photofriend: creating visual ethnography with refugee children

Photofriend: creating visual ethnography withrefugee children

Su-Ann OhInstitute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore 119614

Email: [email protected]

Revised manuscript received 23 May 2012

The political, social and economic context that circumscribes refugees’ lives in Thailand has createdthe need for research that serves the programmatic demands of nongovernmental organisationsand multilateral organisations providing services to children in camps along the border. Thus, researchhas focused on health indicators and schooling, rather than children’s everyday lives. As a result,there are few studies that document their lives as told in their own voices. This paper examines theuse of visual ethnography as a participatory method that places children’s experience of theeveryday at the centre of research. It presents the strengths and limitations of the method as a wayof eliciting the thoughts, feelings and memories of children who have encountered armed conflict anddisplacement.

Key words: forced migration, Photovoice, refugee children, Thailand, visual ethnography, photography

IntroductionIn the nine official refugee camps along the Thai–Burmeseborder, children make up almost half of the approximately140 000 people registered as refugees from Burma (TBBC2012). The political, social and economic context thatcircumscribes refugees’ lives in Thailand has created theneed for research that serves the programmatic demands ofnongovernmental organisations and multilateral organisa-tions providing services to children living in camps alongthe border. Thus, research has focused on health indicatorsand schooling, rather than on children’s everyday lives andhave used traditional research tools such as structuredquestionnaires and focus group interviews (Oh et al. 20062010). As a result, there are few studies that document theirlives as told in their own voices.

Moreover, commentators have pointed out that the dis-course on and conceptualisation of refugees (Rajaram2002) and refugee children (Hart and Tyrer 2006) is oftenframed around their vulnerability, helplessness and role asvictims. For example, the predominant approach thatthe United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees(UNHCR) uses in reference to children is that of ‘protec-tion’ – the belief that children have the right to grow up in

an environment that protects them from danger, exploita-tion and harm (UNICEF 2005).

Conventional wisdom on research methods with chil-dren also emphasises their vulnerability to persuasion,adverse influence and harm in research, as in the restof life (Hill 2005). It is assumed that this vulnerability isheightened in children who have encountered instancesof armed conflict. Undoubtedly, researchers attempt toconduct research with children using methods thatprotect children from psychological and other formsof distress that may arise during the research pro-cess. However, there are times when the objective ofobtaining useful data conflicts with that of protectingchildren.

This paper outlines a visual ethnographic approach thataddresses these concerns. It describes the use of partici-patory photograph-making and photo-elicitation to gathermeaningful child-centred and child-generated perspec-tives of their everyday lives. Thus, it contributes to thegrowing inventory of research methods used to elucidatechildren’s understanding of their experiences through thequotidian within their local environment. Moreover, theprocess is unobtrusive, respectful of children’s experi-ences of adversity, and enjoyable!

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Area (2012) doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2012.01111.x

Area 2012ISSN 0004-0894 © 2012 The Author.Area © 2012 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)

Photofriend, Photovoice andvisual ethnographyPhotofriend is a programme that incorporates researchinto activities for creative expression for children living inboarding houses supported by Room to Grow Foundationin Maesot, Thailand. It combines this with a mentoringproject with students studying at a post-secondary school,English Immersion Programme (EIP), in Umphiem-Mairefugee camp along the Thai–Burmese border. It is basedon the Photovoice technique:

a qualitative method that facilitates contextual under-standing and is intended to foster participative opportuni-ties that can ‘give voice’ to people, communities, andissues often ignored by mainstream society. (Green andKloos 2009, 462)

This method, developed by Wang, Burris and colleagues(Wang and Burris 1994 1997; Wang and Redwood-Jones 2001), typically involves participants photographingaspects of their daily lives, coming together to discuss thephotographs in small groups to reflect and using theirfindings to effect social change.

The running thread in Photovoice projects is theenhancement of (marginalised) community through par-ticipation. As such, this method has often been used topromote change in the lives of oppressed and disenfran-chised groups, such as refugees (Berman et al. 2001;Green and Kloos 2009; Oh 2011), women (Chilton et al.2009; Sutherland and Cheng 2009), those with HIVand AIDS (Moletsane et al. 2009), the disabled (Newmanet al. 2009) and the homeless (Wang et al. 2000; Halifaxet al. 2008).

The visual and participatory nature of Photovoice lendsitself to research with children because it places thevoices and viewpoints of the participants at the centreof research. Drawing on the social-constructionist view ofchildhood (James et al. 1998) and the rights-basedapproach of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child(United Nations 1989; Robson et al. 2009), researchershave incorporated Photovoice techniques into theirresearch methodologies in order to understand how chil-dren interact with their surroundings and the meaningsthey ascribe to these interactions.

As illustrated in this paper, this technique is particularlyuseful in research with refugee children living in camps.First, it uses photographs and photo-elicitation to gleaninformation about the material circumstances of theireveryday lives, as represented by them. For example,Dodman (2003) used this technique to explore adoles-cents’ mobility in urban Jamaica, Mitchell et al. (2007)investigated children’s perceptions of their local urbanenvironment in New Zealand and Lee and Abbott (2009)examined adolescents’ views about their environmentin rural Australia. Other researchers have found this

technique to be useful in participatory research with streetchildren (Baker et al. 1996; Thomas and O’Kane 1998;Young and Barrett 2001). For instance, Young and Barrett(2001) found that the photographs gave excellent cover-age of children’s lives, were a useful tool for facilitatingdiscussion, revealed information about places that theresearcher would not have been able to gain access to,and unveiled interesting and hitherto undisclosed subsidi-ary subjects.

The second attribute of the Photovoice method is that itgoes beyond visual representations and unveils how chil-dren cognitively construct and interpret their experiences.Photographs are cultural artefacts that are meaningfulwithin the context they are created (Becker 1974). In fact,‘[p]roviding contextual detail – the stuff of all good eth-nography – is what is needed to make images intelligible’(Ball and Smith 2006, 24). I believe that this is the mostinteresting and revealing aspect of Photovoice. The inter-pretation and analysis of the research does not centre onthe composition of the images. Instead, the principal datacome from the interviews and conversations with thechildren. The children’s narratives are used to providecontext and meaning, giving us a window into their socialworlds and their interpretations of everyday life and theirsurroundings.

The third significant feature of Photovoice is that par-ticipation and empowerment are the bedrock of itsapproach and rationale. In instances where children haveexperienced conflict and adversity, there is some concernabout their vulnerability and how research may have animpact upon that. While it is important to be sensitive totheir experiences of adversity, Hart and Tyrer (2006)caution that it is limiting to perceive children as inherentlyvulnerable.

Firstly, such thinking serves to distract us from the ways inwhich children may manifest strength and the capacitiesfor coping with adversity. Secondly, the assumption ofinherent vulnerability can blind us to the ways in whichvulnerability may be created, not least through the prac-tices of organisations that see children as victims and, as aresult, fail to engage with them as participants in their ownprotection . . . Thirdly, the association of ‘children’ – as anentire section of the population – with vulnerability maycause us to overlook the fact that no group of children arehomogenous in terms of the risks that they face. (Hart andTyrer 2006, 10)

Photovoice is a distinctive way of conducting researchwith children that treats them as social actors rather thanas victims, while taking into account their experiencesof adversity. Moreover, the technique engenders an indi-rect way of gaining access to refugee children’s expe-riences of conflict, displacement, poverty and foodinsecurity, thus reducing the possibility of causing themdistress.

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Area 2012ISSN 0004-0894 © 2012 The Author.

Area © 2012 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)

These three features make Photovoice a subtle andsensitive tool, combining the generation of rich visual andtextual representation with techniques that are indirect,unobtrusive and inconspicuous. Before elaborating onthese features, I shall first describe Photovoice andPhotofriend in detail.

The methodology of PhotofriendPhotofriend is a programme designed by the Room toGrow Foundation and it aims to provide children inboarding houses with a tool for self expression and forsharing what is important to them. It is also used to recordthe lives of the children so that Room to Grow may get toknow them better, and monitor and improve its services.In addition, it teaches research skills to post-secondarystudents at EIP. Finally, it uses the photographs for raisingawareness and in fundraising campaigns.

The programme takes place in three stages. In the firststage, post-secondary students receive training on researchand interview skills and practise using digital cameras.Next, the students are introduced to the boarding housechildren through the Big Brother Big Sister programme.This programme pairs students (aged between 18 and 23years) with children who are either orphaned or separatedfrom their parents for mentoring sessions. The groups areformed organically – all the students meet all the childrenat the same time. They then form groups of their ownaccord. No efforts are made to match individuals by age,gender or any other criteria. For most groups, the age gapbetween students and children was 4–6 years but in somecases was as great as 10 years. Once a good relationshiphas been established between the students and the chil-dren, the students teach the children how to use thecameras. The children are asked to take photographs ofwhatever strikes their fancy. They are then asked to chooseand talk about the photographs which are significant tothem. An unstructured approach to the interview is used,where two main questions are posed:

Tell me about this picture.

Why did you decide to show me this picture?

The rest of the session includes questions designed toelicit information about the children’s physical security,food, relationship with adults and peers, health, school,play, movement, work and everyday activities. The pro-gramme runs for four to six sessions with each child overa 2-month period. At the end, the children are asked tochoose a photograph from the ones that they took and aregiven a hard copy of it as a souvenir.

In this study, findings from the Photofriend programmethat took place in 2007 are presented. In total, 29 girls and36 boys between the ages of 10 and 17 from a dormitory

in Umphiem-Mai refugee camp participated. They had allbeen separated from their parents who lived in the borderareas of the Karen State in Burma.

Generating rich data through representationsof the everydayOne of the greatest strengths of the Photovoice techniqueis its ability to focus on quotidian details. Researchershave exploited this feature in order to understand howchildren in a range of settings perceive their everydayrealities. For example, in Sweden, researchers lent refugeechildren with chronically-ill siblings cameras to investi-gate spatiality and sociality, time perspectives and thesignificance attached to everyday events and objects(Svensson et al. 2009).

In this study, the Photovoice technique proved to be afirst-rate tool for obtaining information about the children’severyday lives. Its foremost strength is that it enables thechildren to (re)produce representations of the objects,people and situations in their lived realities through thecreation of photographs. This enabled the children to usethe photographs as entry points to their innermost thoughtsabout events and relationships across time and space. In aphoto elicitation session with a 10-year-old girl, her memo-ries of conflict emerged through a photograph of a pair ofsandals (Plate 1).

When I lived in my home, I went to school and the SPDC1

came and fired on my village. I ran back from school tothe house without slippers2. Because my mother couldn’tbuy me slippers. While I was running, my feet hurt a lotbecause I tripped, and stepped on tiny thorns and my feetwere bleeding. When I got home my parents were readywaiting for me, to flee. My mother told me that we wouldflee into the jungle and stay in the caves. But now, I livehere I don’t have to run away and I get slippers becauseour dorm leader bought them for me. (NGW)

An everyday object, such as a pair of sandals, elicitedan expressive narrative that intertwined the threads of fear,flight and pain, displacement and ‘settlement’, and lackand sufficiency. Another example is provided by AS whotook a photograph of a bowl of rice.

When I lived in my village, we had to flee into the forestbecause our enemy came and entered our village. Somepeople didn’t have any rice to cook for meals. We did notdare to go back to the village. If the enemy saw anyone,they arrested and tortured them. We live in the refugeecamps, we aren’t starved. We get enough rice to eat. (AS)

In the two examples above, separate visual representa-tions of a pair of sandals and a bowl of rice in campprovided the trigger to a narrative of the past that encom-passed internal displacement, hunger, fear and abuse.

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In other words, the photographs were not just represen-tations of the objects, scenes, places, people and activitiesin their everyday lives; they were portals into the chil-dren’s emotional and cognitive universe. This enabled theresearchers to gain access to how the children understoodand rationalised their experiences of conflict anddisplacement.

As Banks wrote,

all films, photographs and artworks are the product ofhuman action and are entangled to varying degrees inhuman social relations; they therefore require a widerframe of analysis in their understanding, a reading of theexternal narrative that goes beyond the visual text itself.(2001, 12)

This ‘wider frame’ includes the dimension of time. As thenarratives provided by the two children show, they do notexperience their daily lives in isolation from the past. Infact, the children are constantly making sense of eventsthrough a juxtaposition of the past and present.

The nature of participation in PhotofriendThe second strength of this technique is that it is notnecessary to ask children direct questions about their

experiences of conflict and displacement. They spoke ofthese of their own accord when talking about the photo-graphs they had taken. Asking children questions aboutseparation, loss or death may sensitise them to painfulissues of which they were previously unaware (Boyden2000). In addition, direct questions about their experi-ences related to conflict and displacement are potentiallystressful to them.

Researchers and organisations working with children,such as Save the Children, have adopted the overarchingprinciple of doing no harm to children, particularly whenworking with children who have experienced conflict andtrauma. Guidelines for working with children in Photof-riend were taken from Ennew and Plateau’s work (2004).They believe that it is unethical to ask children directquestions about painful experiences, using poorly-designed research tools and without their informedconsent. In addition, they hold that indirect data collectionmethods allow children the option of withholding infor-mation, or provide them with the possibility of respondingin ways that do not dredge up painful experiences andcause further harm.

As illustrated above, the children inevitably spokeabout these experiences without being prompted. Thisfeature makes the Photovoice element of Photofriend anexcellent tool for obtaining information about children’sexperiences of loss, danger and involuntary displacementwithout causing them distress. Its success can be attrib-uted to the nature of the children’s participation.

There is consensus among researchers working withchildren that besides the generation of better quality andmore relevant data, children’s participation in research,programming and policy formation makes children morevisible within a particular community, improves children’sability to communicate views and contributes to theirempowerment (Hart 2006; Save the Children 2003;Robson et al. 2009; Alderson 1995; Boyden and Ennew1997). However, it is critical to consider the type ofresearch technique used.Valentine (1999) pointed out thatthe difference in power between children and adults canintimidate children when ‘traditional’ research methodsare used, and that different types of research methods thatmake it easy for children to communicate should be usedinstead. Of particular interest to this study is Green andKloos’ (2009) Photovoice project with refugee youth in aninternal displacement camp in northern Uganda. Theyoung people were lent digital cameras and asked to takephotographs about issues in their community. This wasthen used to effect social change in their community andschool.

Thus, in designing Photovoice and Photofriend, the par-ticipative aspect had to be carefully planned. During Pho-tofriend, the children were given the freedom to takephotographs and to select the ones they wanted to share

Plate 1 Photograph of sandals taken by NGW

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with the researchers. This ensured that control and agencywere incorporated into the nature of their participation:the children were not directed to answer questions aboutspecific areas of their lives. Instead, they were given thespace to choose which experiences to share, and in waysthat were meaningful to them. This placed the controlsfirmly in their hands, allowing them to reveal as much oras little as they wanted.

The children’s production and creation of visual imagesand accompanying narratives constituted the first level ofanalysis that is essential in this type of research (Boydenand Ennew 1997). The final analysis was then conductedby the principal researcher. The extent to which childrenparticipated in the research falls in between the fourth andfifth rung of Hart’s (1997) ladder of participation. Thefourth rung, ‘Assigned but informed’ is where children andyoung people are assigned a specific role and informedabout how and why they are being involved. The nextrung up the ladder involves young people being consultedon programmes and research. The children who partici-pated in Photofriend were informed of the study andasked to participate. At the same time, their photographsand narratives were used as a first level of analysis, andthey were consulted on how best to schedule (see below)the research sessions. In Hart’s classification, the highestrung is achieved when programmes are initiated by youngpeople and they share the decisions with adults. This hasnot been incorporated into the design of the Photofriend.However, on reflection, it is clear that future iterationswould do well to increase children’s level of participationto that described in the fifth rung of Hart’s ladder. Thiswould involve consulting with the children more fully andasking them to contribute to higher levels of analysis.

In a very real sense, asking children to be participants isabout conferring power onto them and decreasing thepower differential between them and the adult research-er(s). However, researchers have commented about thedifficulties of gaining genuine informed consent (Boyden2000; Valentine 1999), since children often occupy aninferior position in society and are expected to conform tothe wishes of adults.

This is partly because the researcher, as an adult, negoti-ates with the research subjects from a position of superi-ority. In most societies children are socialised intopleasing adults and falling in line with adult decisions,regardless of whether or not they agree with them.(Boyden 2000, 2)

In the Photofriend projects, the children were giveninformation about the research, what it was about, what itwas to be used for, details relating to their participationand the option to withdraw at any time. However, gainingchildren’s informed consent is often complicated by theprocess of gaining access to talk to them individually

(Valentine 1999). In addition, the granting of consent ‘isbound up in a highly complex web of expectation, normsand meanings and as such can be hard to achieve inpractice’ (Boyden 2000, 2).

In the study, the children consented to participating inthe research, but some children did not turn up for thephoto elicitation sessions. It was eventually discoveredthat they had not had the time to participate because theyhad had to collect firewood from the wooded areas sur-rounding the camp. They had found it difficult to tell thestudent researchers that they had other, more important,duties to fulfil. This was resolved when the studentresearchers discussed with them the times which wouldbest suit them. This meant that a collaborative approach tosetting research times worked best, reinforcing the princi-ple that the children’s voices counted and that they had asay in the scheduling of the research sessions. This isnovel, in that, in their society, children’s opinions abouttheir own lives are not often sought or valorised.

This study found that rapport, trust and respect need tobe established between the children and the researchersbefore the children become more comfortable with arelationship where adults relinquish the power that isaccorded to them. One of the ways that seemed effective inaddressing the power imbalance was to establish a rela-tionship between the children and the student researchersprior to the research through a Big Brother Big SisterProgramme. The children formed groups with studentswith whom they could spend time together and whom theycould turn to as a mentor. This relationship enabled thechildren to feel more comfortable with sharing and articu-lating their thoughts, feelings and wants.

Moreover, their mentors had a common understandingof conflict and displacement, as many of them are alsorefugees. However, this was offset by the students’research skill and experience. They had little first-handknowledge of how to conduct in-depth interviews.Moreover, there was a concern that they would not beable to make the right decisions when confronted by achild who was feeling pain or fear as a consequence of theresearch activities. The student researchers were advisedto be cautious and to alert the boarding house leaders andtheir own teachers when they came across such a situa-tion. This gave them a group of people to turn to for helpand support, thereby ensuring the welfare of the childreninvolved.

The contradictory demands of the children’s duties andtheir participation in the research, as mentioned above,also draws our attention to the possible conflicting claimsbetween attempting to ensure children’s participation andacting in their best interests. By asking them to participate,the researchers were taking the children away from animportant livelihood task. Robson et al. (2009) faced asimilar situation in their work on child participation in

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research on transport and mobility in Malawi. They real-ised that in the process of conducting research, the youngresearchers had to forego some classes at school. ThePhotofriend programme needs to take this into accountand design research in anticipation of its occurrence.

ConclusionThe use of visual ethnography in Photofriend is an attemptto create circumstances that generate a meaningful child-centred narrative. The strengths of the technique are that ithas great potential for representing the everyday realitiesof the children living in the camps and for creating agateway to how they rationalise and understand their ownexperiences of conflict and displacement. The researchsessions with the children generated narratives that inter-twined concerns about poverty, hunger, danger, pain andflight, while juxtaposing the present with the past, objectswith emotions, space with time. This contributes to ourunderstanding of how children use their surroundings tomake sense of their past and present experiences.

The photographs gave the children an object on whichto focus their discussion of their experiences, thoughtsand feelings. Taking it one step further, the use ofphotographs,

touches on the limitations of language, especially lan-guage used for descriptive purposes. In using photographsthe potential exists, however elusive the achievement, tofind ways of thinking about social life that escape the trapsset by language. (Walker 1993, 72)

In fact, the research technique revealed the representa-tional nature of everyday objects as perceived by thechildren. It is fascinating to see how they used objects tosymbolise abstract concepts and how they translated andarticulated their thoughts and feelings using these objects.Moreover, photograph-making and photo-elicitation seemto work particularly well with children who may findit difficult to articulate more abstract or conceptualthoughts. The photographs give them something concreteon which to hook their thoughts and feelings.

Besides generating relevant, valid and meaningful data,Photovoice in the Photofriend programme has the addedadvantage of eliciting these data in an indirect way, thusreducing the likelihood of causing harm to childrenduring the course of the research. This is due to the natureof the children’s participation in the Photofriend pro-gramme. For many of the children, this was the first timethat their thoughts and opinions were solicited by adultsand incorporated into a project that would have an impacton their well-being.

This article presents Photovoice as used in Photofriendas an alternative to research that conceptualises childrenwho have experienced war within the narrow framework of

‘victims’. The danger in this is that the research design andthe methods used highlight only those parts of their livesthat conform to this framework. This selective approachrenders invisible the actual views and experiences of chil-dren, as well as the workings of the wider context thatdetermine their everyday circumstances. This is significantbecause research about refugee children tends to focus onindicators of their nutrition, health and schooling, ratherthan on their lived experience as a whole.

Nevertheless, Photovoice as used in Photofriendrequires further refinements such as consulting with itsparticipants more fully on research design and schedul-ing, including them in the higher levels of analysis andplanning for potentially conflicting demands on the chil-dren. This will ensure that it yields much more in-depthinformation and enables the children to participate evenmore fully and meaningfully in the creation of visual andtextual representations of their lived experience.

Notes

1 The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) was theofficial name of the military regime of Burma that seized powerin 1988 and was dissolved in March 2011.

2 Slippers refer to sandals.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies for itssupport, and the editors, referees, and proofreaders for their con-tributions in improving this paper.

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photofriend: creating visual ethnography with refugee children

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