Researching with children and adolescents in protection residencies: methodological becomings in the field

Abstract

Participatory research into the experiences of children and adolescents (C&A) who are victims of abuse raises ethical and methodological difficulties. The aim of this article is to analyze the becoming results of the first months of fieldwork in a participatory research with institutionalized children in residencies of the Chilean National Specialized Childhood and Adolescence Protection Service, focusing on the ways in which the unfolding of the fieldwork, through the interactions with the participants and the appearance of various challenging situations, reshapes the methodology.

A post-ethnographic methodology is developed through participant observation, children’s visual productions (photographs, drawings and cartographies) and micro-interviews with C&A, conducted in two residences located in the Metropolitan and the Valparaíso region, with C&A from 8 to 12 years approximately. This article is based on the early stages of the research, drawing on a collective and interpretative analysis of the field notebooks, the production and selection of photographs by children, and the first interviews with them.

Two types of challenges are highlighted. First, methodological challenges related to the articulations between the characteristics of residential care institutions and their residents. Here, methodological reflections are developed through the discussion of two critical aspects of residential life: the dialectic between that which is individual and that which is collective, and the expressions and treatments of trauma. Regarding the former, it is pointed out that the residence’s intervention strategies are highly individualized, and that this manner of functioning has a role in children subjectivation processes. This raised difficulties for the application of collective participatory research techniques, as well as the necessity for shifting the methodological approach to a more individual one. Likewise, the traumatic experiences faced by children in care leave traces that manifest in a variety of forms. Emotional dysregulation episodes are one of those that have proven challenging, as they call for attention to alerting signals and a heightened awareness for when to encourage participation and when not to insist.

The second type of challenges have to do with the bonds that abused and institutionalized children have with adults and peers. Their relationships with adults are very important, but also ambivalent: marked by experiences of abandonment or neglect, and by the high rotation of their resident carers. This conditions the research process and poses ethical questions on participation and voluntariness. Meanwhile, their relationships with peers fluctuate between care and disciplining. On the one hand, they form significant friendships through time that may even sometimes be regarded as brotherhood/sisterhood. On the other hand, they often encounter conflicts in which hierarchies and relations of power are to be seen. These relationships, complex and volatile as they are, have had a strong impact on the becoming of the methodology as well.

This fieldwork experience whispered a variety of emotions on researchers, and gathered feelings of tenderness and empathy for C&A and resident workers, but also feelings of overwhelm and frustration in front of the observed situations and difficulties in implementing the research and actively involving C&A.