Uttalbara och outsägliga fasor : En kvalitativ studie av hur erfarenheter av flykt och krig porträtteras som trauma i svensk barnlitteratur

Children’s literature functions as a medium through which the social realities surrounding traumas of flight and war are reflected, constructed, problematised and conveyed to young readers. The present study analyses five children's novels published in Sweden between 2015–2024. Its aim was to explore how children’s literary fiction narrativises experiences of flight and war as trauma from a zemiological and cultural criminological perspective, and how the depictions relate to the societal discourse surrounding migrants and refugees. Using (trauma) narrative analysis, the selected children’s novels were examined to identify and code common narrative themes, which were subsequently analysed through the lens of literary trauma theory. From the analysis, three overarching trauma narrative themes emerged: the corporeal narrative, the fantasy narrative, and the haunting narrative. The results showed that the children’s novels delve into the physical, sensorial and emotional dimensions in their depictions of suffering in war, while simultaneously tending to dissociate events from affect. They also revealed a tendency within the novels to emphasise the universal nature of suffering associated with flight and war, a narrative expression that connects powerfully with dominant social narratives that depict migrants as victims in the Swedish societal discourse. The analysis furthermore showed that the examined children’s novels both distanced and brought experiences of war closer to the (child) readers, and represented trauma in the context of flight and war as both speakable and unspeakable. Hence, the novels both reproduce and challenge trauma theory’s emphasis on the inaccessible, unrepresentable and unspeakable nature of traumatic experience.