Contents

1 Introduction................................................................................................................................. 308

2 The Evacuation of British and Finnish Children in World War II.......................................

3 Self and Sense of Placelessness............................................................................................... 310

4 Spatial Trauma: Multidisciplinary Approach........................................................................ 312

5 Displacement as Traumatic Event in Childhood................................................................... 313

6 Self, Memory, and Socio-Material Context: Connections and Disjunctions..................... 314

7 EvacuatedBritishChildrenontheHomeFront.......................................................................... 316

8 BritishandFinnishWarChildrenAbroad.................................................................................. 319

9 Conclusions................................................................................................................................ 322

References......................................................................................................................................... 322

Abstract

This chapter discusses the existential relations of self and place among war children. During World War II, more than 1.6 million British and Finnish children of various ages were sent away for safety from their homes either within their country or abroad. Forced displacement changed children’s familial social and physical environment and created fractures in spatial belonging. War children’s oral accounts on displacement describe a sense of placelessness, irrespective of the length or physical distance of their displacement. Typically, war children’s autobiographical memories of their displacement are fragmented and temporally disoriented.

Research funded by Academy of Finland SA 266161, SA 272168 and ISTME (IS 1203).

A.-K. Kuusisto-Arponen (*)

School of Management, Space and Political Agency Research Group, University of Tampere,

Tampere, Finland

e-mail: anna-kaisa.kuusisto@uta.fi

© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2017

C. Harker et al. (eds.), Conflict, Violence and Peace, Geographies of Children and

YoungPeople 11, DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-038-4_18 the concept of spatial trauma is introduced here. Spatial trauma means that forced displacement has created drastic, bodily experienced and memorized, psychophysical experiences that continue to affect people's ties, sights, and practices of belonging later in their life. Empirically, this chapter is based on oral narrative interviews and written memories. It looks at how displacement experiences and partial effacements of memories affected war children's sense of belonging. What kinds of socio-spatial coping mechanisms were deployed during the displacement? How and what do former war children tell about their experiences, and how does spatial trauma practically manifest itself in their childhood memories and their overall life course? By tracing existential spatial practices, this chapter provides new insights into postwar and post-conflict literature on the experiences and aftercare of displaced people.

Keywords

Forced displacement • Spatial trauma ’War child • World War II • Great Britain and Finland

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