Displaced children’s experience of places and play: a scoping review

ABSTRACT

There is a lack of understanding about displaced children’s experiences of places and play in the field of children’s geographies and built environment. This paper contributes to emerging knowledge in the fields of displacement, place and play by summarising and identifying gaps in the existing evidence regarding displaced children’s experiences of place in temporary and/or informal settlements, or in new environments. The scoping review deployed a combination of search terms related to displacement (displaced, informal settlement, temporary settlement, refugee) and themes related to place and play (child friendly places/spaces, experience of place, place attachment). A total of 1001 studies were identified from ScienceDirect and Proquest, with 33 studies included in the review. From the limited number of relevant studies, it was found that place attachment provides a sense of stability amidst change, contributes to wellbeing and identity, and supports the cognitive, physical and social development of displaced children. Overall, play and opportunities for play can help children to adapt to a new place following displacement. The review concludes that more research is needed to explore displaced children’s experience of place in both their original and new environment, as well as comparing the experiences of place for ‘placed’ and ‘displaced’ children.

KEYWORDS:

• Displaced children
• experience of place
• informal settlement
• temporary settlement
• children’s play
• child friendly spaces

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the UCL Global Engagement Fund 2019–2020 and UCL Grand Challenges Small Grant 2019–2020 for supporting the research on which the paper is based.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by UCL Grand Challenges Small Grant; UCL Global Engagement Fund.