The stories behind stories: Reflections on the role of voice in research with unaccompanied refugee youth

Author(s) : Annika Lems

Source : https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.13124

Abstract:

“In the summer of 2015, when I started to conduct research with unaccompanied refugee youth in Switzerland, I was struck by the scarce guidance the refugee and migration literature offered in terms of the ethical and practical challenges of working with this highly vulnerable group of young people (Rousseau, 1993; Vervliet et al., 2015). Despite the increased public and academic attention that refugee children had received in the years and months leading up to my research, I had to piece together my research design from various methodological approaches and fields of research. Several years and another European “refugee crisis” later, this situation has improved only marginally. Unaccompanied child refugees have entered research agendas with great force, leading to important new insights on the social, cultural, legal and political factors impacting their everyday lives. Yet despite these innovations, the question of how scholars approach research with refugee minors is still rarely debated (Chase et al., 2020).”