Social Relations, Safety, and Acceptance—Making Meanings of Home in Children’s and Young People’s Visual Expression
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15503/jecs2025.2.717.738Keywords:
home, belonging, empathy, meaning-making, visual expression, children and young peopleAbstract
Aim. This article aims to understand children’s and young people’s notions of home by analysing how children express the meanings they invest in the concept of home both visually and in related explanatory texts.
Methods. The article explores outcomes of a creative task implemented in schools in six countries with students aged 5 to 15. The data consists of 559 visual artefacts and captions explaining their contents. In the examination of the data, we engaged in a thematic and contextual qualitative analysis that follows the inductive logic of close reading.
Results. Our analysis reveals three interlinked meaning-making modes through which the students dealt with the idea of home and identifies key elements that make them feel at home: home as social relations; home as safety; and home as acceptance. For the students, home commonly includes a material dimension, a house, but it becomes “a home” only through meaningful social relations, emotions, and everyday practices.
Conclusions. Our findings bring to the fore a rather unified understanding of home, pointing out that there are shared cultural and school-derived conventions that affect the manners in which creative tasks are approached by students in the school context. Yet general conformity also highlights the instances in which expressions of home deviate from expectations, as the depictions of safety as “protection from” exemplify in our data. In these depictions, the nationalistic and exclusionary aspects associated with home are brought to the fore.
Downloads
References
Aaltojärvi, I. (2014). Making domestic technology meaningful. From purification to emotions [Doctoral dissertation]. Tampere University. https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-44-9555-7
Ahmad, J. F. (2018). Children’s drawings in different cultures: An analysis of five-year-old Jordanian children’s drawings. International Journal of Early Years Education, 26(3), 249–258. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669760.2018.1444587
Amnesty International. (2022, February 1). Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: A cruel system of domination and crime against humanity. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/
Anning, A. (2003). Pathways to the graphicacy club: The crossroad of home and pre-school. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 3(5), 5–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687984030031001
Antonsich, M. (2010). Searching for belonging — An analytical framework. Geography Compass, 4(6), 644–659. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2009.00317.x
Boccagni, P. (2014) What’s in a (migrant) house? Changing domestic spaces, the negotiation of belonging and home-making in Ecuadorian migration. Housing, Theory and Society, 31(3), 277–293. https://doi.org/10.1080/14036096.2013.867280
Botticello, J. (2007) Lagos in London: Finding the space of home. Home Cultures, 4(1), 7–23. https://doi.org/10.2752/174063107780129671
Brummett, B. (2010). Techniques of Close Reading. Sage.
Coates, E., & Coates, A. (2011). The subjects and meanings of young children’s drawings. In D. Faulkner & E. Coates (Eds.), Exploring children’s creative narratives (pp. 86–110). Routledge.
Corsaro, W. A. (1992). Interpretive reproduction in children’s peer cultures. Social Psychology Quarterly, 55(2), 160–177. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.2307/2786944
Cox, S. (2005). Intention and meaning in young children’s drawing. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 24(2), 115–125. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-8070.2005.00432.x
Deguara, J. (2015). Meaning-making in young children’s drawings [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Sheffield. https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/9980/1/Deguara%20J%20-%20Meaning-making%20in%20young%20childrens%20drawing%20PhD%20Thesis%202015%20VOLUME%201.pdf
Del Gobbo, G., & Galeotti, G. (2018). Education through art for intercultural dialogue: Towards an inclusive learning ecosystem. Formazione & Insegnamento, 16(3), 213–229. https://dxdoi.org/107346/-fei-XVI-03-18_18
Denton, J. A. (1990). Society and the official world: A reintroduction to sociology. General Hall.
Dockery, M., Kendall, G., Li, J., Mahendran, A., Ong, R., & Strazdins, L. (2010). Housing and children’s development and wellbeing: A scoping study (Report No. 149). Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.
Dubois, A. (2003). Close reading: An introduction. In F. Lentriccha & A. Dubois (Eds.), Close Reading. The Reader (pp. 1–40). Duke University Press.
Duncum, P. (2004). Visual culture isn’t just visual: Multiliteracy, multimodality and meaning. Studies in Art Education, 45(3), 252–264. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1320972
European Commission. (n.d.). EU and Israel. https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/european-neighbourhood-policy/countries-region/israel_en
Fialho, O. (2019). What is literature for? The role of transformative reading. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 6(1), Article 1692532. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2019.1692532
Gerharz, E. (2014). Indigenous activism in Bangladesh: Translocal spaces and shifting constellations of belonging. Asian Ethnicity, 15(4), 552–570. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2014.937112
Gonçalves, S., & Majhanovich, S. (Eds.). (2016). Art and intercultural dialogue. Brill.
Greenbaum, C. W., & Elizur, Y. (2012). The psychological and moral consequences for Israeli society of the occupation of Palestinian land. In D. Bar-Tal & I. Schnell (Eds.), The Impacts of Lasting Occupation: Lessons from Israeli Society, Series in Political Psychology (pp. 380–408). Oxford Academic. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199862184.003.0013
Hall, S. (2000). Cultural identity and cinematic representation. In R. Stam & T. Miller (Eds.), Film and theory: An Anthology (pp. 704–714). Blackwell Publishers.
Hamlett, S., & Strange, J-M. (2021). Animals and home: Introduction to special issue. Home Cultures. The Journal of Architecture, Design and Domestic Space, 18(2), 77–81. https://doi.org/10.1080/17406315.2021.1968671
Infante, C., Idrovo, A. J., Sánchez-Domínguez, M. S., Vinhas, S., & González-Vázquez, T. (2012). Violence committed against migrants in transit: Experiences on the northern Mexican border. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, 14(3), 449–459. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-011-9489-y
Kellner, D. (1995). Media culture: Cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and the postmodern. Routledge.
Kiil, K. (2009). Kielletyt kuvat: Suomalais- ja virolaisnuorten piirtämällä esittämät kielletyt aiheet [Prohibited images: Prohibited subjects in drawings by Finnish and Estonian young people]. Taideteollinen korkeakoulu.
Kinnunen, S. (2015). How are you? The narrative in-between spaces in young children’s daily lives. [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Oulu. https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:9789526210285
Kobayashi, A. (2014). Being CBC: The ambivalent identities and belonging of Canadian-born children of immigrants. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 104(2), 234–242. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2013.862133
Lauzon, C. (2017). The unmaking of home in contemporary art. University of Toronto Press.
Lawrence, R. J. (1987). What makes a house a home? Environment and Behaviour, 19(2), 154–168. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916587192004
Leavy, P. (2017). Research design: Quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, arts-based, and community-based participatory research approaches. Guilford Publications.
Lähdesmäki, T., & Koistinen, A.-K. (2021). Explorations of linkages between intercultural dialogue, art, and empathy. In F. Maine & M. Vrikki (Eds.), Dialogue for intercultural understanding: Placing cultural literacy at the heart of learning (pp. 45–58). Springer. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-71778-0
Lähdesmäki, T., Saresma, T., Hiltunen, K., Jäntti, S., Sääskilahti, N., Vallius, A., & Ahvenjärvi, K. (2016). Fluidity and flexibility of ‘‘belonging’’: Uses of the concept in contemporary research. Acta Sociologica, 59(3), 233–247. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001699316633099
Lähdesmäki, T., Baranova, J., Ylönen, S. C., Koistinen, A-K., Mäkinen, K., Juškiene, V. & Zaleskienė, I. (2021). Learning cultural literacy through creative practices in schools. Cultural and multimodal approaches to meaning-making. Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89236-4
Maine, F., & Vrikki, M. (Eds.) (2021). Dialogue for intercultural understanding: Placing cultural literacy at the heart of learning. Springer.
Maine, F, Brummernreich, B, Chatzianastasi, M., Juškienė, V. Lähdesmäki, T. Juna, J. & Peck, J. (2021). Children’s exploration of the concepts of home and belonging. Capturing views from five European Countries. International Journal of Education Research 110(7), Article 101876. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2021.101876
Martínez-López de Castro, R., Alvariñas-Villaverde, M., Pino-Juste, M. & Domínguez-Lloria, S. (2023). Designing and evaluation of an artistic experience for the development of empathic capacity: “Stepping into others’ shoes”. Brain Sciences 12(11), Article 1565. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci12111565
Mavers, D. (2011). Children’s drawing and writing: The remarkable in the unremarkable, Routledge.
Morizio, L. J., Cook, A. L., Troeger, R. & Whitehouse, A. (2022). Creating compassion: Using art for empathy learning with urban Youth. Contemp School Psychology, 26(4), 435–447. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40688-020-00346-1
Pappe, I. (2017). Ten Myths About Israel. Verso.
Peled-Elhanan, N. (2022). Holocaust education and the semiotics of othering in Israeli schoolbooks. Common Ground Research Networks. https://doi.org/10.18848/978-1-957792-08-8/CGP
Raijman, R. (2020) A warm welcome for some: Israel embraces immigration of Jewish Diaspora, sharply restricts labor migrants and asylum seekers. Migration Information Source. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/israel-law-of-return-asylum-labor-migration
Reinprecht, C. (2014). Social housing in Austria. In K. Scanlon, C. Whitehead, & M. Fernández Arrigoitia (Eds.), Social housing in Europe (pp. 61–74). Wiley Blackwell.
Rose, G. (2001). Visual methodologies. An introduction to the interpretation of visual materials. Sage.
Saegert, S. (1985). The role of housing in the experience of dwelling. In I. Altman, & C. Werner (Eds.), Home environments: Human behavior and environment (pp. 287–309). Home Environments. Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2266-3_12
Siim, P. M. (2019). Drawing and storycrafting with Estonian children: Sharing experiences of mobility. In T. Lähdesmäki, E. Koskinen-Koivisto, V. L. A. Čeginskas, & A. K. Koistinen (Eds.), Challenges and solutions in ethnographic research: Ethnography with a twist (pp. 84–99). Routledge.
Tange, H., & Jenks, C. J. (2023). Nationalism: threat or opportunity to critical intercultural communication? Language and Intercultural Communication, 23(3), 221–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2023.2212488
Taylor, K. V. (2020). Building school community through cross-grade collaborations in art. International Journal of Education Through Art, 16(3), 351–370. https://doi.org/10.1386/eta_00038_1
Toku, M. (2001). Cross-cultural analysis of artistic development: Drawing by Japanese and U.S. children. Visual Arts Research, 27(1), 46–59. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20716021
United Nations (2024). General Assembly Security Council. Seventy-eighth session Seventy-ninth year, Agenda item 67. Promotion and protection of the rights of children Children and Armed Conflict. Report from the Secretary-General. United Nations Official Document System, https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/095/07/pdf/n2409507.pdf
Weik von Mossner, A. (2017). Affective ecologies: Empathy, emotion, and environmental narrative. The Ohio State University Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Susanne C. Ylönen
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
CC-BY
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. All authors agree for publishing their email adresses, affiliations and short bio statements with their articles during the submission process.
