Childhood and Migration : How Children Experience and Manage Migration

This volume explores the question of how children themselves experience and manage migration and by what means they construct their own identity. It considers experiences from both their places of origin and their host societies. What role does the cultural background of the society of origin and the strategies of integration found in the host society play in the creation of identity and of a concept of home, origin, and belonging? How do children express processes of cultural orientation and integration (music, media, fashion, style) and what role do peer groups and social milieus play? How do migrant children experience xenophobia and a lack of acceptance on the side of the host society and how do they counterbalance such experiences? The approach of this work is both comparative and interdisciplinary. Contributors have different theoretical and methodological backgrounds, and the contributions address different social and cultural settings both with regard to place of origin and host society. Jacqueline Kn÷rr, is an anthropologist and head of the Research Group, Integration and Conflict as Dimensions of Cultural Tradition, Social Dynamics and Historical Experience in the Upper Guinea Coast (West Africa) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. Her main areas of research are West Africa and Indonesia.