Abstract
In 2022, Russian forces invaded Ukraine, resulting in one of the largest refugee crises in Europe. Switzerland took in around 60,000 Ukrainian refugees, many of whom were children. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Ukrainian refugee children (aged 8–14) who participated in the WoKidS (Children’s Well-being in German-Speaking Switzerland) project, we reconstruct the importance of family for their subjective well-being by addressing three interrelated aspects: home, objects and relationships. We argue that, despite experiencing adverse situations, refugee children are active participants in the processes of homemaking and the promotion of family co-presence and care across borders. Furthermore, the children’s perspectives expand our understanding of (transnational) families and (transnational) care, showing that well-being is relational and challenging the notion of family as ‘left behind’.
Introduction
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to one of the largest refugee crises of our time. Nearly 6.5 million people have fled and more than 3.6 million are internally displaced (UNHCR, 2024). As most men of military age (18–60 years) were not allowed to leave the country due to drafting regulations, the majority of Ukrainian refugees are women and children (OECD, 2023). Switzerland has taken in around 66,000 Ukrainian refugees, including approximately 13,000 children of school age (Swissinfo, 2023). While the effects of war on children’s physical and mental health, such as trauma, depression and stress disorders, are well documented in the literature (Kadir et al, 2019), and some studies indicate that separation from family members and overall lack of information regarding their situation is a major cause of anxiety in refugee children (Schwartz et al, 2022), very few studies have examined their perspective on family and how it impacts their subjective well-being (Centrone et al, 2023). On the one hand, although research on transnational childhoods has gained prominence in the last decade (see Tyrrell et al, 2013; Ducu et al, 2018), children continue to be overlooked in migration studies, with research on transnational families mostly focusing on adult family members (Fresnoza-Flot, 2018). On the other hand, while research on children’s well-being argues for the importance of constructing a child standpoint (Fattore et al, 2017), where children’s experiences and understandings of well-being inform research and public policy (Ben-Arieh, 2005), studies on refugee children’s subjective well-being are still based on adult-oriented approaches (Schmees et al, 2022), in which they are often portrayed as passive and vulnerable victims.
In this article, we address these research gaps and examine the significance of ‘family’ for the well-being of Ukrainian refugee children from a child’s standpoint. Aiming to understand children’s experience of forced displacement ‘here and now’ (Moskal, 2023), we ask: how does ‘family’ appear in the children’s narratives and become important for their subjective well-being? Drawing on qualitative interviews with Ukrainian refugee children (aged 8–14) who participated in the WoKidS (Children’s Well-being in German Speaking Switzerland)1 project, we reconstruct the importance of family for their subjective well-being by addressing three interrelated aspects: home; objects; and relationships. The term relationships refers to the family members with whom the children feel a sense of connection. In this article, we will focus on the relationship with family members who stayed behind. Home encompasses both the physical space in which the children and their families lived before and after displacement, and the emotional space in which children sense themselves ‘at home’. As McCarthy and Edwards (2011: 111) note, ‘indeed, the terms “family” and “home” are often intrinsically linked … symbolizing togetherness and belonging’. In addition, objects are crucial elements of family homes, as they maintain emotional connections with family members and places of belonging and are used by migrants in their homemaking practices (Pechurina, 2023).
Understanding children’s well-being as contextually linked to what children are able ‘to do’ and ‘to be’ in the given situation where they grow up, and understanding Ukrainian children’s narratives as embedded in transnational social fields, in which individuals, but also symbols and material and immaterial goods circulate, this article draws on transnationalism (Vervotec, 2009) and the capability approach (Nussbaum, 2007). We argue that refugee children, despite experiencing adverse situations, are active beings in the processes of homemaking and the promotion of family co-presence and care across borders. Furthermore, the children’s perspectives expand our concepts of (transnational) families and (transnational) care and show that well-being is relational, challenging our understanding of family as ‘left behind’.
Family in research on the well-being of (refugee) children
Well-being is considered a multifaceted concept that refers not only to individuals’ living conditions, but also to their subjective feelings and experiences (Ben-Arieh et al, 2014). While children’s objective well-being is based on indicators determined by adults on what is a good life for children, such as health, education and housing situation, children’s subjective well-being is based on children’s accounts of how satisfied or happy they are with their lives – but also what they miss and/or what they would like to be different (Axford et al, 2014). Including children’s perspectives is important not only out of respect for their rights, but also because children can better assess their immediate well-being, showing the living conditions and socio-economic and historical context in which they are growing up. While children’s accounts may prioritise some domains of well-being that are similar to those in objective well-being research, children’s perspectives extend and provide alternative knowledge about areas that are important in children’s lives (Fattore et al, 2021).
Studies on children’s well-being indicate that ‘family’ is the main contributor to their subjective well-being (Savahl et al, 2020), with children achieving high levels of well-being when they relate more to family relationships than friends and feel loved and supported at home (Dinisman et al, 2017). Researchers have shown that the time spent with parents (González-Carrasco et al, 2019), the sense of trust (McAuley and Rose, 2014) and daily engagement with parents, such as talking, having fun and learning (Savahl et al, 2020), are important aspects when children evaluate the quality of their family relationships. Lack of participation in family decision-making (Fattore et al, 2017), excessive parental control (González-Carrasco et al, 2019) and not having family members to turn to when they need help (Alexandre et al, 2021) are evaluated by children as hindering their well-being. While findings suggest that life satisfaction is lower for children who do not live with both biological parents (Dinisman et al, 2017), some studies also highlight that the quality of the relationships is a critical factor for children rather than the family structure (McAuley and Rose, 2014). However, family encompasses more than just relationships with family members. Studies show that there is an important link between the family home and children’s well-being. Evidence on the role of home and housing highlights that residential mobility, home stability and housing conditions are crucial to children’s well-being. While residential mobility disrupts children’s local environments, moving into insecure and unstable households and with poor conditions creates stress for all family members (Clair, 2019). Moreover, living in overcrowded spaces, lacking privacy (Tonon and Mikkelsen, 2022) and missing essential household resources (such as a bedroom and personal objects) can negatively impact children’s subjective well-being and physical health (UNICEF, 2020). Overcrowded and economically deprived homes often mean there are no personal spaces for children, including a lack of their own beds or space for their belongings (Akkan et al, 2021). As Clair (2019: 621) points out: ‘Housing is central to family life, and therefore is likely to play an important role in all children’s lives.’
Research on refugee children’s well-being points out that settlement with other family members and supportive family relationships are important aspects of their well-being (Iraklis, 2021). However, refugee children often experience more physical violence and harsher discipline from their parents (Al-Natour et al, 2022) and are less likely to receive emotional support from them, as they must cope with the distress and uncertainty caused by the war (Eruyar et al, 2020). After their arrival, they often live in temporary accommodation and under extremely harsh conditions (Watters, 2014). As male family members may have been killed, disappeared or injured, and refugee women can be unemployed or the sole breadwinner, refugee families often face economic restrictions (Al-Natour et al, 2022), which causes concern for refugee children (Centrone et al, 2023). While home is relevant for individuals in general, it holds even greater significance for refugees, whose journeys are often marked by ‘the loss of material, relational and symbolic homes and the (re)imagining and (re)making of new homes’ (Donà et al, 2023: 42). Toros et al (2024) highlight that refugee children experience sadness and anxiety stemming from homesickness, longing for family members, and the loss of their homes and personal belongings, all of which impact their overall well-being. In addition, refugee children must cope with changes in communication patterns caused by family uprooting (Timshel et al, 2017) and are often concerned for the safety of family members who have stayed behind, fearing that they may be harmed or die in their absence (Lawrence et al, 2019). Losing contact with loved ones is at the core of refugee children’s experiences (Chase and Allsopp, 2021).
Theoretical positioning: combining transnationalism and capability approach to understand the importance of family to refugee children’s well-being
Ukrainian refugee children are part of families that have become transnational due to the war, as some members were forced to migrate while others stayed behind. This separation occurred for reasons such as older family members choosing to remain in their homes (Löbel, 2020) or males of military age who were unable to leave. Thus, considering how family becomes important to children’s well-being means considering not only those who migrated but also those who stayed behind. As migration studies have shown, migration is not (necessarily) a unidirectional movement of the resettled family to the destination country (Levitt and Glick Schiller, 2004), but a continuous and fluid flux of persons, goods, information, services and care formed and maintained across national borders (Vervotec, 2009). Through transnational practices, facilitated by improved transportation, technology and telecommunication, migrants maintain a feeling of family connection and a sense of family belonging that goes beyond time and space (Bryceson and Vuorela, 2002).
Information and communication technologies have created new ways of being together across distances, providing new possibilities for sustaining intimacy, emotional closeness and ‘being present’ (Baldassar et al, 2016). While virtual co-presence (the one exchanged through voice, messages or videos) is very diffused and physical co-presence (being bodily present) is considered the most important form of togetherness, research shows that migrants also engage in proxy (achieved indirectly through embodied internalised presences) and imagined (feeling connected even when there is not an active engagement in communication) co-presence with transnational family members (Baldassar, 2008). Moreover, transnational migration research has emphasised the importance of ‘home’ as a physical and symbolic place – where one comes from, where one lives or that one misses – and the practices of homemaking that migrants engage in as they attempt to exert a sense of appropriation and attachment to a place (Boccagni, 2023). The meanings and significance of material objects have also received attention in the literature, as they are often used by migrants to maintain connections with multiple places and spaces of belonging (Pechurina, 2023), and to emotionally and symbolically connect family members at both ends of a migration system (Pérez Murcia, 2023). These aspects are also central to migrant children’s everyday lives (Moskal, 2023).
Transnational family relations need, however, to be understood according to the political and geographical context of the sending and receiving countries, as some migrant groups might be more likely than others to practise transnational family life (Bloch and Hirsch, 2018). Some refugees may have no home to return to, and in geographically restricted or ongoing conflict zones, they may experience uncertainty about the concretisation of possible visits, the sending and receiving of remittances or even the possibility of maintaining communication across borders (Lim, 2021). Thus, the (forced) migration experience is also shaped by the capabilities of what one is able ‘to do’ and ‘be’ according to what one most values (Chase, 2020). This means that one should consider not only what children themselves need to feel good, but also the political and social contexts, and therefore the living conditions that enhance or undermine children’s well-being (Riepl, 2024).
The capability approach acknowledges both the children’s perspective on their well-being and the opportunities that surround them. As a result, children’s well-being is often perceived as constrained by marginalised conditions, yet the resources that children bring to the table despite these conditions are sometimes overlooked (Nussbaum, 1999). Fegter and Richter (2014) point out that by combining the perspective of the social conditions in which children live with the perspective of the children themselves – who are understood as active subjects within – the capability approach offers a theoretical potential for analysing the well-being of children living in socially adverse conditions, such as in forced migration. As a normative framework, it can be used as a tool to examine the conditions that promote and hinder children’s well-being and to look for children’s aspirations and the resources to fulfil them (Chase, 2020). Furthermore, this approach also emphasises the adaptive preferences of children, whereby they make choices based on the opportunities available to them in society (Nussbaum, 2007).
Research project and methods
The data used in this study come from the project WoKidS, which investigates the subjective well-being of children in Switzerland. In two research phases, qualitative interviews were conducted with children aged 8–14 to investigate when, under what conditions and how they experience well-being. In phase I, two interviews took place to explore places, situations, people and things that are important for their well-being. In the first interview, the children (n=53) were invited to make a drawing of what they consider important in their lives and what makes them feel good. In the second interview, they (n=38) created an egocentric network map in which they were asked to place the most important, very important and important people in their lives. In phase II, the newly recruited children (n=28) participated in the project through focus group (n=5) discussions (Heite et al, 2022). A total of 81 children took part in the project, including 23 Ukrainian refugee children who migrated to Switzerland after the outbreak of the war in 2022. The interviews were conducted in Ukrainian and/or Russian, for the most part by a Ukrainian project member who was trained by the research team. The data were transcribed,2 translated, anonymised and double-checked before being analysed using the grounded theory methodology (Charmaz, 2014). The analysis shows that family is not only confined to relationships, but also to objects and the home. For instance, the data revealed concepts such as ‘connecting to the family through objects’ or ‘understanding the family as extended’. The drawings were analysed through the interviewee’s own interpretation of the visual method produced, focusing less on the visual content of the drawing itself, and more on the narrative that the interviewee produced in relation to the drawing – and how it was made relevant in the context of the project (Rose, 2023). For the purposes of this article, we primarily rely on the first interview of phase I made with the Ukrainian participants.
Analysis: family in the well-being narratives of Ukrainian refugee children
In the following, we reconstruct the perspectives of Ukrainian refugee children on three main aspects of their family lives: home; objects; and relationships. We analyse children’s capabilities to act and the transnational dimensions of their family lives and explore how they relate to their subjective well-being.
Home
I drew my home in Ukraine. This is my flat ((showing in the drawing)). And here is the TV (.) this is also the TV (.) this is our kitchen (.) this is the living room and there are the toilets and my room. (Roman)
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Roman’s home and neighbourhood
Citation: Families, Relationships and Societies 14, 1; 10.1332/20467435Y2024D000000054
Interviewer:At home, do you have your own room?Roman:At home in Ukraine, yes (.) and here in Switzerland no (…) I honestly want to sit alone in my room but everyone comes in ((annoyed)).
One of the main difficulties for refugee children is the lack of privacy due to the lack of space in shared bedrooms, where there is no opportunity to ‘sit alone’. Elena, nine years old, says that she hides ‘under the bed’ when she wants to be alone with herself. Privacy and space are highlighted as an important aspect of children’s well-being (Tonon and Mikkelsen, 2022), which becomes particularly important in the lives of refugee children as they tend to lose it (Watters, 2014). In addition, resettlement can also mean living with strangers, as in the case of Amogus. Thus, the taken-for-granted concept of home as a place of familiarity and safety is challenged by refugee children (Paju et al, 2023). Moreover, while Amogus and Roman demonstrate a lack of capability because they are unable to change their home and feel restricted by the lack of space, Elena shows herself to be capable of creating her own space under the bed, making use of an opportunity that is only accessible to children, but not to adults of tall stature. Her search for a space can also be interpreted as a practice of homemaking – that is, of transforming a place into a home (Boccagni et al, 2020), also under adverse situations.
Due to economic constraints and unemployment, many refugee families are unable to move into more comfortable homes. Davyd, eight years old, expresses in his drawing the intersection between family income and family home after resettlement (see Figure 2).
Davyd’s video game character, a house and money
Citation: Families, Relationships and Societies 14, 1; 10.1332/20467435Y2024D000000054
Davyd drew a ‘four metres tall’ video game character that is a statue and looks immobile but is a monster that ‘comes to life’ and runs after people who ‘must flee’. Near the monster are other elements that Davyd describes: ‘This is a small house, this is money, this is income, and these are expenses. Income. Expenses. Small house.’ The little house is so tiny that it lies between the monster’s feet. The income is represented by the banknote 10, the expenses by the banknote 505. Davyd shows that the income is much lower than the expenses and that the expenses could also be read as SOS due to the spelling. Furthermore, the ‘monster’ is the reason for the crisis described, because when it came ‘alive’ it caused people to flee, to be confined in small homes, and to live with more expenses than income, a situation very similar to Davyd’s. Through his drawing and narration, Davyd shows his concern about his family’s financial and housing problems (see Centrone et al, 2023). Moreover, children may have become ‘homeless’ in Ukraine, as some families lost everything during the war (see Al-Natour et al, 2022). Mila, 13 years old, has witnessed her home being destroyed and wishes to support her family in the future: ‘When I grow up, I want to buy an apartment for my mother’, she says. For her, home is an imaginary destination, an ideal place that she pursues as a refugee (see Paju et al, 2023).
In this section, we have seen that Ukrainian refugee children have often moved from comfortable living conditions to homes where they lack space and privacy, and they often worry about the financial and housing situation of their families, which can also give rise to the notion of home as an imaginary place and destination in the future. However, they also actively engage in processes of homemaking, even when it means being under the bed.
Objects
Roman:Soon my most favourite toy will be brought from Ukraine (..) it’s a bear (.) although it’s skinny and has no fur (…) It’s yellow ((smiling)) my mum gave it to me when I was born (.) and I immediately liked him.Interviewer:And what does he mean to you?Roman:I don’t know ((thinking)) but it’s like my friend. (…) Sometimes it comforted me (…) my secrets (…) I told him.
The yellow bear is, for Roman, not only one of his favourite objects but his ‘most favourite’ and dearest one, which he has had since birth, as a gift from his mother. It listens to Roman’s secrets and comforts him when he is unwell. The fact that the bear ‘is skinny and has no fur’ testifies to how much he has embraced him and how bodily close he was to the bear over the years. Roman has not only left behind his ‘most favourite’ and ‘immediately liked’ soft toy. He also left behind his ‘friend’ who supported him emotionally during difficult times, like the ones Roman is going through because of the war. While research with adult migrants has focused on long-distance emotional support with other human beings (see, for example, Baldassar et al, 2016), Roman’s example highlights the importance of considering the emotional support provided by non-living beings, such as soft toys, as these are often understood as friends to children. However, as soft toys comfort children through physical contact and do not communicate verbally, the emotional support they provide cannot be given over long distances. Thus, Roman and his family have arranged for someone to get his yellow friend from Ukraine and bring it to him in Switzerland. This demonstrates not only Roman’s capability to stand up for the things that are important in his life but also the transnational social support networks in which separated refugee families are embedded (see Löbel, 2020). The arrival of his friend, the bear, can also give Roman a certain sense of normalcy and continuity in his new home (see Pérez Murcia, 2023).
I always have with me my phone and my bracelet (..) that my mum put on my arm (.) back when I was in the fourth grade ((smiling)). […] It is my amulet ((got nervous)) […] Before we used to spend a lot of time with my parents (…) and now I just don’t take it [the bracelet] off (.) it’s always with me (.) gives me memories. […] Now everything was flashing before my eyes. (Aline)
Aline has had the bracelet she carries on her arm since she was in fourth grade. However, as she points out, its meaning has changed over time: ‘Before, [when she] used to spend a lot of time with [her] parents’, the bracelet was more of a gift from her mother, a cherished object. Now that she no longer lives with her parents, the bracelet acts as a link between Aline and her family, constantly providing her with memories that ‘flash before [her] eyes’. The bracelet is thus a proxy object that internalises the presence of the absent family (Baldassar, 2008). By having her bracelet ‘always with [her]’ and never ‘tak[ing] it off’, Aline has established a symbolic relationship with this object, which not only connects her to her family but also serves as an ‘amulet’ that protects her from lonely times. However, relationships with objects are often ambivalent (Pérez Murcia, 2023): while Aline smiles when she talks about her bracelet and is nourished by the emotional memories it brings with it, at the same time she also becomes nervous and melancholic, as it also reminds her of the things she misses in her life. As Baldassar (2008: 257) points out, objects carried across borders ‘are evidence of love and affection as well as of loss and yearning’. Aline’s narrative shows her capability to find strategies to cope with distance and maintain an emotional connection with those who stayed behind.
Lera:We went to a flea market. And such a situation happened.Interviewer:Which one?Lera:I’ve seen these dolls, these here. […] There’s something ((smiling)) weird with this one, nothing works. […] I wanted to buy my doll. And the person gave us all these dolls for one euro. And also that one, with no arms or legs.Interviewer:Do you play with them?Lera:They are more for beauty and yes, I play with them.
When Lera talks about her new objects, the dolls, she emphasises the purchase price (she got ‘all these dolls for one euro’) and the place of purchase (‘we went to a flea market’). Although she initially wanted to buy one doll, she got a bunch of second-hand dolls from the salesperson. The fact that not everything is intact does not seem to bother her, as she smiles when she notes that one of the dolls is ‘weird’ and ‘nothing works’ on her and the other one has ‘no arms or legs’. Lera wishes she had a doll to call her own (‘my doll’), but as she is aware of her family’s financial situation, she adapts herself to buying cheaper toys and playing with dolls that are weird, incomplete or not working. Moreover, she uses the dolls to decorate her bedroom (‘they are more for beauty’), showing that she actively engages in the process of homemaking (Moskal, 2023), navigating the financial adversities of her forced migration.
In this section, we have seen that objects are important components of children’s transnational family relations, as they emotionally connect children to memories and to those who stayed behind. In addition, some objects, such as soft toys, can provide emotional support to children, adding new complexities to our understanding of significant others and relationships with non-living beings. Children’s narratives also show that they actively participate in the processes of homemaking and actively embrace the financial situation of their families by buying cheaper objects and finding beauty and new ways to play with broken toys.
Relationships
Interviewer:Your father stayed in Ukraine, right?Amogus:Yes, we only talk on the phone.Interviewer:And what do you talk about?Amogus:We ask him whether someone has bombed nearby or not, and he explains the situation, how things are.
Although Amogus has left the war behind him, he continues to live it in his family relationships. When he talks to his father, he wants to know whether ‘someone has bombed nearby’, ‘the [war] situation’ and ‘how things are’ in Ukraine. Amogus is therefore worried about his father’s safety and fears for his life. In their study on refugee children in Australia, Lawrence et al (2019) point out that worrying about family members has a strong impact on children’s well-being and is associated with anxiety and other psychological symptoms. Moreover, children are not only concerned about their parents’ safety but also about their parents’ sadness. The calls Amogus makes to his father can also be interpreted as a way of checking in on his father’s general well-being and providing some emotional care from a distance (see Baldassar et al, 2016) through virtual co-presence (Baldassar, 2008). In doing so, Amogus also reverses the generational orderings (Alanen, 2003) of the care relations, being the one who provides support.
I took off my cross when I came here (..) because well my mum always forcibly told me to wear it (..) and I wanted to wear something else with my dresses. […] It bothered me a bit that I could not take it off (…) that mum says it was not allowed. And when I arrived here (..) I took it off. (Aline)
As she comes from a religious family with very conservative rules, Aline felt that she had little say at home: ‘I am perceived as a five-year-old who has no wishes or thoughts of her own,’ explains Aline. Her parents also ‘forcibly’ required Aline to wear a cross around her neck. Although Aline ‘wanted to wear something else with [her] dresses’ and it ‘bothered’ her that she was not ‘allowed’ to take it off, she accepted the family rules and obeyed her parents. There was no room for her ‘wishes’ and ‘thoughts’ at home. Aline was also ‘not allowed to go anywhere’ on her own: ‘I was with my mum all day and she kept a close eye on me.’ Thus, at home, Aline experienced excessive parental control (González-Carrasco et al, 2019) and a lack of participation (Fattore et al, 2017) that hindered her well-being. Moreover, home in Ukraine was not necessarily positive for her, being a place where she experienced loneliness and oppression (see Pérez Murcia, 2023). Aline’s arrival in Switzerland and the removal of the cross meant a change in her relationship with her family. The cross stands for her subordination to her parents, from which she can now free herself by living her life the way she wants to. Through migration, children and young people can encounter new spaces of freedom that open up new opportunities for them to reinvent themselves and their future (Meloni, 2019).
She was home every day. Constantly did everything for me, cleaned, cooked. She was present 24/7. […] I miss her. […] I miss my grandma more than I miss my mum. […] She misses me. I know it.
Aline’s story exemplifies the situation of children who were regularly cared for by their grandparents and lost daily contact with them after fleeing, as older people rarely leave conflict regions (Löbel, 2020). As Aline cannot communicate with her grandmother, she connects with her through her longing for her. In this way, Aline creates an imagined co-presence (Baldassar, 2008) in which she feels connected to her grandmother, even if they do not have conversations or video calls. Knowing how much her grandmother has done for her by being ‘present 24/7’, Aline also worries about the impact of her migration on her grandmother’s well-being. ‘She misses me. I know it’, says Aline, with the imagined certainty that her grandmother is mourning her absence. As Chase and Allsopp (2021) point out, part of a young refugee’s transnational identity is dealing with the worries generated by the impact of their migration on those who stayed behind.
When talking about family, children often include their pets, challenging ‘species-ist’ conceptualisations of family, and thus understanding it as composed of ‘more-than-human’ beings (Irvine and Cilia, 2017: 8–9). The pets also had to survive the war, as the children were rarely able to flee Ukraine with them. While some pets stayed with their fathers, others were left alone on the street or given to other people. Elena, nine years old, draws her home, where she also keeps dogs, cats, rabbits and hamsters (see Figure 3). She says: ‘I want them all to live with their owners. Too many animals live on the street, without food and warmth. […] I want everyone to have a home again.’
Elena taking care of Ukrainian homeless pets
Citation: Families, Relationships and Societies 14, 1; 10.1332/20467435Y2024D000000054
Elena points out that pets were orphaned (‘I want them to live with their owners’), became homeless (‘they are on the street’), and were left living in precarious conditions (‘without food and warmth’), worrying for their well-being. Therefore, she includes them together with human beings in the right to a home: ‘I want everyone to have a home again.’ By pointing out the importance of considering the well-being of non-human family members, Elena also expands our understanding of transnational family care.
In this section, we have seen that relationships with fathers and grandparents may have changed considerably since the war. They may have lost the capacity to communicate verbally with them, or their communication may have become more focused on the war. The children show concern for the well-being of those who stayed behind, including the well-being of pets. In doing so, they extend our understanding of transnational family care to ‘more than humans’. Migration also appears ambivalent for the children: if, on the one hand, they miss those who stayed behind, on the other, separation from family members can also mean fewer restrictions for children.
Discussion: children’s well-being in times of war
The outbreak of war in Ukraine led to the separation of numerous families who fled across Europe and beyond. Studies show that family is the most important factor for children’s well-being (Savahl et al, 2020). However, little is known about how family becomes important for children’s well-being, especially in situations of forced displacement (Schmees et al, 2022). Using qualitative interviews with Ukrainian refugee children, the importance of family for their well-being was reconstructed by looking at three interlinked aspects: home, objects and relationships. Home is important to children both in the home country, where they often envisioned a comfortable material life, and in the host country, where lack of space and privacy seem to strongly affect their well-being (Watters, 2014; Clair, 2019; Tonon and Mikkelsen, 2022). By living with strangers, in cramped spaces and under difficult financial conditions, children question the image of home as a place of familiarity, comfort and safety (Paju et al, 2023). However, this does not mean that children are paralysed by the adverse circumstances in which they grow up. Children use their capabilities to engage in processes of homemaking (Moskal, 2023) – for example, using the space under the bed to be alone and call it their own, asking someone to send their favourite object from Ukraine, or decorating the room with weird, broken and incomplete dolls. Being worried and aware of the economic crisis caused by the war, the children adapt to their family’s financial situation, acting between choices and constraints: they can choose a toy, but it has to be a second-hand one; they can make a place for themselves, but it has to be under the bed. In addition, they also engage in developing future capabilities, such as buying an ‘imaginary home’ for their family.
Objects are not only important to homemaking. As carried objects cross the borders, their meaning also changes: they now promote a proxy co-presence (Baldassar, 2008) between the children and the absent family, feeding children with emotional memories and reminding them of who they were before displacement. Chase and Allsopp (2021) also found that young refugees carry their families within them through physical reminders such as photographs or pieces of jewellery. However, these objects are ambivalent, as they simultaneously remind children of their love and their loss. Thus, objects are associated with strong emotional investment as they might acquire an affective value or become ‘sensitive’ (Pechurina, 2020). Children expand the discussion about ‘material cultures’ in the context of migration when they show that what adults understand as an ‘object’ (a soft toy) can be a ‘friend’. These ‘object friends’ also offer a new layer of complexity in the discussion of social support. While emotional support from family and friends has been widely discussed in the literature as being possible to be exchanged over long distances (see Baldassar et al, 2016), children add to and challenge this aspect in two ways: they include ‘non-living beings’ as important sources of emotional support and they show that emotional support for this type of transnational relationship must be provided in presence, as it requires close physical contact. Moreover, although soft toys seem to be important for emotional support, they are still given very little consideration in research on well-being.
Contact with family in Ukraine is mostly established through virtual co-presence (Baldassar, 2008), which enables children to sustain intimacy and emotional closeness across distance (Baldassar et al, 2016). However, children may also have lost contact or be unable to communicate with emotionally close family members (Chase and Allsopp, 2021). In such cases, they show that they engage in imagined co-presence (Baldassar, 2008) and are emotionally connected to family members through their thoughts. Thus, they use their capabilities to find ways and means to navigate the distance and feel emotionally closer to their displaced family. However, it does not diminish the importance of physical co-presence for children, as they wish to reunite with their family and see them safe.
Children also show that the experience of being a refugee can have an ambivalent effect on their well-being: while they long to be with their families, they may also experience freedom from hierarchical relationships with their parents (Meloni, 2019). This also challenges the understanding that home in the country of origin is necessarily a place where one feels good. Furthermore, they include pets as part of their families, which stands against ‘species-ist’ (Irvine and Cilia, 2017) conceptualisations and broadens our understanding of who is part of (transnational) families. While the children’s narratives presented in this article expand how family is important for their well-being, research on children’s well-being has focused more on parent–child relationships (see, for example, Dinisman et al, 2017; González-Carrasco et al, 2019; Savahl et al, 2020), paying little attention to pets, homes and objects in children’s family lives. This study, therefore, broadens the understanding that family is important not just because of personal relationships.
Children also show their active role when they reverse the generational order (Alanen, 2003) of the care relations and provide emotional care to their fathers. Furthermore, they express concern for the safety and general well-being of parents, grandparents and pets in Ukraine, confronting the notion that they have been left behind and demonstrating that well-being is relational for refugee children (Chase and Allsopp, 2021). For children to feel good, they need to know that others who are important to them are also doing well. However, the fact that children are able to act in contexts of forced migration does not change the fact that difficult living conditions – such as the lack of a stable household, space, privacy, communication and physical proximity (Baldassar, 2008) to family members, plagued by economic restrictions and forced separation – produce ‘situational vulnerabilities’ in children, that shape their childhood experiences and affect their well-being (Bagattini, 2019: 211). Our findings thus highlight that refugee children are not vulnerable or capable of acting, but rather vulnerable and capable of acting. These aspects offer new insights into well-being and (transnational) family research in contexts of forced migration.
Notes
Ethics committee approval number 18.10.4.
Transcribed according to the rules of Przyborski and Wohlrab-Sahr (2014). (..) = pause with dots quantity seconds; ((smiling)) = nonverbal comments; bold = very loud said; underline = loud said; °quiet° = quietly said; […] indicates the deletion of a part of the text.
Funding
Research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Project number: S-63117-03-01.
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the Ukrainian children and their families who participated in the project, as well as the research team, students and partners who supported the project.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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