Understanding the Role of Digital Technology in the Transitions of Refugee Families with Young Children into A New Culture: A Case Study of Scotland

Abstract

The worldwide refugee crisis is a major current challenge, affecting the health and education of millions of families with children due to displacement. Despite the various challenges and risks of migration practices, numerous refugee families have access to interactive technologies during these processes. The aim of this ongoing study is to explore the role of technologies in the transitions of refugee families in Scotland. Based on Tudge's ecocultural theory, a qualitative case-study approach has been adopted. Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with volunteers who work with refugee families in a big city in Scotland, and proxy observations of young children were facilitated remotely by their refugee parents. A preliminary overview of the participants' insights of the use and role of technology for transitioning into a new culture is provided here.

Full text

Understanding the Role of Digital Technology in the Transitions
of Refugee Families with Young Children into A New Culture: A
Case Study of Scotland
Valentina Andries
School of Education, The University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
valentina.andries@ed.ac.uk
Sabina Savadova
School of Education, The University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
sabina.savadova@ed.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
The worldwide refugee crisis is a major current challenge, aect-
ing the health and education of millions of families with children
due to displacement. Despite the various challenges and risks of
migration practices, numerous refugee families have access to inter-
active technologies during these processes. The aim of this ongoing
study is to explore the role of technologies in the transitions of
refugee families in Scotland. Based on Tudge’s ecocultural theory, a
qualitative case-study approach has been adopted. Semi-structured
interviews have been conducted with volunteers who work with
refugee families in a big city in Scotland, and proxy observations of
young children were facilitated remotely by their refugee parents.
A preliminary overview of the participants’ insights of the use and
role of technology for transitioning into a new culture is provided
here.
CCS CONCEPTS
•Human-centered computing →Human computer interac-
tion (HCI);HCI design and evaluation methods.
KEYWORDS
Refugee Families; Children and Technology; Language Learning
ACM Reference Format:
Valentina Andries and Sabina Savadova. 2021. Understanding the Role of
Digital Technology in the Transitions of Refugee Families with Young Chil-
dren into A New Culture: A Case Study of Scotland . In Interaction Design
and Children (IDC ’21), June 24–30, 2021, Athens, Greece. ACM, New York,
NY, USA, 5 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3459990.3465185
1 INTRODUCTION
According to UNICEF, the number of international migrants reached
272 million in 2019, and 33 million of the migrants were displaced
children [
5
]. “A refugee is dened as an individual who has to ee
from his or her home country to escape persecution for dierent rea-
sons, including race, religion, nationality or political oppression”[
1
].
Scotland (United Kingdom) is one of the leading countries welcom-
ing refugees and since 2015, the country has pledged to resettle
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https://doi.org/10.1145/3459990.3465185
20,000 refugees under the UK’s Syrian Resettlement Programme.
The challenges associated with displaced children are not new,
however they are gaining increased international visibility [21].
Many families who are displaced go through assimilation pro-
cesses related to new places, languages, and cultures, facing stressful
circumstances as a result [
31
]. In relation to language acquisition in
a new country, families use professional services to receive informa-
tion and resources about language learning and cultural adaptation
[
25
]. Nonetheless, their children can make a signicant contribu-
tion to their families’ transitions into the new country [
24
]. The
children spend most of their time engaging in activities that allow
for language learning, and adaptation to the new socio-cultural
norms quickly and more naturally.
1.1 Refugee Families and Technologies
The increased exposure and reliance of migrants on interactive
technologies before and after the relocation process is becoming
of interest to the human-computer interaction research commu-
nity [
9
,
14
,
18
]. Recent studies such as Kaufmann [
16
] indicate that
smartphones are increasingly being used for everyday language
learning and translation [
29
] because they can support quick, sit-
uated and informal learning [
17
]. In a study with displaced youth
from East African, Latin American and Asian countries, Fisher and
Ya [
11
] found that young refugees use technology to help their
family in various situations, such as to understand and acquire
socio-cultural norms, to translate information as well as to navigate
geography.
Nonetheless, with regards to younger refugee children or their
caregivers, few technologies are currently adapted to their needs,
preferences and abilities [
14
]. Hourcade et al. [
14
] discuss that
technologies could be designed for specic purposes, particularly
in order to facilitate cultural transition and immersion, to support
essential communication with family and relatives who are left
behind, and to enable their connection with local communities and
newly-found peers.
Although the main purpose of the current study was to under-
stand the refugee families’ use of already existing technologies,
requirements for technology design have also emerged qualita-
tively. These are discussed in a subsequent section (Interviews with
Befrienders). Considering all the existing and possible problems
refugee families face in host countries, a number of intervention
programs have been put in place to assist families in need, and many
of these programmes have been found helpful by all the parties
involved [
10
]. While it is not our intention to develop and conduct
intervention programmes, the outputs of the project may support
arXiv:2105.12538v1 [cs.HC] 26 May 2021

IDC ’21, June 24–30, 2021, Athens, Greece Valentina Andries and Sabina Savadova
refugee families in their transition process, alleviating some of the
stress experienced as a result of having to rapidly acquire a new
language for cultural adaptation.
1.2 Children and Technology Use
Over the last decade the number of households owning dierent
kinds of digital media devices has increased rapidly according to the
surveys conducted in countries of the Global North [
2
–
4
]. Recent
research has revealed that digital technologies are already becoming
a part of their everyday practices and children’s exposure to digital
devices begins well before school years. Children often start living
in a media-rich world through their parents, care-givers and siblings
from birth and they are becoming increasingly adept at using digital
technologies at younger ages [6, 12, 19, 20, 23, 27].
Children use digital technologies for a multitude of purposes: to
learn, to interact and to understand the surroundings [
19
] or to play
games and watch videos [
13
]. Nevertheless, children’s interactions
with digital technologies compose only one part of their daily life
in addition to their other everyday activities [8, 27, 32].
Although refugee families use their native language at home,
they frequently want to use the host country language as part of the
process of settling in and also to help their children to adapt to their
new schools [
15
]. However, considering that the majority of parents
do not know the language of the host country, particularly mothers
who spend more time with their children at home, children often
become mediators between their families and the host country [
24
].
This project aims to locate the role of digital media (digi-
tal devices, such as smartphones, tablets, TV and laptops) in
this mediation process by:
(1) understanding volunteer befrienders’ use of technol-
ogy in supporting the refugees’ transition to the Scot-
tish culture,
(2) determining whether children’s interactions with tech-
nologies at home have any impact on families’ transi-
tions into the new culture.
2 METHODS & PARTICIPANTS
The initial plans for this project entailed conducting face-to-face
semi-structured interviews with volunteers about their work with
the refugee families, as well as focus groups with dierent refugee
family members in situ while they would take part in various social
activities organised by the City Council or by charities from a big
city in Scotland for their befriending programme. Furthermore,
observations of how the refugees’ children interact with digital
technology during these events was also part of the initial study
design.
2.1 Befrienders
However, the data collection began in late spring 2020, and the
design had to be adapted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Consequently, semi-structured interviews were conducted online
with volunteers also known as befrienders (N=4), who regularly
work with refugee families from Syria in Scotland, in order to make
their transition smoother.
The befriending programmes facilitated by the Scottish gov-
ernment ocially last for 9 months initially, entailing systematic
meetings, once a week. The meetings can continue on their own
after the 9-month period if a relationship is developed, or it comes
to an end; usually, friendships develop as they learn about each
others’ cultures. The befriending program was initially created
for the refugees to explore the surroundings together with the be-
friender, however the volunteers adapt to the needs of the families.
Their connection fosters learning manifold aspects about life in
Scotland, from navigating the social or legal system, to food and
leisure. English language practice with adult refugees, as well as
with the children are usual activities which these befrienders do
with the families, or primarily with the refugee parents.
2.2 Families
So far, data has been collected from two refugee families with young
children aged 4-8-years old, by using a method called living journals
[
28
]. Through the living journals, parents were assigned as ‘proxy’
[
26
], and they were sent prompts (Where is your child? With whom?
What is your child doing? Why?) several days during a week. Parents
were asked to reply to these prompts with visuals (pictures or 30-
second-long videos) and answers to the questions, as inspired by a
study by Plowman and Stevenson [
27
]. Parents’ answers together
with the visuals they sent were collated to create a personalised
journal for the participant children in a paper and digital format.
The resulting journals were sent to the families in a paper format,
representing research output as well as memorabilia. Then parents
were invited to discuss the journal of their own children and that
of the other participant’s children in semi-structured interviews
held online. An interpreter facilitated the conversations. Prior to
sharing the children’s journal in a digital format online during the
discussions, we obtained the families’ consent for this purpose.
Relying on contextualist ecocultural theory, the living journals
method is focused around daily activities, which are grounded in
cultural values and norms [
28
,
30
]. The theory sheds lights into
children’s day-to-day lives through exploring their activities, in-
terests and interlocutors that they are interacting with on a daily
basis. This approach supports the importance of documenting tech-
nology use in context within a daily life, without disrupting the
participants’ routines via the researchers’ physical presence.
Thematic analysis has been employed to analyse the data from
the volunteers as well as the resulting living journals [
7
]. Each
family was treated as a case, and initially their data, together with
the visuals, were coded and analysed inductively following our
research aim, and then across cases [
22
]. The data analysis was
focused on revealing insights into children’s daily lives as rst
communicated by the befriender interviews, further visualised by
the parents in the journals, and discussed in the living journal
interviews.
Ethical approval was granted from the University for this study.
Special care was taken to obtain parents and children’s consent
and assent to participate in this study, and use their materials in
publications and conference presentations. All of the data collection
has been carried out remotely, respecting social distancing rules
imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and allowing for exibility in
data collection. The living journals approach allows the families to
observe their children using digital technology in their own home

Understanding the Role of Digital Technology in the Transitions of Refugee Families with Young Children into A New Culture: A Case Study of ScotlandIDC ’21, June 24–30, 2021, Athens, Greece
Figure 1: Pictures of children from the two families. Figure (A) depicts the children watching cartoons in English on TV; Figure
(B) showcases the app selection on their parents’ smartphone, and Figure (C) shows the older child reading stories to the young
siblings.
environments, as well as to communicate with the researchers at
times that suit them.
Because of the remote research approach, the researchers’ in-
volvement has been minimised for the study component involving
the refugee families. The living journals data was collected by us-
ing the instant messaging application WhatsApp, which has the
benet of encryption features. The parents were more condent
to use WhatsApp to send and receive data because they regularly
use that for communication with befrienders and their families in
their home countries, instead of platforms such as Collaborate or
Microsoft Teams.
3 FINDINGS
3.1 Interviews with Befrienders
Thus far, the interviews with the befrienders (N=4) have revealed a
few themes. These are discussed below, as well as in relation to the
themes emerging from the families’ data.
3.1.1 Technology Access. The volunteers made observations previ-
ously reinforced in the literature, regarding the refugees’ access to
and use of smartphone technology. Most families that they have
interacted with have smartphones; they are seen as a necessity,
not a luxury. The refugees need smartphones primarily to commu-
nicate with social workers, volunteers, the local authorities and
their families; they seem to have appointments all the time with
the authorities through their social workers.
3.1.2 Communication. According to the befrienders, the refugees
seem to have an overall preference for WhatsApp for communi-
cating with each other, for keeping in touch with other refugees
in the same city, as well as for talking to their family members
and relatives who were left behind. So the befrienders also use
WhatsApp to set meetings and communicate with the refugees.
If the befrienders happen to only have limited Arabic language
skills, or the nature of the discussion between them and the refugee
adults implies more complexity, the latter may involve their chil-
dren or grandchildren in the conversation. The children may have
more developed language skills and they feel proud of their role as
enablers.
3.1.3 WhatsApp for Homework. Due to the pandemic, the befrien-
ders decided (by discussing in their own WhatsApp group) to help
the refugees’ children however needed for learning and practising
English. They made this decision due to closing of schools and the
uncertainty about socialising. This approach proved to be particu-
larly valuable for families with children who arrived in Scotland
shortly before the pandemic aected all essential activities in the
UK in spring 2020. The befrienders explained that they were fo-
cusing on helping the children out with the homework online on
WhatsApp, such as reading practice and pronunciation.
3.1.4 Google Translate. According to the befrienders, the refugees
are aware of various apps and dictionaries that they can use to
communicate. English language classes are also facilitated through
the City Council for the adults that are interested or available
for that. However, they reported that they mainly make use of
Google for acquiring information, and Google translate specically
for language purposes. Nonetheless, they note that, while Google
translate can be useful for some very basic communication, its use
is rather limited beyond that.
The befrienders interestingly point out that communication can
quickly be impeded when using such apps due to a lack of dialectic
input/output. More specically, issues with google translate can
refer to the system using standard Arabic, whereas Syrians speak
levantine Arabic, which is the spoken language. Thus, dierent
nuances of communication are lost in translation, resulting in po-
tentially awkward moments. One of the befrienders discusses that
“it messes things up even more”, leading to broken communication
as it is not easy to identify the correct synonyms or nuances to use
depending on the type of conversation that they engage in.
Another befriender emphasised that the National Health Services
should provide interpreters for the refugees’ visits to the doctor
but in practice, that is not always possible. This is just one example
of situations where interactive technology could be very useful to
convey messages eciently.
3.1.5 Children as Language Enablers. Nonetheless, the befrienders
describe themselves and the adult refugees as not very technologi-
cal, as opposed to the children. They discuss that, as expected, the

IDC ’21, June 24–30, 2021, Athens, Greece Valentina Andries and Sabina Savadova
children learn English faster than the parents, and that “some peo-
ple learn to depend on their children” for communication purposes.
In some cases, the children who get to speak English very well
would playfully correct their parents, translate phrases for them,
or help the befrienders to communicate with their parents when
Google translate fails.
3.1.6 Early Design Requirements for A Customisable Language Tool.
For communicating with people with very limited English, the vol-
unteers emphasise their reliance on visual materials such as picture
dictionaries, ashcards which the befrienders would make speci-
cally for themes relevant for the dierent families that they work
with, or Google images to refer to specic objects. The volunteers
describe turning such activities into a language exchange, the for-
mer learning words in Arabic and the refugees learning something
in English, while the children help as well.
The befrienders discuss that they would nd it benecial to
use a digital tool for language exchange. More specically, such
a tool should allow the users to customise its content according
to themes or family needs. Children’s homework could be one of
these themes, as emerging from the interviews, which could then
be further subdivided into topics. One of the befrienders reects
that such a tool could be used instead of ashcards, to which videos
could be added as well, to facilitate memorising. Another befrien-
der discusses that a visual dictionary could be built within such a
platform, and these could be envisaged as family activities with the
help of the volunteers. They also reect on further personalising
such a tool, by allowing the users to build a useful phrase bank that
would appropriately reect their dialect, and to express dierent
nuances in communication.
3.2 Living Journals and Interviews with
Families
The living journals from the families reinforced some of the themes
presented earlier, such as the families using smartphones and What-
sApp to communicate with their families from overseas. The pic-
tures sent by the parents, as prompted by the researchers (What
are they [children] doing now?) revealed that the children use digi-
tal technologies as part of their daily activities, alongside arts and
crafts, books, exercise books for homework and outdoors activi-
ties. Specically to language acquisition, the living journals also
showcased the children engaging in various activities which fa-
cilitate this process. Those ranged from doing English homework
with a view to support more formal literacy practices, as well as by
watching cartoons in English on TV (Figure A), listening to nursery
rhymes, or using dierent apps in English on their tablets, and the
parents’ smartphones (Figure B).
From the volunteers’ accounts as well as from the living journals,
storytelling emerged as an activity that also facilitates language
learning. Furthermore, storytelling was used to preserve their native
language as well. As it can be noted in Figure C, the older child
from one of the families that has taken part in the study so far, is
being portrayed reading a story in Arabic to their younger sisters.
The parents and the volunteers want to encourage communication
in their native language to their children so as to keep it alive. They
also discussed that there used to be volunteer groups that organise
storytelling times in both Arabic and English, which they enjoyed
attending prior to the pandemic.
4 CONCLUSION
To summarise these preliminary ndings, it is apparent that in-
teractive technologies play an important part in refugee families’
transitions into the Scottish culture. Exploring refugee children’s in-
teractions with digital technologies within their daily lives through
the lens of ecocultural theory allowed us to reveal the ways in
which children contributed to the families’ day-to-day lives and
their adaptation in the new country. However, it is important to fur-
ther unravel the dierent needs and preferences of refugee families
and volunteers regarding language acquisition and communication,
and how digital technologies could meet them.
At this stage, as recruitment is still ongoing, it is dicult to draw
denite conclusions regarding the design of a digital platform for
communication, from the perspective of the refugee families’ and
that of the young children. More comprehensive reections about
the opportunities aorded by existing technologies, as well as their
shortcomings when it comes to being used in ways that were not
initially intended shall be provided in further work, complemented
by more data. Nevertheless, the role of children in their parents’
language acquisition, as well as the guiding and facilitating inu-
ence of the befrienders has emerged from the current data. The
purpose of the research is to ultimately compile a guidebook for the
families and the volunteers, highlighting how digital technology
can support language acquisition for cultural assimilation. Lastly,
design requirements can be provided, with a view to developing an
English language-facilitating tool that would support the families’
transition.
5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to extend our gratitude to the befrienders and refugee
families who have kindly agreed to take part in our research. We
thank the Universitas21 network for granting us in 2019 a Graduate
Collaborative Research Award of 5000USD, Professor Lydia Plow-
man for her invaluable guidance, as well as Alexandra Pennycuick
and Laura Iosip.
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