Luisa Weissberg

This article explores how children conceptualise the boundary between non-violent and violent sibling conflicts. It draws on three case studies from the Children’s Well-Being in German-speaking Switzerland (2021-25) project, each involving potentially violent sibling conflicts. Following the initial interpretation, the cases were discussed in a focus group with newly recruited children. Popitz’s power-informed understanding of violence served as a sensitising concept during the analysis. While I analytically frame the cases as involving violence, children in the focus group did not always reach a consensus. Generally, they identified certain behaviours as emotionally or physically harmful and proposed solutions, such as parental involvement or verbal communication, indicating that they perceived the situations as boundary crossing. Simultaneously, some children relativised the harm of particular behaviours, referring to age, birth order or socio-geographical discourse. The article raises further questions about the responsible actors, their obligation and the timing of involvement in children’s potentially violent sibling conflicts.

Objective: This research note has both substantive and methodological objectives. It presents an account of undertaking a surface thematic analysis of a data sub-set from a repurposed public engagement written postcard exercise, to consider: (i) the significant non-relationally framed (i.e. factual and not related to the quality of the sibling relationship) information that people across gender and generation think that researchers should know about their siblings, and (ii) the written postcard exercise as a potential research method in family research. Background: Much research on siblings is concerned with outcomes or everyday relational processes. There is less attention to what people themselves regard as significant features of their siblings’ circumstances that is not shaped by researcher agendas and interactions. Method: The research note draws on electronic and hard copy written postcard data, submitted in response to the open prompt "Please tell us about your brothers and sisters", submitted by 795 children and adults. The majority were aged 29-58 and were female. A surface thematic analysis was undertaken to identify the factual, non-relationally framed information provided by postcard writers in a data sub-set in order to identify the issues that they regarded as important. Results: Postcard writers providing factual information about their siblings’ circumstances did so largely in the here-and-now of their siblings' lives. They addressed family form, geographical location, and age at which siblings left home, framing this non-relationally as information about their siblings. Conclusion: The analysis of sibling-provided information that is not relationally framed provides an alternative or additional perspective to both developmental outcomes research and studies of sibling perspectives. The postcard exercise offers possibilities as a data generation method that enables an initial co-production design.

Participatory research with children presents a range of ethical challenges, particularly concerning power dynamics between adults and children in the research process. Factors such as the research setting, parental consent, the role of gatekeepers, interview dynamics, and the methods used can either facilitate or limit children’s participation. For migrant children and their families, specific issues like the language of communication, the materials developed for the study, socio-economic status, and migration-related vulnerabilities, such as sensitive experiences of (forced) migration, are especially important. This paper explores these ethical considerations through the lens of our research in the WoKidS project, which examines the subjective well-being of children (N = 84) aged 8 to 14, both with and without a migration background. The article is grounded in an ethical reflexivity approach, where multiple researchers involved in the study reflect on their experiences and practices while conducting research with (migrant) children.