Children's experiences of social exclusion : what is it like living in a slum in Kampala?

The voices of young people are beginning to be heard, but rarely are children living in poverty included in this research (Ridge, 2002). In this study, the authors used an interpretive approach that is informed by the phenomenological underpinning of the new sociology of childhood (Conroy & Harcourt, 2009; Schiller & Einarsdottir, 2009). In this approach, they positioned children who lived in a slum in Uganda as active citizens who were able to give accounts of their own experiences. They collected information through children's drawings: a form of visual data collection identified in Pauwel's Integrated framework for visual research (Pauwels, 2010, p. 552) as respondent-generated imagery and interviews. In their analysis they particularly focused on the aspects of life they thought were most likely to have been influenced by work towards the United Nations-created Millennium Development Goals (MDG): that is children's experiences of sanitation and hygiene (toileting, washing hands, access to drinking water) and schooling. Despite the fact the children were not instructed to focus on these in the discussions or in their drawings, the authors used these key components as guides to determine how work done at government-level towards the MDG was actually impacting on the children's daily experiences living in the slum.