Integration, race and “doing good” – some critical reflections

This article discusses reflections on doing research with and about migrant children, focusing on addressing “race” and racialization processes as well as integrationist implications of “doing good” among both school professionals and researchers. The motivation is to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how to research integration while also promoting a child-centred approach and taking children’s own understandings and opinions into account. Written at the threshold of the phase of analysing data from fieldwork with children, which is one of the main analytical tasks in the MiCREATE project, this article is a summary of some focus points and concepts that turned out to be of importance during the ongoing epistemic reflexivity process in the research project. Taking a point of departure in general methodological reflections on a structuralist-constructivist approach and on constant epistemic reflexivity, three approaches that could be useful in reflections and analyses are suggested: reflections on the concept of integration, on race and diversity, and on researcher positioning within a research project both while studying practices of “doing good” and aiming at “doing good” in itself as well.