Broken relationships – a story of a boy who has lived in Norway for 7 years without residence permit.

In a narrative research project, I have followed a family who came to Norway as refugees in 2015. The family of four have two children who has been attending school since they arrived in Norway. Kalib, the oldest son, was 9 years old when he came to Norway. After a few months he started in 3rd grade. In the school year 2021/22, Kalib was in 9th grade in a new place, still without a residence permit. It was the 7th school he started at since 2015. He has moved school in the middle of the year 4 times, because the receptions center has been closed. Kalib has difficulty keeping up with school, struggles academically, and has challenges making new friends.

The paper will present a positioning analysis of the narratives. That means that the analysis seeks to look after connections between the narrator, the social context in which the activity is made, and relevant aspects of the master narrative, the wider social world.

The narrative activity can be analyzed in three different levels. The position level 1 focuses on the what in the story, how the characters are positioned to one another. The position level 2 focuses on the how in the story, the interactions between the actors int the actual situation of interactions. How do the storyteller position themselves to the audience, and how does the storyteller address the question “Who are you?”. The position level 3 focuses on how the storyteller position themselves to a wider discourse, to social and cultural processes in the situation of interactions

By analysing this family’s stories by using positioning analysis, I will seek to understand Kalib and his families’ possibilities and rights in Norway. This can give us important information about refugee children without residence permit rights in Norway. What impact can it have on a young boy’s life situation with all this changes in his life, with all those broken relationships?

Data in the project consists of notes / transcripts of informal conversations at meetings, messages via mobile phone, and two longer unstructured interviews with conversations focusing on education from the home country, during the flight and schooling in Norway. The interviews were conducted in July 2017 and February 2020 at the family's home at the reception center. The parents had to decide whether the children should participate in the interview, and at the first interview, they chose to have the interview when the children were at school. The second time, the children where there. In the interviews, I had an interpreter who translated the conversation. The first interview was recorded on tape, while the second interview was not recorded by mistake. There I wrote down both during and directly after the interview. Following the interviews, the children have returned home from school, and the interpreter and I have been invited to social meals prepared by the mother. I did not use the interview guide who led the conversations but started by talking about the research project and sharing the information letter that the parents signed. In the first interview, I asked the parents to tell me about their own schooling, without having a template or checkpoints to follow. I wanted to let the conversation flow as freely as possible, without any prior guidance other than talking about education. The interview lasted two hours, and the parents themselves chose to tell me about their concern for Kalib. In the second interview, we took up the thread about schooling in Norway, as well as what it is like to live in different asylum reception centers and to move around so much. We discussed various issues related to this, which I had noted in advance based on previous interview and conversations with the parents. When needed, the mother and I have communicated a lot via messages on mobile. At times it has been demanding to understand the content of the messages, since she translates from Arabic to Norwegian via google translator, but gradually I have become better at asking quite directly what she means to confirm that I have understood it correctly. The messages also contain photos from documents with the rejections, anchors, and statements from a lawyer. She also documents the various receptions with photos and describes the conditions.

A three-level positioning analysis (in progress) At positioning level 1, I will show how all the characters in the narratives are positioned, the parents, the children, the school, the reception staff etc. At position level 2, the focus is on the how in the story. How do the storyteller position themselves to the audience. At position level 3, I seek to understand how the storyteller position themselves to a wider discourse, to social and cultural processes in the situation of interactions and narratives.

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