Already in its second year, MiCreate, a project providing a child-centred approach to exploring and surmounting integration challenges, has gathered valuable insights from schools across Manchester. Our team has immersed itself in the last few months in an in-depth research of migrant children, conducting participant observation, focus groups and interview with pupils from six primary and secondary schools in the city.

While the research is still ongoing, we have set up a blog space offering a glimpse into the challenges and thrills of conduction fieldwork amongst Mancunian pupils. Follow this space to find out more about our reflections on what is it like to gain trust, become a peer, socialise and play with children and adolescents, all the while gaining critical insights into their integration journeys.

In the first blogpost, Cosmin Popan, one of the MiCreate team member at Manchester Metropolitan University, discusses the challenges he faces as a Romanian researcher while trying to establish trust with pupils at a secondary school in Manchester, many of whom are also Romanian. As Cosmin observes, sharing the same ethnicity does not automatically warrant a privileged position in the research field.