. Empirically, we will provide alternative explanations of why some children are marginalized and excluded, while others are not. Theoretically, we will further develop a new concept gaining ground in the social sciences today: practices of belonging. Methodologically, we will advance novel techniques especially suited to capture these practices, such as visual ethnology and walk-along studies, stakeholder-involvement, children as co-researchers and a quasi-experiment. The individual and societal costs of marginalization and social exclusion of children and young people in the form of dropouts from school and future unemployment, disablement and low income are considerable. The potential impact of a project aiming to prevent such life trajectories to be realized is therefore high.

Publications from Cristin

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VAM-Velferd, arbeid og migrasjon