This project used children's media productions as both a research tool and a means for enabling young refugees and migrants to connect with each other and communicate about their lives. CHICAM is based on the premise that "Media are central to the lives of refugee and migrant children in Europe. Their uses of television, the Internet, music, photography and video as well as mobile technologies are diverse, drawing on global, diasporic and local connections. Their uses are directly related to their social needs." In addition to video production and face-to-face contact, ICTs were a key research and communication tool for organisers as well as for the children participating in CHICAM.

Working with 6 partnering organisations, the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media set up 6 media clubs for refugee and migrant children (ages 10-14) in the following countries: Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. These clubs, intended to serve as social centres as well as places to learn about and make media, met weekly after school hours over a year (with some extra full days during school holidays). Together, participants created videos about their experiences (click here to view the videos online). They then exchanged these videos on the internet. Specifically, the CHICAM intranet was an online area where the children from the various clubs could view and comment on each other's work. In addition to video-related comments, there was also a general discussion board designed to enable the children to discuss the media on the site and have conversations with members of the other clubs - a form of intercultural exchange.

In each participating country, researchers and media educators employed by the project collaborated with youth workers and teachers. Using the internet, they established a communications network to facilitate the sharing of children's media productions, in order to generate dialogues between them. This process was carried out in part through a dedicated online discussion board where researchers could post comments and discuss the reports between clubs/countries. These processes of production and exchange were intended to offer the researchers diverse views on key social policy areas such as peer relationships, experiences of education, and family life in migration.

A final conference, which was held in Brussels in October 2004, brought together approximately 50 policy makers, practitioners and researchers. The project DVD was launched and a 10-minute video presenting the project and the work of the children opened the proceedings. The project director then outlined the research areas and the main policy considerations, with specific findings and recommendations (organised by project theme) presented by the lead authors/countries of the reports (click here to access these reports). These findings and policy recommendations were informally endorsed by a young woman who had come to Europe as an unaccompanied refugee from Bosnia and had experienced the difficulties in school and community common to many of the children in the project.

Children, Migration.

The following words are those of CHICAM Research Officer Liesbeth de Block:

"The project found that media production provided an important opportunity to integrate verbal and non-verbal forms of communication and expression, to promote social and intercultural communication between children and to address emotional and symbolic aspects of experience and identity. Media production also triggered reflection and discussion during different phases of the production process. Seeing videos from other European countries both brought to the fore and challenged stereotypes and, through their observations of the details raised discussions about the different national contexts of the clubs. This was important for those children with different cultural experiences and who are in the process of settling into new countries of residence. However, in the increasingly culturally diverse societies of Europe this also has implications for the social and media education and visual literacies of all children.

Some of the key areas that this points to are:

• the need for more creative uses of media and ICT in both formal and informal education settings,
• the training of media educators so that they can develop greater awareness of the needs of visual intercultural communications and develop appropriate new practice,
• the creation of platforms for disseminating the increasing numbers of youth and 'minority' media productions,
• the need for consistent European wide media policies to ensure media representation of Europe's minorities, and
• the need for improved access to new media by those presently excluded."