CHILD-UP - Children Hybrid Integration: Learning Dialogue as a way of Upgrading policies of Participation

Image: CHILD UP logo

CHILD-UP aims to provide schools, social services, reception centres, education and mediation agencies, and policy makers with knowledge about dialogic methods that can support professionals working with migrant children. The project combines innovation with well-proven traditions, enhancing the understanding of how to contribute to participative learning, integration, high-quality education, and protection.

CHILD-UP conducts research into the level of integration of migrant children in Europe and their social condition with the primary aim of proposing an innovative approach to improving these conditions. In this shifting of perspective, children’s agency – a specific form of participation – represents the real keystone to improving children’s psychosocial wellbeing and set the child at the centre of their self-empowerment.

CHILD-UP highlights the importance of the relationship between children’s agency on the one hand and dialogic interactions between children and children and adults on the other. CHILD-UP aims to show that adults facilitating this dialogic interaction offers migrant children the opportunity to change their own social condition through exercising their agency. In CHILD-UP, integration is considered hybrid and is based on contributions of both migrant and non-migrant children.

CHILD-UP is a Horizon 2020-funded project and is coordinated by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia.