Unheard voices in the dissonant diaspora: youth from aggressor states negotiating identity through picturebooks
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Situated within lifelong learning, this study investigates how diasporic youth from aggressor states (Russia, Belarus, China) navigate their “stigmatised citizenship.” By employing the Picturebook Elicitation Interview (PEI), this research positions intergenerational picturebooks as a mediating “third object,” facilitating the articulation of a fragile moral agency. The findings reveal four intersecting mechanisms: (1) the hermeneutic gap provides emotional scaffolding; (2) visual metaphors enable the cognitive deconstruction of propaganda; (3) this protective distance paradoxically exposes ethical tensions regarding complicity; and (4) effective engagement strictly relies on concrete ontological anchors, rejecting pure abstraction. Ultimately, this study argues that for stigmatised subjects, the aesthetic distance of the picturebook is not a retreat from reality, but a fundamental prerequisite for moral reconstruction and the assertion of civic agency.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Gli autori che pubblicano su questa rivista accettano le condizioni previste dalla licenza Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
References
Arizpe, E., McAdam, J., & Hirsu, L. (2025). Creating safe spaces in contexts of “complex emergency” through mediation and picturebooks. In S. Mourão & K. Bennett (Eds.), Multimodal mediation through picturebooks and graphic narratives: Educational and translational contexts (pp. 113–129). Routledge.
Biesta, G. (2021). World-centred education: A view for the present. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003098331
Cali, D., & Bloch, S. (2013). The enemy: Older reader’s edition. Wilkins Farago.
Campagnaro, M. (2021). Picturebooks and aesthetic literacy in early childhood education. In Å. M. Ommundsen, G. Haaland, & B. Kümmerling-Meibauer (Eds.), Exploring challenging picturebooks in education (pp. 79–98). Routledge.
Farrar, J. (2020). Encounters with metafiction: Playing with ideas of what counts when it comes to reading. In J. Deszcz-Tryhubczak & I. B. Kalla (Eds.), Rulers of literary playgrounds: Politics of intergenerational play in children’s literature (pp. 179–190). Routledge.
Formenti, L., & Hoggan-Kloubert, T. (2023). Transformative learning as societal learning. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 2023, 105–118. https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.20482
García-González, M., & Deszcz-Tryhubczak, J. (2020). New materialist openings to children’s literature studies. International Research in Children’s Literature, 13(1), 45–60. https://doi.org/10.3366/ircl.2020.0327
Giroux, H. A. (2022). Pedagogy of resistance: Against manufactured ignorance. Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350269521
Haaland, G., Kümmerling-Meibauer, B., & Ommundsen, Å. (Eds.). (2023). Exploring challenging picturebooks in education: International perspectives on language and literature learning. Routledge.
Hasheminezhad-Li, C. (2025). Post-apocalyptic narratives for climate change education. Climate Literacy in Education, 3(3), 34–41. https://pubs.lib.umn.edu/index.php/cle/article/view/7010
Hope, J. (2018). “The soldiers came to the house”: Young children’s responses to The colour of home. Children’s Literature in Education, 49, 302–322. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-016-9300-8
Kelly, L. B., & Kachorsky, D. (2022). Text complexity and picturebooks: Learning from multimodal analysis and children’s discussion. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 38(1), 33–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/10573569.2021.1907636
Kümmerling-Meibauer, B. (Ed.). (2018). The Routledge companion to picturebooks. Routledge.
Letria, J. J., & Letria, A. (2021). War. Greystone Books.
Lysaker, J. T. (2018). Before words: Wordless picture books and the development of reading in young children. Teachers College Press.
Nygren, H., Nissinen, K., Hämäläinen, R., & De Wever, B. (2019). Lifelong learning: Formal, non-formal and informal learning in the context of the use of problem-solving skills in technology-rich environments. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(4), 1759–1770. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12807
Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.
Pearson, J. S. (2024). Defining digital authoritarianism. Philosophy & Technology, 37, 73. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-024-00754-8
Romanyshyn, R., & Lesiv, A. (2021). How war changed Rondo (O. Lushchevska, Trans.). The New York Review Children’s Collection.
Rottenberg, B. (2022). Bibliotherapy as an integrative psychotherapeutic channel. Journal of Poetry Therapy, 35(1), 27–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/08893675.2021.2004371
Sadeghi, S. (2016). The burden of geopolitical stigma: Iranian immigrants and their adult children in the USA. International Migration & Integration, 17, 1109–1124. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-015-0451-z
Saldaña, J. (2021). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Sergeeva, I., & Kamalov, E. (2025). Invisible costs of exiting autocracy: Subjective well-being and emotional burnout among Russian wartime migrants. Post-Soviet Affairs, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2025.2477417
Świetlicki, M. (2018). “Oh, what a waste of army dreamers...”: The revolution of dignity and war in contemporary Ukrainian picturebooks. Filoteknos, 8, 119–130. https://doi.org/10.23817/filotek.8-9
UNESCO. (2021). Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education. UNESCO. https://doi.org/10.54675/ASRB4722
Véliz, S., & García-González, M. (2022). Becoming abject: Testing the limits and borders of reading mediation. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 43(1), 15–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2020.1786355
Zembylas, M. (2012). The affective (re)production of refugee representations through educational policies and practices: Reconceptualising the role of emotion for peace education in a divided country. International Review of Education, 58(4), 465–480. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-012-9296-2