Studying children in shared physical custody in Turin, Italy : methodological considerations for the study of multi-local residency.

Murru, Sarah [UCL] Merla, Laura [UCL]

This paper explores the methods employed to study the experience of children living in shared physical custody arrangements in Turin, Italy. It is part of the ERC Starting Grant research project, supervised by Prof. Laura Merla, MobileKids: Children in Multi-Local, Post- Separation Families, which seeks to understand the lived experiences of children who grow up in separated or divorced families practicing shared physical custody arrangements in Belgium, France and Italy. Considering children as active social actors that can, to various extents, exercise agency and influence on their own lives as well as on the lives of the people surrounding them, we ask how children are active in developing family practices inside this mobility and look at the process of moving from one house to the other every week. For this purpose, we will present 3 methods that we mobilize to help the children make sense of their multi-local residency: the Social Spatial Network Game (Schier, 2017), the use of photos, and fictional cases about specific key moments in this context.