Castle and Cage: Meaning of Home for Palestinian Children and Families
Children and families in Palestine live in an environment characterized by the constant threat of violence in their homes, schools, and neighborhood communities. It is within this context that an examination of the meaning of home is relevant. For home tends to represent a beloved and safe place for children in families in the context of political violence. Yet, as this paper illustrates, the meaning of home is actually much more complicated and can be both positive and negative.
Methods
Data were collected using the innovative, participatory methodology of rapid ethnography. Eighteen families (for a total of 149 individual family members) in the West Bank and East Jerusalem participated in collaborative family interviews. All participants were encouraged to draw during the interview in order to illustrate a point or tell a story. In addition to participating in family interviews, children were invited to participate in GPS-tracked neighborhood walks around their home communities. To further ground the data, ten in-depth interviews were conducted with key community informants who work with Palestinian children and families.
Results
Findings indicated an inherent contradiction in the concept and meaning of home for Palestinian children and families. Participants expressed a tension between home as both a castle and a cage. As a castle, home serves as (1) a site of family practices, (2) a center of identity, and (3) a place of protection in the context of political violence. However, the home can also serve as a cage for family members because of (1) the unhealthy physical condition of the home, (2) the lack of privacy that characterizes many families’ homes, and (3) the feeling that one is a prisoner in one’s own home.
Conclusions and Implications
Family members may hold different meanings of home, which can be positive, negative, or both. Practitioners and policymakers working with children and families in these contexts should consider these diverse—and sometimes contradictory—meanings of home. Though home is often viewed as protective—and treated as such in practice and policies with populations affected by political conflict—it may also be a negative environment. Therefore, practice and policy must include diverse and unique experiences of home. Practitioners must allow for children and families to tell their own stories of home and what meaning—positive, negative, or both—they may attribute to home. Based on children’s and families’ own conceptualizations of home, policies should be developed that encourage the positive elements of home, such as gathering families together in the home, nurturing one’s identity based on home, and using the home as a protective physical space. At the same time, policies should address the negative elements of home, such as ensuring that homes are physically healthy, increasing the privacy of homes that are in overcrowded environments, and providing opportunities for children and families to safely explore the places beyond their homes, thereby contributing to children and families well-being in the context of political violence.