Migrant children's digital stories

Abstract

This article starts out from the European research project Children in Communication about Migration (CHICAM). It addresses questions about intercultural communication via the internet and about media production as a vehicle for personal expression and identity formation among excluded youth groups. The article starts out from a cultural theoretical perspective linked to an empirical analysis, which is based on a series of selected productions made by 12 to 14-year-old refugees. The productions represent various programme genres and formats. The use of visual language such as representational conventions are highlighted in order to find out how identities are (re)created in the process of media production. The article touches upon these productions as they reflect not only experiences in dealing with cultural tensions between the 'old' and the 'new' world, but also their views on their future life and on the conditions that they find crucial in developing themselves

Critical media literacy through making media: A key to participation for young migrants?

“…Other benefits noted include "narrative health promotion" such as increased self-esteem and social support as found among Puerto-Rican Latinas (DiFulvio et al, 2016, p. 157). De Leeuw and Rydin (2007) report that producing self-representations increased "self-empowerment" and "pleasure" and taught refugee and migrant children to combine their variously located subject positions and orientations towards the past, present and future (p. 461). Learning to make media may also be beneficial to "dislodge other's gazes": In a project with marginalized girls in Canada the participants created and circulated oppositional frames of young people as "creative, thoughtful, engaged, and articulate" (Gonick, 2017, p. 92).…”

“…The discovery and acquisition of visual media production and self-representation competencies may increase the resilience of young newcomers (Blum-Ross, 2015;De Leeuw and Rydin, 2007). We were moved to learn participants had successfully enrolled in media production and journalism-oriented courses.…”

Digital Passages: Migrant Youth 2.0. Diaspora, Gender and Youth Cultural Intersections

“…Digital technologies are used among descendants of migrants to reinvent traditions while simultaneously seeking to assert their independence and circumvent family norms (Brouwer, 2006a;De Leeuw & Rydin, 2007;Green & Kabir, 2012, pp. 100-101;Alinejad, 2013).…”

“…In the hyperlink practices and viewing strategies of Moroccan-Dutch youth, the multiplicity of their personal cultural trajectories and their cosmopolitan perspectives becomes visible. These findings provide new leads to consider how second-generation migrant youth who have been shown to be more concerned with identity issues and belonging than their parents, digitally rearticulate their selfhood (Boym, 2001;Berry, Phinney, Sam & Vedder, 2006;Brouwer, 2006a;Mainsah, 2011;De Leeuw & Rydin, 2007;Green & Kabir, 2012).…”

At the crossroads of migrant workers, class, and media: a case study of a migrant workers’ television project

“…It still portrays migrants as active consumers, but not much as producers. A few studies of migration and media draw pictures of the active involvement of groups of the same ethnic migrants of the same ethnicity in media production activities (Alexandra, 2008;E Cohen, 2008;Cunningham and Nguyen, 1999;De Leeuw and Rydin, 2007;Taiwan International Workers' Association, 2007). Taking into account these concerns of multiple identities of migrants, class as a critical element in migrants' lives, and possible involvements in media production activities, this research sheds light on migrant workers who choose class as their new and shared identity and expand it to make alliances with others to command their own images in media.…”