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There is a general lack of clarity in the literature regarding the reporting of children's own migration status. Children's voices are often subsumed within those of their adult parents or carers. There is a need to promote more child-focussed research which gives voice to migrant children to better understand the complex and multidimensional factors that contribute to their (ill)health.

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In this article we explore how Finch’s (2007) concept of display might illuminate the new sociology of personal life as set out by Smart (2007). Drawing on narratives of family life and eating practices, from both parents and children, the article considers how these work as tools of family display. For some families, displays are used to affirm an idiosyncratic sense of their family through drawing on particular cultural motifs of ‘family’. For other families, practices of display work to smooth over challenges from within. Displays can also be more normative, confirming wider hegemonic models of what the family is. Thus, while displays — and therefore ideas of family — do take different forms, nonetheless they also demonstrate that, as Smart suggests, people’s personal lives need always to be understood as embedded in particular social and cultural worlds, rather than a function of lone, autonomous individuals.

Children's health and wellbeing is high on the research and policy agenda of many nations. There is a wealth of epidemiological research linking childhood circumstances and health practices with adult health. However, echoing a broader picture within child health research where children have typically been viewed as objects rather than subjects of enquiry, we know very little of how, in their everyday lives, children make sense of health-relevant information.This paper reports key findings from a qualitative study exploring how children understand food in everyday life and their ideas about the relationship between food and health. 53 children aged 9-10, attending two socio-economically contrasting schools in Northern England, participated during 2010 and 2011. Data were generated in schools through interviews and debates in small friendship groups and in the home through individual interviews. Data were analysed thematically using cross-sectional, categorical indexing.Moving beyond a focus on what children know the paper mobilises the concept of health literacy (Nutbeam, 2000), explored very little in relation to children, to conceptualise how children actively construct meaning from health information through their own embodied experiences. It draws on insights from the Social Studies of Childhood (James and Prout, 2015), which emphasise children's active participation in their everyday lives as well as New Literacy Studies (Pahl and Rowsell, 2012), which focus on literacy as a social practice. Recognising children as active health literacy practitioners has important implications for policy and practice geared towards improving child health.