INFORMAL PRACTICES OF UNACCOMPANIED AND SEPARATED CHILDREN TRAVELING THE BALKANS ROUTE – RESEARCH RESULTS AND LESSONS LEARNED ON CONDUCTING RESEARCH WITH THIS POPULATION

During 2018 and 2019 the Save the Children’s Balkans Migration and Displacement Hub carried out a research on informal practices of unaccompanied and separated children traveling the Balkans route. The results are presented in the report “Struggling to Survive: unaccompanied and separated children travelling the Balkans route”(link is external), while the research challenges met during this process and learnings on overcoming these challenges were collected and presented in a document called “Researching UASC: Lessons learned”.

Although this webinar will shortly present key findings on how unaccompanied children find important recourses during their journey, its main focus will be on what are the main difficulties researchers face while researching UASC in transit countries (and how we overcame them). These difficulties and challenges vary from logistical ones (related mostly to the organization of research and accompanying challenges), those related to data collection itself as well as those concerning child protection and safeguarding.

These learnings aim at contributing to the body of knowledge for migration research and, particularly, research on children in migrations. Knowing which obstacles one might meet while conducting research on UASCs or which parts of the research process one should focus special attention/ additional recourses on, could be very useful to anyone planning a research in similar conditions.