The conceptual framework

The chapter describes the conceptual framework of the project which combined the concepts of hybrid integration and the facilitation of migrant children’s agency. It deals with the concept that facilitating migrant children’s agency is extremely important for their hybrid integration. Agency is intended as a specific form of participation, based on the choices of action that enable children to promote change in their social contexts. The concept of agency is combined with the concept of facilitation of children’s narratives and non-essentialist theories that challenge the idea of permanent membership of cultural groups to conceive cultural identity as a contingent product of social negotiation in public discourse and interaction. The chapter explains that cultural and ethnic diversity can be conceived as social construction, so that negotiations can produce hybrid identities, i.e. changing and flexible manifestations of cultural identities so that integration can be seen as hybrid integration, based on the interlacing of children’s personal cultural trajectories. Finally, the chapter illustrates how expectations about girls and boys can differ, creating barriers and possibilities in terms of children’s agency. The combination of an agency-based perspective with a gender approach leads to approach gender as a social construction.