Title Pending

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.This paper presents qualitative research on the facilitation of Policy Lab meetings held in a Belgian city. Policy Labs are types of mini-publics that aim to apply a deliberative form of democracy by increasing citizens’ participation in the elaboration of new policies, tailored to their needs. Policy Labs are held with the collaboration of specialized stakeholders and policymakers and include both plenaries and small group workshops. The investigated Policy Lab meetings aimed to involve migrant-background children with the aim to improve their integration in the local school system. In these Policy Lab meetings, stakeholders were adult migrants and members of education services. The paper focuses on the facilitation of the Belgian meetings, discussing the function of facilitation pf migrant children’s participation in deliberative democracy. The analysis is based on the videorecording of two meetings. On the one hand, this analysis shows a directive form of facilitation limiting children’s agency, in terms of choices of ways and contents of their contributions to deliberations. On the other, it shows that the children are able to exercise agency, and to make proposals to enhance the democratic development of school policies.