ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Pediatric Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1607643
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Rights and Needs of Children During Times of War and ConflictView all 4 articles
"Playing helps you feel at home": Recovery and reintegration of child victims of political and social violence
Provisionally accepted
Aleksandra Głos1,2*
Lina Martín Corredor3,4
Ivonne Vargas Celis1Verónica Monreal5Antonia Valenzuela Sarrazin1,6- 1Faculty of Medicine, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile
- 2Faculty of Law, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile
- 3Department of Special Education, Early Childhood, and Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Education, Denver, Colorado, United States
- 4Metropolitan State University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, United States
- 5Faculty of Psychology, The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile
- 6Université de Paris, Paris, Ile-de-France, France
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As one of children's most important needs, play is a crucial human right. However, despite the countless benefits of play for children's well-being and development, it is often overlooked in public policies, and especially so in the situation of political conflict and social unrest. Drawing from the children's rights framework, this qualitative study explores the role of play for the psychological recovery and social reintegration of children affected by political and social violence. It does so within the wider framework of peace studies and includes the exploration of children's conceptions of peace and the question of how play can contribute to promoting a culture of peace in violence-stricken societies. Through play-based focus groups with child migrants and refugees in Chile, we explored their own views on the therapeutic and peace-building potential of play as a response to self-reported problems. The children in our study told a dual story: a story of trauma and violence, and another one about hope, friendship, and resilience, all of which were greatly facilitated by play. For that reason, as representatives of children's vulnerable voices, we advocate for the greater and more systematic provision of children's right to play in conflict zones and its inclusion in peace-building programs.
Keywords: Play, right to play, political and social conflict, child migrants and refugees, Trauma, resilience, peace, Participation
Received: 07 Apr 2025; Accepted: 11 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Głos, Corredor, Celis, Monreal and Sarrazin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Aleksandra Głos, Faculty of Medicine, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile
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