This article investigates children’s participation and sense of belonging from the perspective of unaccompanied children, based on two qualitative research projects with unaccompanied children in Sweden and Finland. The results show that the unaccompanied children’s own understanding of their participation and belonging in different positions was fluid; for instance, the borders between childhood and adulthood, and striving for independence or wanting to be cared for by adults were flexible, allowing the children’s movement within and between the categories.

This paper considers how asylum seeking girls in residential care in Finland construct their everyday lives while waiting for asylum outcomes. These girls, from various African countries, are shown to experience waiting as both debilitating and productive. First, our findings confirm the established picture of asylum seeking young people being in limbo, unable to influence the resolution of their claims. Second, we explore more hopeful ways in which they wait. We emphasise the complex responses and relationships they build in waiting times with each other and their carers. We suggest that waiting is not just 'dead' time, but is also lively in periods of uncertainty.

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