WP2 CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE IN AND ACROSS INSTITUTIONAL SPACES
Leader: Cathrine Grimsgaard; Co-leader: Anna Chalachanova
Researchers: Elisabeth Fransson, Mari Herland, Anita Gjermestad, and Siri Bakken
WP2 explores how ICCs affect children and young people’s lives. Inspired by the concept of carceral spaces,
borders and design (Moran, 2015; Moran et al. 2023; Turner, 2016), WP2 will investigate a spectrum of
institutional settings with varying degrees of confinement: child welfare facilities, respite homes and juvenile
correctional institutions. The focus is to understand ICC spaces as sites of dwelling (Heidegger, 1971). To
analye sites of dwelling WP2 will explore the inter-face between the built environment and children's/young
people's lived experiences: how the physical environment influences how bodies move, change and
experience care and control. This knowledge will inform the design of institutional environments that are
more suited to communication, relationships, milieu work and milieu therapy. Together with children and
young people WP2 will study silence, opposition and running away as meaningful forms of agency, bringing
in material and non-human resources and considering children in context and in relationships with other
people.
Research
Methods and data resources
- Ethnographic fieldwork within and across child welfare facilities, respite homes and juvenile correctional institutions.
- Site visits in ICCs in Sweden, England and Italy.
- Creative and participatory methods e.g., drawing, photos, photo-voice and digital research methods. The co-production of two photo exhibitions: (i) with children and young people living in child welfare institutions and prisons; (ii) with children and professionals from two different respite services and social education students.
- Building on knowledge from the photo exhibitions, two dialogue conferences (Gjermestad et al. 2020) will be arranged with professionals, children living in ICC institutions, students, architects and political stakeholders.
Research questions
- What specific needs are/are not addressed by ICC spaces?
- How do institutional spaces and environments affect children and young people’s experiences of dwelling, resistance and escapes from these institutions?
- How do logics of care and control play out in these contexts?
- How does children and young people’s participation in research contribute to change?
Team
Siri Bakken
Researcher
