Göra plats - Om trängbodda barns vardagspraktiker

Abstract

The essay examines through semi-structured interviews the experiences of overcrowded housing, as they are portrayed through the eyes of children aged 8 – 14. Overcrowded housing has an effect on children’s school performance, general health and is often linked to less capacity for normal social consumption. Yet there seems to be little done in terms of interrogating children about how they perceive their situation here and now. Rather, the emphasis from research society has been to examine the outcomes of over crowdedness in retrospect. The aim of this study is, as a consequence, to examine children’s experiences as they are told here and now. The aim is to study children’s everyday strategies to manage an overcrowded household and their understanding of the situation. The aim is further to study aspects of the children’s social context, such as friends, homework, hobbies and leisure time. The interviews aspire to answer the following questions: * How do the children cope with overcrowding in their everyday life? * How do the children understand the crowdedness, or rather, what does it mean to them? * How do the children talk about their networks and material situation? The analyses rely on theoretical concepts from modern sociology of childhood, such as agency, competence and reflexivity. Furthermore the theoretical foundation rest upon theories on space and place, family- and everyday practices and poverty and relative deprivation. The participating children can be divided into two groups – one that is less marginalized and one that that is marginalized or socially excluded. The children cope with the over crowdedness differently, depending on to what group they belong. The less marginalized tend to compensate themselves for a lack of space through material goods from the consumer market. They also develop place taking strategies designed to live in or share small spaces. The more marginalized children’s place taking strategies can be described as negative or defensive. The children understand their position through comparison with peers. They discuss the lack of space through consumption goods and picture a room of one´s own as synonym with an extended purchasing power. Only a few index themselves with more prosperous groups of middle class children. The less marginalized group declare that it is easy to play with friends and have no feelings of shame when it comes to inviting friends to their home. The marginalized children find it troublesome inviting friends, due to extreme over crowdedness or the fact that the dwelling is not a standard apartment. The latter group also have emotional responsibilities to comfort parents whose psychosocial health is jaded. The poverty put the marginalized children in a waiting space: waiting for subsidies and permanency.