Episode 39: Childhood & Migration: Parentification after Migration: On the Deconstruction of a Contested Concept

Welcome to the Childhood and Migration Series, hosted by CCYSC AwaazIn Episode 1 of this new series, Margot Lavent and Dr. Kaat Van Acker present rich, grounded examples of how families experience parenting and growing up both before and after fleeing their home countries. Within this context, they explore how families make sense of evolving roles, tasks, responsibilities, and caregiving dynamics and critically examine the widely used—and often contested—concept of parentification.Margot Lavent is a researcher at Odisee University College in Brussels, affiliated with the SocialWork Research Group and the Centre for Family Studies. Her research focuses (changing) family dynamics among refugee families, child- and family-friendly reception centers, and, more generally, parenting and growing up in the context of refugee families. She also works as a freelancer, providing training, workshops, and peer supervision sessions on diversity-sensitive social work. Together with Mieke Schrooten, Sophie Withaeckx, and Dirk Geldof, Margot co-authored Transmigration: Social Work in a World of Superdiversity (2016), which explores the experiences of transmigrants in Belgium and the implications for social work.Dr. Kaat Van Acker is a lecturer in Social Work at Odisee University of Applied Sciences in Brussels and in Social and Cultural Psychology at KU Leuven in Belgium. Her research focuses on family dynamics in refugee and immigrant communities, with particular attention to how parenthood and childhood are reconstructed after forced migration and shaped by institutional settings and legislation. Over the years, she has also examined issues related to the acculturation of Muslim minorities, the resilience of refugee families, and the role of collective emotions. Alongside her academic work, Kaat practices as an emotion-focused therapist and maintains a strong interest in how therapy can be adapted to intercultural contexts. She is the author of 13 peer-reviewed articles on migration and intergroup relations, including a recent study on shifting narratives of parenthood among refugee families and social workers in collective reception centres. In this work, she introduced the concept of “institutionalized forms of parentification.Podcast hosts and editors: Dr. Adrienne Atterberry (Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Lowell) and Dr. Karina Ruiz (Director of Research, CSLX).Post-production work: Kate Parsons (Student, University of Massachusetts Lowell)