Families on the move in Europe

children’s perspectives

Abstrakti

In this article we introduce the on-going (2012-2014) international collaborative project Families on the Move Across Borders: Children’s Perspectives on Labour Migration in Europe. First, we present the project and its aims; then, we briefl y discuss the current state of migration research on families and children in order to explain how our research can contribute to a fuller inclusion of children in social analysis, not only by challenging the theoretical debates, but also through our empirically rich study. We aim to contribute to the advancement of methodology in childhood and migration studies by studying migration experiences from the child’s perspective. We discuss the challenges inherent in researching children and describe the methods we have found to be most suitable for investigating families and children in a holistic way. We argue that the experiences of children are of paramount importance to understanding the present-day realities of transnational family life and simultaneously endeavour to make sense of the nascent futures of such European families. Finally, we present some preliminary findings from our on-going research and map out the diverse avenues this research is taking.