Photofriend: creating visual ethnography with refugee children

Abstract

The political, social and economic context that circumscribes refugees' lives in T hailand has created the need for research that serves the programmatic demands of nongovernmental organisations and multilateral organisations providing services to children in camps along the border. Thus, research has 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 the use of visual ethnography as a participatory method that places children's experience of the everyday at the centre of research. It presents the strengths and limitations of the method as a way of eliciting the thoughts, feelings and memories of children who have encountered armed conflict and displacement.