Refugee Children’s Drawings: Reflections of Migration and War

Abstract

Humans have had to immigrate from one country to another throughout the history because of economic problems, warfare, safety, etc. Warfare and migration definitely bring about traumatic incidents for all humanity. However, they are much more destructive for children. The current study aims to review the warfare-and-migration-themed drawings of the Syrian and Palestinian children living in Turkey as refugees in comparison to the Turkish children’s drawings. A case study design was employed as a qualitative methodology. 19 Syrian, 6 Palestinian and 25 Turkish children aged between 6-10 years studying in various primary schools in City of Istanbul made up the study sample. Children were asked to draw pictures of warfare and migration, observed and interviewed for data collection. Content analysis was used to determine the themes present in the qualitative data. The themes identified in the drawings were discussed referring to the literature and recommendations were made.