Original scientific paper
Accomodation and Adaptation of Refugee and Expelled Children in Zagreb
Carmen Brčić
; Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, Zagreb, Croatia
Tihomir Dumančić
; Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The presence of parents and other relatives (especially older ones) is important for children's adaptation. Three-member and smaller families are more frequent at refugees, while displaced persons have four-member and bigger families. Father's presence is far more rare with refugees and the presence of mother along with her child is also rare, although the population of refugee children is significantly younger than that of displaced ones. According to parents' statements, displaced children have essentially better solved their sleeping problems, a great majority of them have a separate bed in the room they share with somebody else, while refugee children, as a rule, either share their bed with some other child or with somebody older. The respondent children, pertaining to the middle group, according to the time their seeking refuge began, are the least satisfied with their accommodation. They simply came later and got worse. Relative conciliation with the present situation is more expressive by those who arrived the last, after 1 April 1992. The regularity of meals differentiate displaced persons from refugees even more. As stated by parents' (or tutors') responses, all displaced children have at least three meals a day, while refugee children eat “according to circumstances”. The data obtained first by surveying children and then their parents, often differ. While refugee children are somewhat critical towards some ways of their accommodation, their parents are very cautious regarding their critique being, from one side, aware of the destruction they avoided by coming to Croatia and, from the other, not wishing to unnecessarily try out the tolerance of domestic authorities. Displaced children have much more associated with, as well as conflicted or quarrelled either with their fellow-mates in the refugee's camps or children from Zagreb of the same age, than the refugee children. This absence of keeping company with and clashing with the children of the same age as well, can be explained by the shortness of time, their not including in the school system which increases the possibilities both of association and conflict, and by stress situation which brought about the unsociableness of displaced children, only recently coming from the zone of war operations. Such data on mutual conflicts of displaced children are in greater degree the result of more lasting joint stay at places which are not even designed for playing so that saturation is more likely to appear, than the result of stress situations which may provoke clashes. Such conclusions are drawn from children's responses on their associations which only show their normal reactions.
Keywords
expelled children; refugee children; adaptation; Zagreb
Hrčak ID:
127279
URI
Publication date:
31.12.1992.
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