Everyday Lives of Children and Their Families in Asylum Centres in Switzerland

In recent years, researchers from Germany have taken a critical look at "camps" (Pieper 2008) and the "social disintegartion" that takes place in refugee centres (cf. ibid.), which is not geared to the needs of the inhabitants. From the perspective of children, Eisenhuth (2015) described how she experienced and categorised restrictions with regard to participation, consumption, mobility and other free spaces. According to Widmer (2015), the conditions in asylum accommodation seldom presented themselves in such a way that "children are taken into account in their needs and in their particular vulnerability". (p. 1) World Vision Germany and the Hoffnungsträger Stiftung (2016) showed in their study that for children the unregulated structures of asylum accommodations, the cramped housing conditions and the restriction of privacy were burdens, which is why it was concluded that these accommodations were "unsuitable places of residence" or not in the "best interest" of the children (p. 49). Various studies come to the conclusion that so far there is little knowledge about the everyday life of children in asylum accommodation. Meyer (2012) described this in general terms as an investigation of children and their living environments and came to the conclusion that there is "a need for empirical results that capture the living environments of young children in their entirety and give due weight to the subjective experiences of the children". (S. 29)

Clara Bombach’s currently running study is a response to this research gap, where she deals with the everyday life of children and families in asylum centres in Switzerland. In her ethnographic research she takes part in the everyday life of families and tries to understand from the children`s perspective what it means to want to create everyday life and normality in temporary living spaces. Clara Bombach gives an insight into her current study and presents first results for discussion.