On Austrian Refugee Children: Agency, Experience, and Knowledge in Ernst Papanek's “Preliminary Study” from 1943

Abstract

In 1943 Viennese refugee pedagogue Ernst Papanek turned in his master's thesis, “On Refugee Children: A Preliminary Study,” for the New York School of Social Work at Columbia University. Particularly interested in their role in processes of knowledge translation and transfers, he circulated questionnaires among refugee children he had rescued from France to the United States. Through his thesis he gave the children a voice and depicted their agency. This article contextualizes Papanek's approach to the relief efforts in the United States in the early 1940s. Focusing especially on the responses of Austrian refugee children in the questionnaires, it uncovers aspects of the young people's experiential knowledge and how they were further explored in a follow-up study on Papanek's research from 1947. The article draws on recent approaches in migration studies that look at the intersection of knowledge and the experiences of young migrants, underlining its potential in research for unaccompanied minors and young refugees from Nazi persecution.