CCYSC Awaaz

This week’s episode in the Childhood and Migration Series features a conversation with Dr. Fernanda Ahumada Medina who shares her experience researching with young migrant children in Chile. During the conversation, she discusses the methods, ethics, and positionality considered in her field research.

Welcome to the Childhood and Migration Series, hosted by CCYSC AwaazIn Episode 1 of this new series, Margot Lavent and Dr. Kaat Van Acker present rich, grounded examples of how families experience parenting and growing up both before and after fleeing their home countries. Within this context, they explore how families make sense of evolving roles, tasks, responsibilities, and caregiving dynamics and critically examine the widely used—and often contested—concept of parentification.Margot Lavent is a researcher at Odisee University College in Brussels, affiliated with the SocialWork Research Group and the Centre for Family Studies. Her research focuses (changing) family dynamics among refugee families, child- and family-friendly reception centers, and, more generally, parenting and growing up in the context of refugee families. She also works as a freelancer, providing training, workshops, and peer supervision sessions on diversity-sensitive social work. Together with Mieke Schrooten, Sophie Withaeckx, and Dirk Geldof, Margot co-authored Transmigration: Social Work in a World of Superdiversity (2016), which explores the experiences of transmigrants in Belgium and the implications for social work.Dr. Kaat Van Acker is a lecturer in Social Work at Odisee University of Applied Sciences in Brussels and in Social and Cultural Psychology at KU Leuven in Belgium. Her research focuses on family dynamics in refugee and immigrant communities, with particular attention to how parenthood and childhood are reconstructed after forced migration and shaped by institutional settings and legislation. Over the years, she has also examined issues related to the acculturation of Muslim minorities, the resilience of refugee families, and the role of collective emotions. Alongside her academic work, Kaat practices as an emotion-focused therapist and maintains a strong interest in how therapy can be adapted to intercultural contexts. She is the author of 13 peer-reviewed articles on migration and intergroup relations, including a recent study on shifting narratives of parenthood among refugee families and social workers in collective reception centres. In this work, she introduced the concept of “institutionalized forms of parentification.Podcast hosts and editors: Dr. Adrienne Atterberry (Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Lowell) and Dr. Karina Ruiz (Director of Research, CSLX).Post-production work: Kate Parsons (Student, University of Massachusetts Lowell)

In this episode, our member, Dr. Nicolás Brando (University of Liverpool, UK), talks about his new book, Childhood in Liberal Theory: Equality, Difference and Children’s Rights (Oxford University Press, 2024), with Prof. Tara Collins (Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada). He foregrounds the question of "who is considered a child?" and the framing of "children's rights" in philosophical and policy discourses.

In this episode Dr. Soni, Gitam University, interacts with Dr. Catriona Ellis, Strathclyde University about her recent book, "Imagining Childhood, Improving Children: The Emergence of an ‘Avuncular' State in Late Colonial South India" published by Cambridge University Press, 2023. Her research explores how colonial authorities, through education policies, child welfare programs, and juvenile reform initiatives, sought to position themselves as "avuncular" figures—benevolent yet authoritative guardians of children’s well-being in colonial south India.

Simran Josan, our CCYSC intern, is in conversation with Sumit Parewa (Trustee, TCLP) and Nisha (Class IX student) regarding The Community Library Project, a public initiative to promote the right to read and organise free libraries for all in India and beyond. Sumit and Nisha share their experiences of joining the TCLP as young members and helping to bring books to working-class children in several parts of Delhi. * This conversation has been recorded in the Hindi language.