New Book: Children and Borders

9781137326300Edited by Spyros Spyrou & Miranda Christou
Palgrave Macmillan 2014

This edited collection brings together scholars whose work explores the entangled relationship between children and borders with richly-documented ethnographic studies from around the world. The book provides a penetrating account of how borders affect children’s lives and how in turn children play a constitutive role in the social life of borders. Providing situated accounts which offer critical perspectives on children’s engagements with borders, contributors explore both the institutional power of borders as well as children’s ability to impact borders through their own activity and agency. They show how borders and the borderlands surrounding them are active zones of engagement where notions of identity, citizenship and belonging are negotiated in ways that empower or disempower children, offer them possibilities and hope or alternatively deprive them of both. With innovative cross-fertilization between Border Studies and Childhood Studies, this volume illustrates the value of bringing children and borders together.

 Contents

PART I: CHILDREN AND BORDERLANDS
1. Experiencing the State and Negotiating Belonging in Zomia: Pa Koh and Bru-Van Kieu Ethnic Minority Youth in a Lao-Vietnamese Borderland; Trần Thị Hà Lan and Roy Huijsmans
2. ‘Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me’: A Case Study on Residential Child and Youth Care in the Mexican-American Border Zone; Sylvia Meichsner
3. Growing up in a Portuguese Borderland; Sofia Marques da Silva

PART II: CHILDREN, BORDERS AND WAR
4. Arrested in Place: Palestinian Children and Families at the Border; Bree Akesson
5. Destination Europe: Afghan Unaccompanied Minors Crossing Borders; Barla Buil and Melissa Siegel
6. Crossing Borders of Geography and Self: South Sudanese Refugee Youth Gangs in Egypt; Marisa O. Ensor

PART III: CHILDREN AND CONTESTED BORDERS
7. What is a Border? Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot Children’s Understanding of a Contested Territorial Division; Miranda Christou and Spyros Spyrou
8. Palestinian ‘Children of the Junction’: Contested Borders and Representations; Omri Grinberg
9. Bordering in Transition: Young People’s Experiences in ‘Post Conflict’ Belfast; Martina McKnight and Madeleine Leonard

PART IV: CHILDREN CROSSING BORDERS
10. Criminals in our Land! Border Movement and Apprehension of Children from Bangladesh within the Juvenile Justice System in India; Chandni Basu
11. Crossing Borders and Borderlands: Childhood’s Secret Undergrounds; Sonja Arndt and Marek Tesar
12. Unaccompanied Migrant Children and Youth: Navigating Relational Borderlands; Stuart C. Aitken, Kate Swanson and Elizabeth G. Kennedy

PART V: CHILDREN, BORDERS AND BELONGING
13. When the Border Becomes a Threshold: Children’s Visits to Relatives in Santo Domingo; Livia Jiménez Sedano
14. Borders Separating Families: Children’s Perspectives of Labour Migration in Estonia; Dagmar Kutsar, Merike Darmody and Leana Lahesoo
15. ‘Everything is a Spectrum’: Korean Migrant Youth Identity Work in the Transnational Borderland; Sujin Kim and Lisa Dorner

Submit to the Next ACYIG Newsletter

ACYIG is now soliciting contributions for the February 2015 issue of our newsletter. We are accepting submissions on a rolling basis between Monday, December 15, 2014 and Monday, January 5, 2015. The final deadline for submission is Monday, January 5th, 2015. If possible, please notify me of your intent to submit by the start of the rolling period (i.e. December 15th). It is our hope that this timeline will facilitate an enhanced review and revision process.

All material should be sent to me at kgrimfe2@illinois.edu. Please consider the following types of submissions:
Columns (1000 words or less, including references)

“Methods & Ethics in the Anthropology of Childhood,” in which members explore the methods and ethics associated with doing research on, or with, children

A “Childhood & _____________” column (you fill in the blank!), in which members discuss a topic of interest to their research

”My Favorite Ethnography of Childhood,” in which members discuss their favorite classic or contemporary ethnography of children or childhood and why

”My Experiences/Intersections with Interdisciplinary Research on Children,” in which members investigate the value, pitfalls, and lessons associated with combining anthropological research with that of other disciplines to study children

Features

Letters to the Editor (200 words or less)

New Book Announcements

Professional Opportunities
*Job announcements
*Research Opportunities
*Grants/Prizes Available
*Calls for Papers/Abstracts
*Conference Announcements

Member News/Professional Updates
*Recent Appointments
*Grants Received
*Prizes Awarded
*Any other achievements or publications that members would like to announce

Photos from Fieldwork (with caption of 30 words or less)

Ph.D. & MA in Childhood Studies at Rutgers

Applications now being sought for Ph.D. and MA programs. Ph.D. application deadline: January 5, 2015. Funding available.

The Department of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey USA, opened its doors in September 2007 as the first Ph.D. granting program in Childhood Studies in North America. In addition to the Ph.D., the multidisciplinary program offers BA and MA degrees. Graduate students in the program come from a variety of backgrounds and bring with them an impressive array of educational and life experience. The Masters of Art program continues to grow and produce new and innovative leaders in their field.

With three new full-time faculty joining the Department in Fall 2014, the program is poised to bring innovation and growth to the already vibrant department and field of childhood studies.

Applications are now being accepted for the Fall 2015 entering doctoral class; applications for the Masters of Arts program are accepted year-round. Deadline for applications for doctoral study is January 5, 2014Funding is available on a competitive basis for qualified applicants. Visit the Graduate Admissions website. 

http://childhood.camden.rutgers.edu/2013/06/07/applications/

History & Critique: What to Make of Child-Saving Discourse?

Ep1: What to Make of Child-Saving Discourse? 
by Patrick Ryan

Childhood: History & Critique is a bi-weekly series of interviews and commentaries on the historical study of childhood offered by Patrick J. Ryan for the Society for the History of Children and Youth.

Episode 1 – “What to Make of Child-Saving Discourse?” is available online at: http://shcyhome.org/2014/11/what-to-make-of-child-saving-discourse/
Continue reading History & Critique: What to Make of Child-Saving Discourse?

PhD Project in Children’s Geographies University of Otago

Applications are invited from potential applicants with an interest in the topic:  Children, families and belonging in an urbanising world commencing in 2014 

Supervisors: Dr Christina Ergler & Associate Professor Claire Freeman (Department of Geography, University of Otago, New Zealand)

We are seeking a student willing to embark on a PhD and interested in working on a mixed-methods project on ‘Place attachment and social connection in urbanising societies’. Whilst place attachment is an area that is of established interest to geographers the role of children in forging place attachment for families is less well understood (Weller & Bruegel, 2009, Gordon, 2012).  Continue reading PhD Project in Children’s Geographies University of Otago

Children and Childhoods Conference – UK

Children and Childhoods Conference 2015

July 14-15, 2015
University Campus Suffolk, Ipswich, UK
Hosted by
Unit for the Study of Children and Childhoods, UCS

We are excited to announce that the call for papers for our biennial international Children and Childhoods Conference is open. We invite papers that theoretically and empirically engage with a broad range of disciplines reflecting the diverse nature of contemporary childhood studies. Continue reading Children and Childhoods Conference – UK

New titles on children, young people and families

​Edited by Guðný Björk Eydal and​ Tine Rostgaard​
In this topical book, expert scholars from the Nordic countries, the UK and the US demonstrate how modern fatherhood is supported in Nordic countries through family and social policies, and how these shape and influence the images, roles and practices of fathers in a diversity of family settings and variations of fatherhoods.

Continue reading New titles on children, young people and families

New Release: Child Domestic Work in Nigeria

Child Domestic Work in Nigeria: Conditions of Socialisation and Measures of Intervention

by Ina Gankam Tambo

Historisch-vergleichende Sozialisations- und Bildungsforschung, Band 13, 2014, 384 Seiten, broschiert, € 39,90, ISBN 978-3-8309-3141-6, E-Book: € 35,99, ISBN 978-3-8309-8141-1; New York & Münster: Waxmann-Verlag.

For the last two decades, child domestic work carried out in Nigeria as well as in other countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia, has been given increasing attention by international policy makers and scientists. Yet, the research mainly focuses on the living and working conditions of these children, which also forms part of this book. However, in addition, political and pedagogical measures of intervention employed on international, national and local levels on child domestic work are also at the centre of analysis. Against the background of post-colonial theory the author studies the effects of social modernisation in Nigeria as a rapidly growing national economy on child domestic work and historically
retraces the origins of this form of child work back to indigenous modes of socialisation and social security within the (pre-colonial) Nigerian extended family network. The research is based on field work in Nigeria, including interviews and documentary analysis.

Continue reading New Release: Child Domestic Work in Nigeria