ABSTRACT
Children’s experiences at primary school are formative and can nurture or mar future perceptions of self-worth and identity. This chapter highlights the emotional predicament of South Asian immigrant families and the place of emotion work in schools, especially the use of the school as a “secure base” for children and disrupted families from where to explore. School could provide the necessary holding environment where such children feel kept in mind. The chapter seeks to understand the fragile boundaries by knitting together the emotional contexts of South Asian immigrant families; their children’s inner battles to belong to someone or some place; and incomplete statutory sector mental health provision for a multi-ethnic population. The school is the obvious place to situate any prevention- or early therapeutic intervention-oriented service since it takes advantage of the existing boundaries, which is a fundamental but often missing element in the lives of immigrant children.
