Germany is one of the countries hosting the biggest number of refugee children globally; 6.5% of the asylum seekers arrive in Berlin, and more than one-third are minors [1]. Those refugee children often spend a considerable amount of time in refugee accommodations [2, 3]. Studies have shown that refugee children have cramped living arrangements [4, 5], lack ‘dedicated spaces’ for play inside the camp [3], live in isolated and inaccessible city areas [6], or are worried about neighbourhood safety [4, 5]. Such environmental settings make it difficult for refugee children to engage in physical activity (PA), which is a fundamental determinant of health for children. It helps build a robust body, stable mental health and healthy relationships with peers [7,8,9,10]. The UNICEF report has shown that a large proportion of refugee children are not physically active [2]. Thus, it is possible that the built environment around refugee children hinders them from being active.

Reviews focus on built-environmental attributes associated with non-refugee children’s PA, such as availability/access of exercise equipment in micro-environments [11,12,13,14] and access to PA facilities (playgrounds, greenspaces), availability of sidewalks, neighbourhood perceived safety in meso-environments [15,16,17,18,19]. As mentioned, since refugee children live in very different environmental settings compared to non-refugee children, the existing findings of environmental attributes relevant to non-refugee children’s PA may not apply to refugee children. The authors’ previous review has identified that indoor and outdoor spaces in micro environments, formal/informal PA spaces, and neighbourhood safety in meso environments, are relevant to refugee children’s PA [20]. It also identified the research agenda and indicated gaps between existing built environments and refugee children’s PA. Previous research has presented findings on spatial characteristics and refugee children’s PA in multi-type Berlin-located refugee accommodations using quantitative and qualitative approaches [21, 22]. To gain a deeper understanding of refugee children’s PA; it is necessary to qualitatively identify environmental factors in relevant contexts associated with their PA at individual levels.

By assessing multi-ethnic, newcomer refugee children in one initial reception in Berlin, the authors sought to understand the perceived environmental barriers/facilitators of refugee children’s PA in/around their refugee accommodation.

Asylsystem and initial reception in Berlin

After asylum application submission, refugee families are designated to live in arriving centres or nearest available accommodations. They will then be distributed into initial receptions (Erstaufnahmeeinrichtung, EAE) as their first stations in Germany. After application evaluation, most families will be settled in community accommodation (Gemeinschaftsunterkünften, GAE). Private residences are possibly after leaving EAE (e.g., in Berlin) or specific evaluations, and differ between states [23]. Figure 1 illustrates Asylsystem and the investigated initial reception in Berlin.

Fig. 1

Current Asylsystem and investigated refugee accommodation in Berlin. Source: UNICEF, BAMF and State Office for Refugee Affairs Berlin (LAF) report

Micro, meso and macro environments

Research rarely investigated refugee accommodations and their surroundings as individual built environment levels [24, 25]. Researchers have explored these built environments critically and tried to define the various nuances in the process. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory [26, 27] has been applied as a framework to understand refugee children’s day-to-day activities [28, 29] in this research. The built environment around refugee children includes three environmental layers of interest: micro environment; meso environment, and macro environment. The micro environment is the immediate vicinity of the child’s accommodation and contains the structures they directly contact in their daily lives [29]. Examples include the home/refugee camp and its designated playground [30]. The meso environment is the intermediate layer beyond the immediate surroundings but within the broader neighbourhood, including local schools, communities, streets and open spaces. The macroenvironment involves large-scale features of urban environments such as access to transport infrastructure and regional centres [31]. Dynamic and interactive interplay (such as PA behaviour) occur among all environment levels. The interaction of structure(s) within/between layer(s) is key to this theory. This research focuses on micro and meso environmental levels, as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

Diagram of environmental attributes on micro, meso and macro levels interacting with refugee children’s PA

Formal and informal PA space in meso and macro environments

The authors’ previous review has distinguished and identified two types of spaces that are important for refugee children’s daily PA in built environments as ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ [20]. In this research, formal space is a play space/area constructed explicitly for the purpose of PA, including playgrounds and other sports fields [4, 5, 32, 33]. Previous qualitative studies reported that barriers to refugee children’s PA exist as limited or lack of access [4, 5] or lack of transportation to exercise facilities [33, 34].

Informal space is also essential for refugee children’s PA, including any urban spaces readily and freely available to refugee children. Examples as public open areas (see below Figure 7gh). Such spaces enable children to engage in being physically active, such as spontaneous play [3, 4, 35, 36].

Perceived environments as keys to physical activity participation for refugee children

Abovementioned, built environments are essential for refugee children’s PA lives. Several researchers argued that environmental perceptions are often ignored in debates over refugee studies, but specific urban spaces are critical for refugees’ navigating experiences of displacement and resettlement [37,38,39]. Zeiher also noticed that some facilities were not truly/easily accessible for refugee children since they are often designed by adults [37]. Refugee children may be more cautious and sensitive about safety issues than non-refugee children [36] since they may have escaped from war situations or experienced military occupation [3], and they need to adapt to unfamiliar environments when they come to their host country. Such concerns by their parents are particularly salient, as where children can play is typically dictated by their parents [4], which were also mentioned by refugee accommodation staff in interviews [22]. Therefore, how refugee children (and their parents) perceive surrounding environments for playing (e.g., danger) is the key to their participation in PA. Methods.

Context and setting

In light of the need for more studies on this topic specific to a particular setting, this explorative study using qualitative multi-methods sets out to understand what perceived environmental barriers and facilitators exist to PA among school-aged refugees (6–13 years old) residing in an initial reception in Berlin.

A further research aim was to investigate the feelings children perceived while moving around their everyday spaces and their perceptions of existing environments. As such, we paid close attention to the particulars of their experiences according to their identity [3]. The Unicef Report of Child Rights emphasises the freedom of children’s expressions, which encouraged us to apply more children-oriented methods in research [40]. The key to approaching children in research is to use techniques suitable for them, such as participant observation, task-based interviews, and creative methods [41]. Photography has revealed refugee children’s perspectives as arbiters of their own experience and allows them to document and perceive places that adult researchers often ignore [28, 42,43,44]. Literature also indicates that photography appears particularly prevalent when exploring different environmental levels among minority children [45]. Moreover, Photovoice [46] has been concluded as an appropriate communicative tool among children in marginalised situations [47].

The study design was conducted according to APA ethical guidelines concerning child protection reviewed [48] and approved by the Technical University of Darmstadt Ethics Committee (EK 26/2019) in June 2019.

Participants

Non-probability sampling was used to recruit participants for this qualitative pilot study. Inclusion criteria were (1) not being diagnosed with physical or psychological diseases and (2) aged between 6 and 12 years old/attending primary schools. They were recruited via children department staff and researcher SC (a children volunteer) of the investigated accommodation. SC posted posters with their languages. Families were asked to provide consents while the children were carefully informed about the research aims and made aware that they were free not to answer/withdraw from the research at any time. In stage I, ten parents (Table 1) and fifteen children (Table 2) participated in June 2019. Three refugee children (RC2, 14 and 15) took part in stage II in June and July 2019, who were more engaged in stage I and willing to talk/share with the researcher SC.

Table 1 Demographic characteristics of refugee parent (RP) participants in stage ITable 2 Demographic characteristics of refugee children (RC) participants in stage IInstruments and procedures

Our participatory approach encompassed a place-based method focused on children’s playing, which was conceptualised to include places and how they may mirror and shape relations of PA between children [3, 49]. Parents’ questionnaires and children’s workshops in stage I were formulated to understand their perception and children’s PA in micro and meso environments. Besides, a photovoice workshop in stage II was applied to gain in-depth insight into individuals’ experiences and deepen the qualitative approach. This research was designed with the help of experts and refugee accommodation staff. It aims to provide instruments (clock, drawing, camera) to refugee children, with which protect them from negative feelings about spaces, express their emotions in a non-judgmental/safe space, and discuss their ideas, concerns, and perspectives in an active and participatory way [40, 50, 51].

Stage I

Parents were asked to evaluate PA space accessibility/availability in their children’s existing micro and meso environments with a five-point scale questionnaire (see Additional file 1). The questionnaire ended with a filling content of their children’s detailed PA timeline. While parents answered, the children would finish the following workshops in 30 minutes.

The workshop started with a short questionnaire (see Additional file 2). Afterwards, children entered their PA information (where, when, activity type) by keywords or body language into a playable clock (see Additional file 3a). Children were also asked to ‘draw their play (the facilities/place/equipment they were playing in/with)’ in an A3 paper with defined environmental scales (micro: indoor and outdoor, meso: around the accommodation) as shown in Additional file 3b.

Stage II

Stage II was 3 days’ photographing of refugee children’s playing (where, what, their mood). Three children took part in with provided cameras Participants finished this independently without authors’ influence. SC represented printed photos on an A1 poster by correct timelines and environmental scales (see Additional file 4). Children were asked to put on different mood tags (see below Fig. 6b) and explain their feelings when taking photos in unstructured interviews.

Data collection and analysis

The structured questionnaires in stage I were translated into six languages by professionals. German/English were used in oral communications and interpretations in stage II. All narrative materials from stage I/II were transcribed and translated by SC and a bilingual professional translator. Two previously mentioned tools worked as supplementary carriers that helped children express their feelings: (1) drawing and the clock, which reminded them of their PA perceptions on different scales; (2) mood tags, which helped to express their emotions related to spaces.

More demonstrative explanations and groups of quotations were reassembled into different themes using NVivo software [26, 37, 52]. SC reviewed materials from each participant, intending to analyse and determine naturally apparent codes inductively. MK and SC discussed apparent themes, agreed on the coding categories, and incorporated them into the final coding framework. Additional inputs were produced to interpret data for finalising the findings. Data were determined to reach theoretical saturation when no new themes/viewpoints/ keywords emerged from the materials [53]. This design allows possibilities for reading and backtracking.

Researcher characteristics and reflexivity statement

This research is based in the Urban Design and Planning Unit (UDP), Department of Architecture, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. Built-environments related to refugee children’s health behaviours (e.g., PA) in Germany are not only understudied, but much of its first empiric material concerning individual refugee child’s level is challenging to approach. The UDP’s mission is to deliver empirical data and evidence-based strategies to inform the much-needed transformation towards more healthy and inclusive cities. SC had lived in Berlin for 4 years at the time of the study, and she had been a children’s volunteer in the investigated accommodation since April 2017. She is a non-Arabic speaker but an experienced social worker for communication. MK is an expert in Urban Design and Health and the research supervisor.