Time, space and presences: Bangladeshi girls' friendships in an English primary school

Abstract

The study reported here examined what it is like to be and have friends and how developing conceptions of friendships become embedded in children's peer cultures. It took place in two mixed Year 5 and Year 6 classes in a Church of England Local Education Authority Aided (C of E 'N) primary school in a working-class neighbourhood in a university town in East Anglia, England. A conceptually-split core theme emerged. The core theme is children's enabling and constraining negotiation of friendships and ethnicity within their own tacitly agreed upon boundaries of absences and presences, space and time, and locale. Implications for research and practice are raised.