ARTS, MIGRATIONS AND CHILD PROTAGONISM: AESTHETIC AND EDUCATIONAL POTENTIALS IN THE AMERICAS
Growing human mobility — driven by conflicts, climate disasters, persecution and economic vulnerabilities — has intensified contemporary migratory flows. In Latin America, thousands of families migrate every year in search of refuge and better living conditions. Within these movements, a significant share of the migrant population is made up of children. Upon entering school, these children frequently face challenges related to access, welcome and inclusion, such as barriers to enrollment (Norões, 2021), linguistic and cultural barriers, discrimination based on class, race and origin (Rocha; Mendes, 2023; Aguiar, Coelho, Assumpção, 2023) and, even more worryingly, the progressive erasure of their identities and cultural heritages, a process often naturalized by curricula and pedagogical practices with a monocultural bias (Candau, 2016).
Given this scenario, the symposium is proposed as a space dedicated to interdisciplinary reflection on the potential of the arts to promote humanizing and intercultural environments committed to belonging, active listening and child protagonism. The book Migrant and Refugee Childhoods: Welcoming through Art and Education (Hartmann et al., 2025), the result of research, artistic actions and multidisciplinary collaborations, is a central reference for this symposium, as it highlights the transformative role of the arts in processes of listening and co-creation aimed at guaranteeing the fundamental rights of children.
The symposium is justified by the urgency of articulating practical-conceptual frameworks that can support professional training and the development of participatory research methodologies with migrant children. Educators, researchers and artists need theoretical-methodological references to transform schools and communities into territories of listening, welcome, inclusion and critical intercultural education (Walsh, 2005). Thus, the symposium seeks investigations and reports that use the arts as strategies for education, resilience and intercultural dialogue, challenging hegemonic canons, valuing plural epistemologies, knowledges and forms of knowledge, and consolidating epistemic disobedience in everyday pedagogical practices.
As part of the Migrations thematic line of the ICA Congress, the symposium seeks to move beyond viewing the child as a mere appendage of the family’s migratory process (Zúñiga, 2017; Norões, 2021), recognizing the child instead as a protagonist in building new community ties through artistic expression. In this context, particular attention is given to understanding the migrant child as a protagonist, bearer of cultural heritage, holder of their own knowledge, and subject of rights.
The symposium accepts proposals aligned with the following objectives:
* Debate decolonial, intercultural and insurgent pedagogical approaches that recognize and integrate migrant childhoods.
* Discuss reference frameworks and practical-conceptual structures for training teachers and cultural mediators in the field of arts focused on migrant childhoods.
* Share interdisciplinary projects and methodologies that employ literature, performing arts, visual arts, dance and music as strategies for education, welcome, school inclusion, resilience and confronting xenophobia and racism.
* Share collaborative experiences focused on the co-creation of inclusive practices that recognize migrant children as protagonists of their cultures and educational environments as spaces of intercultural dialogue.
* Discuss participatory methodologies with children that recognize their experiences, perspectives and active role in migratory processes.
