Objectives of the SAUMA Project
What does everyday out-of-home care look like examined from the perspective of young people with multiple minority identities who are in care? SAUMA imagines new kinds of futures and identity-affirming services within the everyday practices of out-of-home care. The diversity and identities of children in care have received relatively little attention in child welfare research.
We focus on two areas of out-of-home care: family placements and life in group homes for unaccompanied refugee children, and the experiences of gender minorities in residential child welfare institutions. The young people participating in our research are our co-researchers in imagining utopias for everyday life in out-of-home care. Together with them, we seek to foster hope and joy in the lives of young people with multiple minority identities.
We develop the concept of hope, as it has often been overlooked or viewed negatively within critical social science research. As a future-oriented positive affect, hope can be understood as a key factor motivating action among individuals and communities. In this way, hope becomes a resource that can generate, for example, liberating forms of resistance against oppression.
SAUMA examines practices of hope and minority joy that help people move forward and make life more bearable. We apply the concept of technologies of imagination, examining objects and practices that generate, enable, and shape imagination in everyday life.
We collect data using ethnographic and action research methods to trace the various material, digital, discursive, affective, and administrative structures within out-of-home care that shape and guide imagination. We develop a new approach in social work based on actor-network theory. We are also introducing new methodology as our perspective moves from the margins towards the centre. This enables us to identify technologies of imagination that would remain invisible from the perspective of the centre.
