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Interrupting ‘the Other’ Childhood: On Social
Circus in Asylum Accommodations
Camilla Löf
To cite this article: Camilla Löf (2021): Interrupting ‘the Other’ Childhood: On Social Circus in Asylum Accommodations, Journal of Intercultural Studies, DOI: 10.1080/07256868.2021.1883568
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2021.1883568
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
Published online: 25 Feb 2021.
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Interrupting
‘the Other’ Childhood: On Social Circus in Asylum
Accommodations
Camilla Löf
Malmö University, Faculty of Education and Society, Malmo, Sweden
ABSTRACT
Social circus has emerged as a complement to regular health and welfare interventions for identified target groups, often striving for social change. Previous studies point out the challenge of identifying target groups without simultaneously positioning said groups as ‘others’. Although children and childhood are intimately intertwined with circus, not least as target groups for circus arts interventions, there are no previous studies that examine constitutions of childhood through social circus. This article is based on a 1.5-year long ethnographic fieldwork on a project using circus in asylum accommodations in Sweden. The aim is to explore the childhood(s) constituted through social circus practice in asylum accommodations in Sweden, with focus on the work of the social circus team. The analysis draws upon childhood sociology informed by critical theory, asking what discursive positions are offered the target group through the social circus project. The analysis shows that when identifying the target group, the team navigated through contradictory discourses. Establishing and upholding a discourse on childhood as playful, the circus activities interrupted the positioning of children in dislocation as ‘others’. The design of the project, as well as the ever-shifting roles in the interaction between all participants, enabled new positions for all.
KEYWORDS Childhood; children; dislocation; circus; social circus; otherness
Introduction
In 2016, two circus organizations joined forces to offer circus activities to children and youth in asylum accommodations in Sweden. The background to the project is the story of the world in crisis and thousands of children in need of protection and support when starting out their (new) lives in Sweden. The goals of the project ranged from offering dislocated children psychosocial support through play and learning different circus skills, to opening up new ways of working for staff at asylum accommo-dations. Moreover, an overall goal of the project was to raise public awareness about the involuntariness of dislocation. The project is one of many circus practices referred to as social circus, that has emerged internationally as a complement to regular health and welfare interventions for different target groups, claimed to reach where other efforts
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(such as by health care and social workers) do not reach, with different ways of working (see Carp1998; Fournier et al.,2014).
The Identified Problem – Positioning of Target Groups as ‘Others’
The target groups of social circus are often identified as particularly vulnerable in society, such as dislocated children as in the project described here. Many social circus programs also want to transform the world, through raising voices of target groups, pushing social positions forward (see, for example, Bessone 2017). However, a discussion emerging from circus studies concerns the risk of further stigmatizing target groups through the mere identification of a group as in need of something, or as vulnerable or marginalized (Spiegel2016; Bessone2017; Sorzano2018, among others). Similar discussions are found in otherfields of research: The approach to ‘open up’ for someone to ‘be included in’, ‘be given a chance to enter’, or ‘get back into’ society (or school, or working life) risks becom-ing borderwork, strengthenbecom-ing the borders between those who are already in a commu-nity or group, and those who are not (see, for example, Ahmed2000,2012; Hydén et al.
2003). The challenge of finding ways of addressing a target group and acknowledging marginalizing structures and mechanisms in society, without reproducing social or dis-cursive positions of that group as‘others’ (see Ahmed2000,2012), is difficult and needs
to be further reflected.
The circus team in the present study have developed an entertaining and educational concept that matches the needs of dislocated children. Although children and childhood are intimately intertwined with ideas of circus (Bolton 2004), there is a gap within the field concerning studies that analyze aspects of childhood through circus arts or social circus. Therefore, there is a great need, not only to reflect upon target groups in general, but to examine constitutions of childhood through social circus in particular. In the follow-ing, I will explore how the circus team dealt with the dilemma of organizing a social circus project for dislocated children as a target group– without positioning anyone as ‘other’.
Aim
This article aims to explore the childhood(s) constituted through a social circus practice in asylum accommodations in Sweden. I direct specific attention towards the work of the social circus team and how they handle the risk of positioning participating children and youth as ‘others’. The analysis draws upon a 1.5-year ethnographic fieldwork, and is guided by the research question: What discursive positions are offered the target group through the social circus project?
Previous Research– a Brief Overview
Arrighi (2014) defines social circus as a recreational pursuit of the circus arts, with an agenda of social change. According to Arrighi, the social in‘social circus’ came from a Cirque du Monde program with‘an interventionist approach to social ills using circus arts’ (2014: 206) in the 1990s. However, this was not the first circus program with a social agenda: Long before the 1990s, circus arts were used in several countries as a tool for bringing communities together (2014). The many social circus practices that
have emerged internationally are designed in various ways. Therefore,‘social circus’ can be explained as‘an umbrella term for the use of circus arts in any caring, supportive or therapeutic setting’ (Cadwell2018: 22). This definition puts wellbeing at the center, yet it is a wellbeing that is closely intertwined with a sense of community. Thus, social circus is a way of promoting, not only healthy individuals, but also health equity and the social change needed to sustain it (see, for example, Carp 1998; McCaffery 2014; Spiegel
2016; Spiegel et al. 2019). Shumakova (2015) suggests that the open, complex, multi-level communication system of this art form is of particular significance for cultural (and social) change: The cultural dialogue enables shifts in norms and values, opening up‘new horizons of possibilities’ (Shumakova2015: 32).
Social Circus, Social Change, and‘Otherness’
In a study on social circus for refugee children and adolescents in Turkey, Van Es et al. (2019) examined life in dislocation from a participant perspective. The children and parents described their life situations as a state of nervousness and sadness, with few things to do and few friends to rely on. In the interviews, the parents also talked about how much they wished their children would forget about the war and their pain. The results suggest that, after a few weeks of circus training, the participants’ resilience and self-esteem were enhanced, as were their activity levels. For some of the participants, the circus activities opened up for new future possibilities, such as becoming circus artists.
Other studies report similar results. Trust and emotional safety (Bessone 2017; Cadwell2018) are aspects identified as cornerstones of social circus, regarding both
pro-gress in training and the social atmosphere created. Moreover, in their analysis of social circus for children with autism, Seymour and Wise (2017) suggest that social circus is an ‘[…] opportunity to step into a world where risk and defiance of the “norm” are encour-aged; where imagination and aspiration are expected to be operating at full force– almost ‘out of control’ […]’ (Seymour and Wise2017: 89). Circus is an art form that demands for practitioners to be‘themselves’, to do tricks in their own way and on their own premises. Seymour & Wise describe how circus training opens for children to embrace the experi-ence of being themselves in a creative and supportive environment, without being mon-itored by regulating norms (which they are used to). Accordingly, social circus allows for participants to‘fit in’ on their own terms (Seymour and Wise2017: 83).
Lavers (2016: 513) uses the term resilient body to provide a theoretical underpinning for benefits of social circus as treatment of trauma. She describes how social circus con-tains body work that releases stress and gains power, which in turn opens for new ways of introducing the self to society, shifting the gaze of others and challenging narratives of victimhood. Similarly, Bessone (2017) suggests that gains of circus practice (such as praising bodily knowledge and embodied trust, inventiveness, and creativity) also carry the potential to impact subjectivities and societies outside of the workshops. Her results from a social circus project in Italy suggest possibilities of social circus practices disrupting pre-existing hierarchies (Bessone2017: 661). However, Bessone underscores that, although social circus encompasses possibilities to disrupt hierarchies, there is also a risk of constructing ‘others’ by identifying a target group, and defining ‘them’ (as opposed to‘us’) as in need of an intervention or of certain skills. This critical perspec-tive on‘otherness’ is the subject of a vivid discourse within the field.
Another critical reflection upon the risk of undermining equality is made by Sorzano (2018). Sorzano’s analysis highlights the binary understandings of social circus as social
work, on the one hand, and as a form of art (with potential to empower individuals and mobilize social change (cf. Shumakova2015)), on the other. This binary work positions social circus as‘other’ than art, or, as put by Sorzano, as ‘the other of circus’. According to Sorzano (2018), the binary is established by the global North (i.e. when the term‘social circus’ was established by the Canadian-based Cirque du Monde), where social circus is seen as consisting of programs aside from professional and performance circus, which is different to the understanding of social circus in the global South. Sorzano refers to Colombia as an example to show how social circus is regarded as professional and artis-tic, offering circus training to participants who have been overlooked by formal edu-cation systems. The definition of ‘social circus’ in the global North risks diminishing the transcendence, not only of the social circus movement, but also of the reality of circus practice as a whole. The problem that Sorzano (2018) sketches out appears as ontic (real): The discursive shift creates new realities.
Social Circus, Childhood, and‘Otherness’ – a Research Gap
Although children are target groups of many social circus programs, childhood is still an underexamined category. Surveying the field reveals that previous research on social circus for children addresses research gaps concerning the special needs associated with particular groups of children and youth. Similarly, the discussion on the risk of posi-tioning target groups as‘others’ is general and does not specifically explore childhood.
Besides Arrighi and Emeljanow’s (2012) research of child entertainers in Australia, few circus studies focus on childhood in their analysis. In his thesis, however, Bolton (2004; see also Bolton1999) puts children and childhood in the foreground for under-standing circus practices. Bolton reveals an intimate relationship between circus arts and ideas of how children think about circus: The aesthetics of early circus posters in North America is based on ideas of how children might describe circus– as impossible, exaggerated, or alien. These (mis)representations of circus are (now) deeply rooted in both how we think of circus (having experience of circus or not), and how we use the word‘circus’ metaphorically for chaotic and unruly situations. Moreover, Bolton demon-strates how critics have worried about the impact of demoralizing circus tales that desta-bilize social and cultural norms.
Bolton’s work (2004) displays constitutions of circus through (stereotypical ideas of) childhood, and claims that the lack of understanding of what circus really is can be harmful and belittle the hard work behind a skill. The intent of the present study is – in contrast to Bolton’s – to explore childhood through the practice of social circus. In order to strengthen the childhood perspective, I have chosen childhood sociology as a theoretical resource.
Theoretical Resources
The analysis in this article draws on childhood sociology (James et al. 1998; Corsaro
perspectives enable an understanding of what kind of childhood is constituted through circus practice.
Childhood Sociology
Childhood sociology was formulated as a new paradigm for childhood studies in the 1990s. This theoretical approach highlights childhood and children’s everyday lives through studies of social practices (James and Prout 1997; Corsaro2017), striving to acknowledge all children’s agency, and to make children’s voices heard.
Before this paradigm was established, research showed an interest in children only as part of families or other institutions, and in large-scale studies. Children and children’s actions were analyzed from a developmental psychological perspective, which has a uni-versal understanding of children (James et al.1998). For example, children of a certain age were expected to be and act about the same, and little interest was taken in variations within that age group, or in individual experiences. Taking an opposing standpoint, childhood sociology was therefore formulated as a framework for understanding chil-dren, and childhood, in their own right (James et al.1998).
However, a central notion is that childhood is not only a period of time in individual children’s lives: Childhood is also a generation – a structural (and marginalized) category in society, socially constructed and situated both geographically and historically. This calls for a pluralistic (rather than a universal) understanding of childhoods. Therefore, to be able to address structural problems in childhood, social interaction and discursive positions of childhood need to be analyzed in relation to macro structures (Corsaro2017; Hammersley 2017; see also Löf2011). As pointed out by Lee (2001), researchers’ and
other practitioners’ (such as circus artists’) notions of ‘children’ and ‘childhood’ have a reaffirming, constitutive power.
From this standpoint, the view of children imbued by social practice is also constitut-ing of childhood. If, for example, teachers interpret school education’s agenda as formconstitut-ing future citizens, teaching builds upon a view of children as becomings, rather than beings. This view undermines children’s agency, setting aside children’s experiences, opinions, and actions in the present. A child’s agency is therefore limited by its social and structural context; and how a child’s childhood is constituted is highly (but not only) dependent on adults’ and society’s view of children (as future citizens and/or as valuable in the present). Seen from this background, childhood sociology provides an understanding of childhood and children’s lives, and hence this theoretical perspective provides not only insights on circus as a social practice, but as a childhood practice. Accordingly, this framework enables an understanding of what kinds of childhood are constituted through social circus activities.
Childhood, Social Circus, and‘Otherness’
It is of importance to acknowledge the risks of putting a specific social category in the foreground for analysis. On the one hand, it is crucial to critically analyze marginalizing structures and mechanisms, but on the other hand, there is, as mentioned previously, a risk of enhancing the distinction between‘us’ and ‘them’ in the process (see Ahmed2000;
studies (much like the critical discussion on‘otherness’ in social circus), arguing that the focus on childhood as‘marginalized’ risks exotifying children, rather than strengthening children’s positions in society.
To address this problem, I use terms such as ‘otherness’ (Ahmed2000,2012) from critical theory, as it is already established within the field of circus studies (see, for example, Bessone2017; Sorzano2018). By doing so, I link this framework to previous studies, thus accumulating the knowledge on social circus while contributing to a deeper understanding of how childhood is constituted within this practice. For example, as pointed out in the previous section, Bolton’s work (2004) is helpful for understanding the relationship between representations of circus through ideas of ‘chil-dren’ and ‘childhood’. Understood from a childhood sociological perspective, the aes-thetics of the early American circus posters, therefore, draw on universal discourses on what a child is and how a child resonates, and thus (re)constitute positions for both individual children and childhood as a generation. The stereotypical ideas of circus– as impossible, extraordinary, alien, or ‘other’ – thus simultaneously position chil-dren as exaggerating, immature, naïve, and easily fooled, and as (still) having the ability to dream and fantasize. As Sorzano (2018) points out, discourses create new realities.
Methods and Materials
The empirical data for this study was mainly generated using ethnographic methods (combined with audio and audiovisual recordings), which Andersen (2005) suggests are particularly suitable for studying the relationship between actions in everyday life and the meanings given to those actions in practice.
Setting, Selection, and Materials
The social circus project on which this study is based, continued for 1.5 years and included three 2-month tours of asylum accommodations in Sweden. The main goal of the project was to offer psychosocial support through play and learning different circus skills. The target group of the project was children on the move, but persons of all ages were welcome to participate in the activities. The intervention was designed as a show, followed by a workshop in which spectators could participate. A goal within the project was to open up new ways of working for staff at asylum accommodations. At the end of a workshop, the circus team handed over a circus kit packed with juggling balls and other apparatus for continued play and training. In order to create a‘toolbox’ for work with dislocated children, the circus team had so-called immersion weeks, during which they collaborated with local cultural actors, sharing experiences of different ways of working. Moreover, an overall goal of the project was to raise public awareness about the involuntary nature of dislocation.
This article focuses on the work of the circus team. It is through their work, talk, and interaction with participants that the childhood constituted through this social circus practice can be understood and has been analyzed here. The study was conducted in line with the ethical guidelines of the Swedish Research Council (Gustafsson et al.
2017) concerning information on aims, distribution of results, and anonymity of the sub-jects of the research, and was approved by the ethical vetting board before the start of the
project. All of the team members in the project have been informed about the project and have given their written approval to participate in the study. In the following, to safe-guard their anonymity, they have been named‘Artist 1’, ‘Artist 2’, etc. in order of appear-ance in this text.
Staff at each asylum accommodation were informed before my arrival, so that the persons involved in the project activities knew the purpose of my study. It should be noted here that the children, youth, and other persons who took part in the activities of the social circus project, other than the members of the team, are not included in this study as individuals. Consequently, no personal data on the persons living, or working, in the asylum accommodations, nor on collaboration partners (during immer-sion weeks) along the road, has been collected. When referred to in presentations and publications, these persons are referred to either as‘participants’ or ‘collaboration part-ners’, or as ‘the child’. I use the term ‘administrative staff’ when referring to staff in the project organization, and‘accommodation staff’ when referring to workers at the asylum accommodations.
In total, the empirical data encompasses both recorded and handwritten materials: . Video recordings: 11.5 hours of recorded material from preparations/education days
before the tour; 30 minutes of evaluation after the tour;1
. Field notes,‘single gigs’: Field notes from observations of eight shows/workshops from asylum accommodations and public events (25 hours of observations);
. Field notes,‘immersion weeks’: Field notes from observations of 3 immersion weeks with local partners (98 hours of observations);
. Audio recordings: 60 minutes of audio recordings of informal interviews with the circus team.
Data Analysis
The material as a whole (both handwrittenfield notes and recordings) was transcribed in detail, and analyzed as text. The analysis was inspired by Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework for discourse analysis (2010): Text, discursive practice, and context were mapped together. Of special interest in the analysis were the discourses on childhood in general, and on the dislocated childhood in particular, that emerged in the discussions during the working process. Certain content stood out, either because it had dominated the discussion over the entire process, or because it lacked support in the additional data. I began the analysis process with an open coding of all text on a micro-level (Fair-clough2010), identifying the content that was made relevant by the actors involved in the project, and how this was done. I strived for a‘clean gaze’ (Stokoe and Smithson
2001) in the sense of not applying predefined categories, but finding categories that
were made relevant in the material. The material covered the categories of the show; how to arrange workshops; and the target group. Many categories were intertwined in linguistic domains. Within each linguistic domain, discursive positions for the dislocated children were sketched out, for instance by describing them as vulnerable.
In the second step of the analysis, the meso-level (Fairclough2010), I found corre-lations between the texts and I could see patterns in the material as a whole, as well as
items that stood out in certain parts of the material. At this level, it was possible to see discursive shifts in relation to changes in the social practice and its context. Also, the analysis showed new themes that emerged throughout the project, such as ‘transform-ation’, ‘agency’, and ‘failure’. In the last, contextual, step of the analysis, I performed selective coding, finding central discourses, and relating them both to each other and to discourses on a macro-structural level (Fairclough 2010). As I will demonstrate in my analysis, the discourses on childhoodfluctuated, depending on the context.
Results
In the following, I will describe the discursive shifts in the project. The standpoint pre-sented in thefirst two sections is that of the team during their discussions when preparing for the tour. The last two sections highlight discourses that the team upheld or (re)pro-duced through the show and workshop, and together with external collaboration part-ners along the road.
Defining ‘Dislocated Children’ as the Target Group
At the beginning of the project, the team were engaged in a process of designing the pro-duction. They designed and wrote the show and set up the pedagogical frames for work-shops. This was done with the target group in mind. The phrase‘in mind’ is important here, because the target group at this point was merely an idea (cf. Bessone2017). Most of the artists in the team had experience of performing and leading circus workshops with chil-dren in refugee camps, schools, or other contexts, but none of them had met these particular participants before. In the following excerpt, the team are engaged in a discussion together with the project administrators (i.e. administrative staff from both circus organizations):
Artist 1: What I didn’t really get is … the target group is children. But it seems like there will be adults as well?
Artist 2: I think it will vary a lot. Artist 3: Youth.
Artist 2: Youth… when there are unaccompanied children, and, like, families at the accommodations? But we’ll primarily focus on the younger ones.
Admin: And what do we mean by‘younger ones?’ Like, when is someone a child, and when in the middle [laughs] and… yeah. Who do you expect to meet? Artist 1: We don’t know. There will be unaccompanied …
Artist 4: … infants and upwards …
When making preparations it was important for the team to acknowledge the fact that they did not know in advance who the participants would be. Their job description had been to produce a show and workshop for children, and they had been told to‘be ready to meet participants of all ages’.
Admin: We are used to meeting a somewhat homogenous target group, like you have… they are [makes wide gestures], like, 8–9 years old. Then you can work with your own disciplines:‘I am an aerialist, so I teach aerials’ or ‘I’m a juggler, so I’ll take care of the juggling.’ But when meeting this wide and mixed group, and with … that we can assume don’t have much previous experience of circus, maybe it’s better to divide the participants into age groups?
Artist 1: But at the same time, it can be difficult to divide them age-wise … Admin: Yes, exactly.
An interpretation of the excerpt above is that dividing the participants into age groups is a way of creating more homogenous groups. This is a popular strategy in many edu-cational settings, but it is nonetheless criticized from a childhood sociological point of view (James et al.1998; Lee 2001; Corsaro 2017). The assumption that everyone of a certain age group is at the same stage of development, has the same needs, and has had the same experiences draws upon a discourse on childhood as universal. This gen-eralization about children (and adults) overlooks, not only individual variations in devel-opment, but also children’s agency. However, as we can see in the excerpt, this is also pointed out by Artist 2, who finds this solution difficult (as does the administrative staff). This shift in understanding children as universal, on the one hand, and as individ-uals, on the other, can be seen throughout the empirical material. Similar dualities of understanding can be seen in the talk on, or expectations of, the participants’ back-grounds and life situations.
Admin: You will meet a target group that we believe is extra vulnerable. But that vulner-ability is among us everywhere and there are‘non-refugee children’ [chuckles] in different accommodations. Being ‘Swedish,’ having grown up here, doesn’t mean you’re free from that.
The chuckle when saying‘non-refugee children’ implies that the project administrator is not fully comfortable with categorizing children as either‘refugees’ or ‘non-refugees’. An interpretation of the above quote is that, although the target group is referred to as‘they’, and as‘extra vulnerable’, the understanding of children on the move as different from ‘other’ (non-refugee) children is questioned. Instead, a discursive domain of children on the move as individuals with various backgrounds, reasons for being there, needs, and experiences– just like any other children – is established. As we can see, the impor-tance of wordings is stressed. Talking about a child as ‘having a refugee experience’ instead of‘being a refugee’ was one way of underscoring that being on the move could encompass different experiences for each individual child: Some of the children might have had traumas, and some of the children are separated from their families, but not everyone. Just as some children who are born and raised in Sweden also have traumas. Being vulnerable is therefore not a condition for‘them’, but for some, independent of their refugee or non-refugee status.
As shown, the team took their starting point in a nuanced and complex understanding of the target group. They de-established discursive positions that may stereotype children as universal, or vulnerability as something that applies only to children with refugee status.
Relating to‘Otherness’ in, and Through, Social Circus
Team members, as well as the administrative staff in the project organization, were also careful with the words they chose, to describe the project. They referred to their own practice as ‘circus’ or ‘circus in a social context’, as opposed to ‘social circus’, because they wished to avoid negative connotations to‘social work’ (cf. Bessone2017; Sorzano
2018). One of the administrators put it as follows: ‘Nobody wants to be the object for charity, a social case’ (field note). Uncareful wordings could cause distress, making par-ticipants feel marginalized or vulnerable. This would contradict the aim of the project, which was to offer a moment of joy.
Interestingly, this aim is based on expectations of life in asylum accommodations as tedious and inactive, which appear to be a nodal discourse (Fairclough2010). In the fol-lowing quote, one of the administrators talks about previous experiences with circus in similar settings:
Admin: They [the dislocated children] are often really bored! That is something to remember when you get there. It’s like … days are passing and it’s … a … drag. So anything that happens is interesting.
As we can see in the quote above, the discourse on living in an asylum accommodation as a vacuum-like experience of endless boredom is accompanied by an expectation that dis-located children and youth will be highly appreciative of any activities offered to them. This view of life in the asylum accommodations is based both on the circus organizations’ experiences from previous projects in Sweden and on an international context (see also Van Es et al.2019).
A more or less implicit ideal of this circus project was to help create a joyful – or playful – childhood. In the following discussions, the team’s interpretations of how to offer joy to this target group led to making precautious preparations. The team had been given guidelines on how not to cause, or add to the prevalent, distress. For example, to listen, confirm, and speak calmly and softly were some approaches that were put forward as appropriate, and were taken into consideration when staking out the pedagogical framework for the workshop. In their preparations, the team widened their definition of the target group to include participants of all ages, genders, and abil-ities. Still, as the following excerpt shows, one of the team members had previous experi-ence of difficult situations when organizing circus activities in a social context:
Artist 1: Based on previous experiences: What about the women that can’t even take their jackets off? How can we make them feel like it’s fun, but also worthy? So they don’t just sit. Is it possible to have (gender-) mixed groups in the same room?
Artist 1 makes gender relevant (Stokoe and Smithson2001) as a category. The quote can be interpreted as a concern that intersecting norms on gender, ethnicity, and religion may cause friction for some women in the workshop if the team are not well prepared. The discourse on not causing distress is thus established, not only as a way of encounter-ing children on the move, but as a responsibility to prepare and adapt exercises so that they will suit all participants in a particular context.
The team were preparing to perform the show and lead workshops in accommo-dations of all kinds: from accommoaccommo-dations in old office buildings and hospitals to those set up in warehouses, gyms, villas, or apartments. They decided to perform on thefloor, close to the audience. This can be understood as a way of quickly establishing the artist and audience roles as equal – a strive to eliminate the making of ‘others’ (Ahmed 2012). In this process, all participants are viewed as individuals. This also goes for the characters in the show, all of whom are given a complex set of indexes regarding gender, age, sexuality, and ethnicity: Male artists wear nail polish, ponytails
and glitter, but are also strong and supple; one of the female artists is both sweet, and loud and querulous, while another female artist is serious, calm and strong; one of the men is whimsical, yet technical; and the tightwire artist, a woman, has a mustache. Moreover, a walker is transformed into a disc jockey booth and the show music is a blend of different musical genres, including a remix recorded in a refugee camp.
The show can be interpreted as a destabilization of norms. At the same time, the char-acters put stereotype aesthetics for the circus context (including side shows) into play: the bearded lady, transgender identities, clowns and strong(wo)men (see, for example, Parker 2011). In this context, where the target group is predefined as marginalized, this approach can be interpreted as a way of stretching the boundaries of who‘we’ can be, and what‘we’ can do. The mixture of contradictory qualities in the characters can also be understood as opening up for an understanding of identities as complex and situ-ated and contextual.
From this starting point, the team leave for a tour around the country. With new audi-ence/participants in each location, the show and the workshop as social practices change and adapt constantly. Consequently, the discursive dimensions of these practices also open up for reinterpretations of the project and its aims, and of the target group.
On the Road– Interrupting ‘Otherness’
The stage has been rigged in a big room with sofas and tables. The artists are warming up, getting dressed and putting on makeup. Two children, a girl of around 3–4 and a boy of about 7–8 years old: They stick together as they walk towards the stage and sit down in the front row. One of the artists approaches them, making jokes. Smiling. He then sits down next to the children, clowning silently. Another artist joins them. The two children watch the clowns with much excitement. More people are coming and soon all seats are taken. The artists are mingling, joking, yodeling, and acting goofy. The accommodation staff is in the audience, laughing with the children and teenagers.
The show begins. The audience seem enchanted by the music, and the dancing and juggling. One of the artists makes the audience repeat a song after him. The little girl shouts the words on top of her lungs. Everyone laughs. Many of the participants are watching the little girl every once in a while. They check on her, looking as if they wish her to be happy. When she is laughing, they smile. It seems like they watch the show both for themselves and through her eyes. When the show is over one of the artists gives a balloon dog to the girl. Everyone around them is nodding and making content faces, as if that was just the right thing to do. (Excerpt fromfield notes)
As can be seen in the excerpt above, the artists interact with the audience as soon as they enter the room. During the show, the audience are encouraged to cheer and even take part in some tricks and jokes. Both the placing of the stage near the audience, and the interaction with the audience purposely break any expectations of a ‘fourth wall’ (see, for example, Brown 2012) between the stage and the audience. The show transcends the boundaries between artists and the audience and serves to establish a common ‘us’, into which category both the artists and the audience fit. The team in fact are pre-pared to perform the show on stages without any walls at all. They bring their own small backdrop and tape electric cords on thefloor to mark out the space they need for their different acts. The stage is rigged late afternoon and the artists warm up in the dining room while dinner is prepared; the show is adapted to whatever space is available.
In the excerpt above, the two-sidedness of childhood (Corsaro2017), or, more pre-cisely, of a dislocated childhood, is portrayed. These two children (and of course every other child in that room) watching a circus show, interacting with the artists, and learn-ing circus skills in the workshop have individual childhoods. The children are agents, with their own experiences and contributions to society. At the same time, in the same room, there is a complex, structural childhood: The two children are part of a gen-eration, and are simultaneously affected by warfare and welfare (of the adult world). Both of these structures constitute a discourse on an uncertain childhood (cf. Lee2001; Löf
2011; for a more general discussion on risk and uncertainty, see Beck 1992): Children are at risk and in need of care and protection.
Although the empirical material does not support analysis of whether the children forget about their life situation or not, the circus interrupts the everyday routines in the accommodations, directing orientation towards unexpected activities in this setting (cf. Ahmed2010). Page after page in the ethnographicfield notes tells about a chaotic, yet focused activity, where children, teenagers, and adults are consumed by different circus activities.
The activity is total. Sixty-three participants (and what feels like 100 juggling balls) are cross-ing the room, eager to try, learn, and be confirmed: ‘Excuse me!’ ‘Excuse me!’ ‘Look!’ ‘Look at me!’ The circus artists watch, support, and play. They confirm every attempt and every little progress with a‘Wow!,’ ‘Excellent!,’ ‘Yeah,’ ‘That’s it!,’ and ‘I knew you could do it!’ Many of the participants seem to give up if not being confirmed straight away. But when the confirmation comes, it gives fuel to try new tricks and other circus disciplines. The circus artists are constantly changing roles: One minute, they are teachers, giving a support-ing hand when someone walks the tightwire. The next, they’re playsupport-ing together with the par-ticipants, mutually exploring and creating new tricks. (Field notes)
The participants in the excerpt above are of all ages, from newborns to grandparents, and they participate in their own individual ways. Some are complete beginners; some have a background in gymnastics or other sports. An interesting aspect of the workshop is the constant shifting of roles of everyone in the room. The analysis displays how the circus artists start the workshop as leaders, building a foundation for all participants. As the participants develop their skills, the circus artists demonstrate more advanced tricks, and also interact more and more in games and tricks where the terms are more equal, rather than hierarchical. By the end of a workshop, many participants are playing, and exploring tricks, together with the artists and the accommodation staff on a mutual basis. At this point, the leadership fluctuates, depending on who is interacting with whom and what skills are practiced at the time.
The following extract is from the last part of a workshop with 50–60 participants, and depicts this (latter) part of the interaction. The boys in this excerpt have taken part in the circus workshop and have learned to juggle with help from the circus artists. At this point, they no longer depend on someone teaching them and they have started to try new tricks together by themselves.
Two boys skip into the room. They look happy. They approach one of [the staff], trying to spin a plate on a stick. One of the boys hands the member of [accommodation] staff three juggling balls. She throws them all at the same time– they fly across the room. The boy makes a shocked face and laughs. The staff member gives it another try and the same thing happens. The boy looks both amused and startled. He then shows her and another
staff member how to do it. They ask him to show the trick once more and he gets a chance to demonstrate his new skills. (Field notes from a workshop)
When the boys teach one of the staff in his accommodation to juggle, the roles of teenager and staff are de-established, and (re)positioned as the teenagers become the teachers – and the staff become students (cf. Bessone2017). Managing new skills in an environment with ever-shifting roles and positions stands out as interrupting the dependency relation-ship with staff, which is normally associated with dislocation. At this very moment, the orientation is directed towards the boys’ skills.
Upholding Discourses in Collaborations
During the tour, the team had ‘immersion weeks’, when they met up with local culture workers (different collaboration partners each immersion week) who were engaged in similar projects or target groups. This part of the project was a way of gaining knowledge and exchanging experiences and working methods. During these weeks, both the team and the collaboration partners put their practices into words. The seminars revolved around topics such as: What is circus in this context?, How are the workshops organized?, and What are your experiences of dislocated chil-dren/children on the move? The different experiences and views on the target group of the seminar attendees opened up for (re)interpretations of both circus (in a social context) and the target group.
The analysis shows that these particular discursive practices followed a certain pattern. To start with, the talk was dominated by questions such as how to encounter this target group (cf. Ahmed2000; see also Bessone2017), similar to the discussions the team had had during their start-off. Some of the collaboration partners lacked experience of working with this particular target group and wanted to know more about the experi-ences the team had gained throughout the project.
Partner: What about the problems with getting permission to stay? Is that something you see– that they just stay in bed, sleeping?
Artist 2: Yes. Sometimes it’s really tough. Artist 3: They don’t know if they can live here.
Artist 2: [Accommodation] staff come up to us, saying, ‘Shit! You made them laugh!’
In the above excerpt, both the discourse on life in the asylum accommodations being tedious and the discourse on the target group as vulnerable re-enter the discursive prac-tice. The question about the life situations of asylum-seeking children and youth pushes the discourse on not seeing the other aside. As a response, the team re-established their interpretation of their work and of the target group, in line with the discourse on trans-formation through circus:
Artist 4: It’s not only about transforming people. It’s also the space and that’s one thing that can never be taken from them. Some people might be sceptical about us going there and what we do. I mean, like, this room yesterday will always be a memory for us and all of them, when they walk into this room they’ll be, like: ‘Ah, this happened here the other week’ (or yesterday or last month). And that’s something that’s always there, a physical thing. You’ve transformed the room, so it has a new look.
This discourse is increasingly prominent in the empirical material, particularly in the field notes from the latter part of the project. Transformation is central in the circus dis-course (cf. Spiegel2016; Spiegel et al.2019) although the definitions of ‘transformation’ vary. In the quote above, Artist 4 defines the term as a shift in the ideas of places, spaces, or persons, which is supported by Artist 2 and 3 (below):
Artist 2: We… transform spaces. Then the spaces are ‘charged’ with new meanings. We transform– and see new sides of one another.
Artist 3: Definitely!
Artist 2: They get to see each other laugh, or fail, or do something funny. Orfind another common ground, not only gloomy experiences, like‘this and this has happened.’ One gets a chance to see something new, get a new experience, sort of. That’s very… that’s special.
Artist 3: But also the [accommodation] staff? That they [the young asylum seekers] can see the workers play, and fail, and laugh, like, together with them…
The circus artists, therefore, see themselves as transforming spaces and places,‘charging’ them with new meanings. Both the expressions‘charged with new meanings’ and ‘see new sides of one another’ suggest that the members of the circus team see this transform-ation as both social and discursive. Hence, transformtransform-ation is not a matter of changing persons or physical spaces; it is a mindshift, and a shift in how the world is understood and experienced. This opens up for new discursive positions for childhood, brief inter-ruptions in the dislocated childhood – moments when children and youth play like any others, rather than being constituted as‘others’ (cf. Ahmed2000,2012).
Summarizing Discussion– Social Circus, Childhood, and ‘Otherness’
The aim of this study was to explore the childhood(s) constituted through a social circus practice in asylum accommodations in Sweden. In my analysis of a circus team’s work through performances and workshops, and in collaboration with local cultural actors, I have shown how the team handled the risk of positioning participating children and youth as‘others’.
The circus team started off by defining the target group: children and youths in asylum accommodations. The discursive positioning of children included both universal and more critical discourses on childhood (see, for example, James et al. 1998; Lee 2001; Corsaro2017). For example, the discourse during the preparations for the workshop per-tained to same-age groups of children and reflected that the circus team were expecting, and preparing for, age homogeneity among the target group; but at the same time, this discourse was deconstructed by the team through reflections that children are individuals with different needs and experiences, regardless of age. Thus, the dilemma of identifying a target group, without simultaneously constituting the target group as‘others’, which is a much discussed problem within thefield of circus studies (cf. Spiegel2016; Bessone2017; Sorzano2018), stood out as highly relevant to the team.
In their preparations, the team considered the risk of causing distress to participants. Of importance here is that the discussion focused on the team’s own work, and on how the team should organize the project (rather than on participants’ abilities to take part). For example, the team members discussed how to design a show and workshop for chil-dren, even if the participating spectators might be of all ages; and how to encourage
women to participate although some of them might wear clothes that might limit their ability to participate. Distress in this context would be the very opposite of the aim of the project, which was to offer joy. By considering these risks, the team also risked enga-ging in a discursive borderwork where the target group is positioned as‘others’ (Ahmed
2000, 2012). The nuanced discussion, however, and the careful wordings and strong focus on the project goals enabled a critical approach, opening up for creation of a playful childhood rather than a childhood in dislocation.
The analysis points out how the design and the aesthetics of the show worked as a destabilization of norms. An interesting question to ask in relation to this, is whether this aesthetic can work as a stereotyping of circus? As Bolton (2004) argued, the stereo-typical representations of circus carry the risk of belittling circus performers’ hard work. Another question to raise, in addition to this, is whether there is a risk that this position-ing of circus as‘freaky’, or of circus artists as ‘supernatural’, reinforces norms ‘outside of’ the circus? Is there then a risk of‘stickiness’ (Ahmed2004: 89–91), insofar as the
other-ness of circus‘sticks to’ the audience? Or could the positioning of circus as ‘the other’ counterposition the audience as‘us?’
The result, however, indicates that the playful stereotyping of circus in this study opened up for a complex understanding of ‘us’ that embraced everyone. An aspect that stands out as of particular importance is the ever-shifting positions: In the work-shops, all participants were able to take on different roles – as leaders or students – depending on the skills they attempted. Both the circus performance and the workshop were intended to see otherness and commonalities in all. The ever-shifting roles in the interaction between all participants (the leaders and the students, the novices and the skilled artists) enabled new social and discursive positions for the young participants, the accommodation staff, and the circus artists.
Given the structural premise for dislocation, this shift may not be permanent. The circus activities did, however, interrupt the everyday routines of dislocation, as well as the relationships and the individuals’ social status.
Note
1. No video recording was made of workshops or interaction with participants from the asylum accommodations.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
Camilla Löf Ph.D in Education. Senior lecturer at the department Childhood, Education and Society, Malmö University.
ORCID
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