Rice, Slippers, Bananas and Caneball: Children's Narratives of Internal Displacement and Forced Migration from Burma

Abstract

This article provides an account of internal displacement and forced migration from the viewpoint of children living in a refugee camp in Thailand. Using photographs they created and narratives they related, the children represented concepts of structural violence, poverty, food security, school, peer relationships and play and articulated how these were woven into their lived experience. The study reveals how the children constantly make sense of everyday life in a refugee camp with reference to the lives they led in Burma. This draws our attention to the way in which the emotional and cognitive connections they make structure their experience and adds to an understanding of children's perspectives of displacement that goes beyond quantitative indicators.

“I Hate the Word ‘Liver’”: A Photovoice Study of Burmese and Bhutanese Adolescent Health Care Brokers in Northeast Ohio

“…Using photographs and focus group follow-up, photovoice is meant to reach, inform, and organize community members, enabling them to discuss and prioritize problems and solutions. This method has been used to study adolescent immigrants (Adekeye et al, 2014; Roxas et al, 2017), children in refugee camps (Oh, 2011), migrants (Moskal, 2017), and resettled refugees (Dixit et al, 2017; Vecchio et al, 2017).…”

When Internal Migration Fails: A Case Study of Central American Youth Who Relocate Internally Before Leaving Their Countries

“…However, these studies are unable to capture how youth migrants think about internal migration, make migration decisions, and experience internal migration. Su-Ann Oh carried out one of the few qualitative studies with internally displaced children; her work has shown how children living in refugee camps in Burma make sense of this experience in reference to their lives before migrating (Oh 2011). Oh is a pioneer in this space, and much work remains to be done in order to understand how youth living in different contexts conceptualize and experience internal migration.…”