Description
Migration is one of the most significant global issues today. Among migrant families, left-behind children represent a unique phenomenon: children who stay in their hometowns while one or both parents migrate for work to other countries or regions. These children are often cared for by a single parent or surrogate guardians such as grandparents. The scale of the issue is striking. By 2020, left-behind children accounted for 22% of all children in Thailand, 27% in the Philippines, and 36% in Georgia. In China, 46.4% of children (around 138 million) are affected by parental migration (Antia et al., 2020, p. 4335； Bălțătescu et al., 2023, p. 1941； UNICEF et al. Bureau of Statistics, & UNFPA, 2020）The migrant parents in China rarely return home due to their workload and lack of funds. Except for the annual Spring Festival, which symbolizes national cohesiveness, reflects Chinese citizenship, and serves as a crucial occasion for family reunions. Therefore, this paper will borrow Lefebvre’s The Produce of Space and Maria Nikolajeva’s picture book theory by focusing on textual and visual analysis to investigate how spatial narratives are constructed through the words and illustrations in the selected picture books and study how three picture books portray domestic space (the home as a space of waiting and uniting) and outer spaces related to home (journeys that reflect the parent’s migration experiences) and examines the following questions:
•Waiting: How children are waiting in domestic space for the Spring Festival and family reunion
•Journeying: How parents’ journey back home from their migrant place
•Uniting: How the sense of home is transformed after their migrant parents are united with their children
| Period | 29 May 2026 → 1 Jun 2026 |
|---|---|
| Event title | The Child and The Book 20th |
| Event type | Conference |
| Degree of Recognition | International |