Research project Staging Migration: Rhetoric, Representation, and Reception in Swedish Children’s Theater

Since the ”long summer of migration” (also known as the 2015 ”refugee crisis”) the field of performing arts for children in Sweden has displayed a growing interest in staging migration while elaborating new artistic strategies and modes of participation. Newly arrived children - both refugees and others - share the stage-audience encounter with children born in Sweden while meeting and interacting with content including the staging of escape routes, new homes, multiple homes, homelessness, identities, belonging, and experiences of being "other". But we lack knowledge on the real meanings of these stage-audience encounters.

The purpose of the project Staging Migration is to produce theoretical and empirical knowledge about the potential of children's theater to stage an inclusive Sweden, and to investigate whether and how social boundaries between ”us” and ”them” may be reproduced as an unintended consequence. The project will use an analysis of the rhetorics of cultural policy documents; representations of stories, bodies, and languages on the stage; and attention to the audience reception of staged migration.

The theoretical frame is cultural sociological and the project will use diverse qualitative and quantitative methods, including document analysis, interviews, observations, and a survey to advance our knowledge on cultural aspects of the meaning and challenges of migration and integration.