The Immigrant Youth Project

The Immigrant Youth Project brings together researchers from around the world to study children's involvement in international migration and its consequences for their wellbeing. Drawing on the fields of demography, economics, psychology, and sociology, this project has led to two review papers, a conference in Bellagio, Italy (2008), and a policy workshop at Princeton University (2009).

The project organizers, CRCW director Sara McLanahan and CRCW research associate Marta Tienda, are working to bring together two fields of research that have generally been examined separately: the study of migration and its consequences and research on child/youth development and wellbeing. The goal of the project is to address two main questions: How does the wellbeing of children who migrate differ from that of children that remain in their home countries? And second, how do migrant children fare compared to native-born children in their host countries?

A grant from the Rockefeller Foundation served as a starting point for the project and enabled McLanahan and Tienda to assess the current state of knowledge on child migration. This work highlighted areas that have been understudied, revealed where existing data was available, and identified leading researchers in the field. A more recent grant from the Jacobs Foundation to CRCW post-doctoral fellow Audrey Beck supported census analysis of the living arrangements and wellbeing of migrant youth in various countries. The Jacobs Foundation is also sponsoring a conference volume on child migration.

With support from the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), the Immigrant Youth Project held a workshop in August 2009 that brought together a group of international researchers. The workshop was designed to identify high quality data and methodologies, establish a research network devoted to the study of children affected by migration, and identify policies that improve the life chances of migrant children and youth.

Together with Alicia Adsera, McLanahan and Tienda are now establishing the Global Network Project, which will convene interdisciplinary teams of researchers from four research hubs: CRCW, the Institute for Effective Education (IEE) at the University of York, Melbourne Institute at the University of Melbourne, and the Institute for Economic Analysis at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Over the next three years, network researchers will conduct workshops, research seminars, and short research visits.  The goal of the Global Network Project is to facilitate the analysis and dissemination of cross-national comparative research about the wellbeing of children and youth with migration backgrounds. 

Additionally, Marta Tienda and CRCW associate Ron Haskins are co-editing a volume of The Future of Children (forthcoming in spring 2011) that will focus on immigrant children.