‘To Feel at Home Is to Feel Safe’: Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (Re)Creating a Sense of Home in Foster Care over Time

Frederikke Jarlby (), Milfrid Tonheim and Marte Knag Fylkesnes
Additional contact information
Frederikke Jarlby: Department of Health and Social Sciences, Norwegian Research Centre, NORCE, Nygårdsgaten 112-114, 5008 Bergen, Norway
Milfrid Tonheim: Department of Health and Social Sciences, Norwegian Research Centre, NORCE, Nygårdsgaten 112-114, 5008 Bergen, Norway
Marte Knag Fylkesnes: Department of Health Promotion and Development, University of Bergen, Postboks 7807, 5020 Bergen, Norway

Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 14, issue 2, 1-24

Abstract: This study explores what unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs) emphasise as important to (re)create a sense of home in foster care over time. Through a longitudinal design consisting of semi-structured, photo-elicitation interviews and by drawing on the concept of homing , we clustered young people’s experiences into three intertwined aspects that contribute to (re)creating a sense of home in foster care: security, familiarity, and autonomy. The study highlights the importance of the emotional, relational, and material resources that young people may access through familial relationships (in foster care), which seem to be an essential part of (re)creating a sense of home. Our findings unpack how URMs in foster care are active agents in doing and becoming home—not just being at home—highlighting their participation and continuous navigation of belonging in daily life. Moreover, our analysis indicates that URMs (re)creating a sense of home in foster care is a dynamic and temporal process between their past experiences, present circumstances, and future aspirations. It is essential for child welfare workers and foster parents to be aware of and support URMs’ connections to their heritage background, birth families, and foster parents during transitions, as well as their individual needs. Findings from this study nuance existing research on what contributes to a supportive foster care environment for URMs, specifically how foster parents can facilitate URMs’ sense of home over time. Yet, our findings also highlight the need for further research on how to better support continuity in foster care for URMs, particularly regarding the role and meaning of cultural, religious, and linguistic belonging.

Keywords: belonging; foster care; homing; temporality; unaccompanied refugee minors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/2/91/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/2/91/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:14:y:2025:i:2:p:91-:d:1584651

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().