Methodological perspectives underpinning the research design

A research design can be referred to as a systematic plan to study a scientific problem and it outlines the way that an investigation will take or took place. Several factors were considered to design this research in order to carry out the research to get better understanding of children’s experience and perspectives of family migration in urban China. I will achieve this by discussing the following points.

4.2.1 Childhood studies

Sociological and psychological studies carried out within the development notion viewed children as incompetent agents for a quite long time, as already mentioned. They were “denied the right to speak for themselves either because they are not competent in making judgments or

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because they are thought of as unreliable witnesses about their own lives” (Qvortrup, 1994, p. 2). In the social studies of childhood, there is respect for children’s lived experiences and their capabilities to provide insightful accounts of how they understand and interpret these experiences. This shift was initiated by writers such as James and Prout (1997), who viewed children as co- participants in the research process and stressed their competency and agency rather than see them as objects of research. In this study, children are viewed as competent social actors who have the right to be listened to and have a say in matters that affect their life. They are placed as the center of the research process and their views are valued.

4.2.2 Qualitative research method

Because childhood studies places an “emphasis on children’s interpretation of their experience, the usefulness of qualitative research approaches have been stressed” (McKechnie & Hobbs, 2004, p 282). Qualitative research methods are used to describe human behaviors and involve the generation and analysis of data which gives meanings to people’s everyday lives and experiences in setting where they live (Fraser et al., 2004). Qualitative research is empirical research and generates word data from participants (Punch, 1998). Qualitative research is concerned with developing explanations of social phenomena and helps to further and deepen our understanding of the social world. The benefits of the qualitative approach are that the information is richer and deeper insight is gained into the phenomenon under study. Thus qualitative research aims to have comprehensive understanding of a specific field of study. This study employed qualitative research in order to learn migrant children’s experience in urban China and their perspectives on their own life. Therefore, with the help of the qualitative research method, the in-depth understanding of migrant children’s world, such as the reasons behind some behavior of migrant children was gained.

4.2.3 Participatory technique

The UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989 specifies in its Article 12 that children have the right to express their opinion on matters and decisions that affect them directly. It promotes the idea that children be involved, informed, consulted and heard. Thus the interest in involving children as active participants and co-researchers has dramatically increased since then (Sinclair, 2004) and a wealth of literature on children’s active role in research has been produced (Boyden & Ennew, 1997; Hill, 1997). However, the social phenomenon of migrant

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children in China is different from others. According to the Chinese White Paper (1991), China stated that “to eat their fill and dress warmly were the fundamental demands of the Chinese people who had long suffered cold and hunger”. Under this view, children’s right to express themselves freely is meaningless in poverty and unstable social environment. Although people have increased their living standard with the help of the continuous economic development in China for around thirty years, Chinese societies still rank social and economic rights, such as the right to economic development, over individuals’ political and civil rights, which means that the rights of children’s participation and expressing views freely around the things affecting them will be postponed compared with the issues of efficient production in China.

In this study, although children was not included from the beginning of the research process due to the short time of fieldwork, the right of expression for the participants was emphasized and they were involved in making some decisions, as deciding when and what they wanted to talk to me about and which photos they wanted to explain. However, when using participatory technique, a lot of challenges were encountered since children are not used to express their view freely and make their own decision in China. For example, all participants were asked to choose their own names for the research (see Naming method), but it was difficult for some children to make a decision. I had to spend a long time to encourage them and talk about the cartoons they like or things they prefer to be able to choose nicknames. In this study, with the help of participatory technique, the participants were perceived as experts in their own life. They were involved in all the process at the fieldwork and their interests were maintained through the research process.

4.2.4 The researcher’s role

The researcher’s role is to form a caring relationship with participants, encourage them to interact freely and create knowledge jointly with the participants (Carter & Little, 2007). As a researcher, I was fully aware of the vulnerability of children due to adult-child power inequalities in the research setting, specially the migrant children. In China, adults usually have a large degree of control over the conditions under which any study of children takes place. Therefore, I tried to minimize the power imbalance in this study in different ways. Firstly, starting from the first day, I dressed causal by wearing T-shirt and jeans. I used easy and simple language to talk with them and at later stage of the fieldwork, I adapted to their language and chose the words

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they often used and spoke in the way they spoke. On the first interview day, I was quite nervous and talked fast with children, trying to ask the questions I had prepared. Listening to the tape- recorded interviews, I realized the same evening that this made children nervous as well. When communicating with children from the next day, I listened to them and followed them, avoiding to lead the conversation. Mandell (1988) discussed that changing the researchers’ appearance, speech and dress could minimize the power imbalance. Secondly, children were perceived as experts in their life rather than simply participants in the research. They were involved in the decision-making process. In the current study, children played an active role in decisions on their participation and when, where and how the fieldwork was conducted. Even in the semi- structured visual interviews, children decided what to talk about and their interest emerged through shared discussion. Therefore, the power between me and the participants was shared. Finally, considering the language abilities of children, proper research methods were used to tailor the need of the participants. Drawing and photography techniques empowered children and helped address the problem of power differentials. However, I am fully aware that as a researcher, I have power over my participants on writing since I will decide which data will be included in the final thesis. During this process, I am trying to look for patterns, and meanwhile be as objective as possible.