SoE Voices: PGR Showcase

Children, Localised Displacement and the Making of Play Spaces in a Dense Urban Settlement in Lagos

Olamide I Udo-Udoma Ejorh

This paper examines how children living in a dense, low-income settlement in Lagos conceptualise and negotiate space, place and belonging in the context of localised forms of displacement. Though many children in Oworonshoki have lived in Lagos all their lives, they have experienced significant spatial disruptions caused by forced evictions, land-grabbing demolitions, flooding and fires. These events reshape children’s neighbourhoods, alter familiar routines and redefine the material and social environments in which they play. While these forms of displacement are common across African cities, little research has explored how children themselves understand and navigate such spatial dislocation.  Drawing on child-centred qualitative methods—including group interviews, child-led photo walks, life mapping, play diaries and play mapping—the study explores how children interpret their changing environments and how they construct meaning in places marked by loss and re-occupation. The findings show that children identify clear shifts in the spaces they can access, the materials available for play and the social conditions shaping where and with whom they play. Their accounts reveal how everyday landscapes become reimagined as play spaces, how boundaries between “children’s” and “adults’” spaces are negotiated and how belonging is rebuilt in altered environments.  By foregrounding children’s spatial narratives, the paper contributes to broader discussions on how children’s identities, practices and attachments to place are shaped by entanglements between local disruptions and wider structural forces. It offers empirically grounded insight into how children produce meaning, continuity and connection within changing urban geographies.    

Biography

Speaker bio: Olamide is a third-year PhD student based in Education and Urban Studies at the University of Sheffield and Founding Director of Lagos Urban Development Initiative.

The Cultural Participation of Young Carers

Dan Chaib

Think back to when you were a child. School ends, the sun is out, and it's time for some fun. Perhaps you loved the theatre, and Alan Bennett’s ‘The History Boys’ was on that evening. Maybe your local youth club was open and you were excited to go get payback for that game of pool you lost last week. Or maybe there was a 7.45pm kick off for your favourite football team, and you were going to cheer them on.

There are a number of reasons why you may not be able to do such activities. A cast member might get sick, local authorities may cut funding to youth services, or there may be a sudden rain storm, muddying the pitch too much for the game to go ahead. Or in your own life, you might have a family emergency, you might not be able to afford to go, or you may need to do something else, like accompanying a relative to an appointment, or cooking dinner.

Here I consider the latter group of barriers. If I have mentioned these and they spring to mind as one-offs, you may not have had caring responsibilities as a child. However, if these sound like familiar, normal occurrences, you may be reading this as someone who was a young carer. In this piece of research, I investigate whether the responsibilities of young carers act as a barrier to accessing multiple areas of cultural participation.

Results indicate that young carers are significantly less likely to participate culturally than their peers, but only when mediated for income, suggesting a need for nuanced discussion around policy, practice, and levels of formal service and provider involvement.

Biography

Final year SMI PhD student investigating the cultural participation of young carers.
 

Watch and worry? Positionality in the explorations of chronic cancer diagnosis

Kate Montague-Hellen 

Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL) is a slow progressing form of chronic blood cancer. Patients receiving a new diagnosis of CLL are faced with an invisible and, at present, incurable disease, but one for which they may never require treatment; people with CLL are therefore faced with a potentially life long period of medical surveillance known as ‘Watch and Wait’. Using a diary-interview method with pre- and post-diary interviews, this study aimed to gain insights into the experiences and expectations of 19 recently diagnosed CLL patients during their first months following diagnosis. In doing so, I extended the accepted timeframes for participant engagement in diary keeping. This presentation will review the impact of my positionality and choice of methods throughout the study to capture this population’s unique experience as they developed their new identity as a person living with chronic cancer.

Biography:

Kate is a third year PhD student exploring the diagnostic experiences of chronic cancer in the School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations, with supervision within the School of Education.