Immigrants as Reverse Anthropologists

This study aims to examine whether social work services can improve migrant children's social engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic in urban China. Valid questionnaires of 416 migrant children in Guangzhou were obtained as the samples. Two regression models were employed to analyze the factors associated with social engagement. The results show that during the pandemic, migrant children with higher self-efficacy, higher community social capital, and better social inclusion tended to have higher social engagement. Among the three dimensions of social capital, only community social capital has a significant positive effect on migrant children's social engagement. The degree of social inclusion of migrant children affects their social engagement. Social work services are beneficial to promoting the social engagement of migrant children. The research has implications for the practice of child social workers. First, it is important to cultivate migrant children's self-efficacy to promote social engagement. Second, social workers should build the social capital of the communities where migrant children live to promote the social engagement of this group. Third, social workers should strengthen support for migrant children's learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Immigration and settling down in a new society can be one of the most dynamic and complex processes in an individual's life. Personal and cultural changes are enmeshed in continuous processes of discovery, upheaval and crisis. [1]With the advancement of urbanization, a lot of migrant children followed their parents to enter the city society in China. [2]Eventually, they became a group of stranger in the rural-urban fringe.The report of national urban migrant children in China issued in 2013 showed the number of migrant children increased rapidly, reaching the the scale of 35.81 million. [3] The migrant situation in contemporary China is directly linked to two historical phenomena: the recent opening of the Chinese economy to market-style reforms, and long-term constraints on population mobility and the distribution of state-sponsored goods and services through a system of residence permits called the hukou system.[4] Geographical migration not only cut off the geopolitical, kinship ties of the migrant children to some extent, but also broke the individual's social network of relationships. This kind of fracture has a certain effect on childhood development and the children's future social interaction. From the psychological perspective, migrant children are in a critical period of development in social interaction. [5]They are in an urgent need to find new ways to complete the reconstruction of the network of relationships. The motivation of the children to develop social network is more related to spontaneous demands of psychological or cultural aspects, rather than utilitarian purpose of the adults. Thus, how to find a way to build their social network and then accumulate enough social capital in the city has become an important issue of the social integration of the group. Quantitative questionnaire survey and semi-structured, in-depth interview conducted with migrant children were the primary research methods adopted in this study.The sampling survey, was mainly conducted in primary and secondary schools. The whole process is divided into two rounds. The first round of the survey was conducted from November 2009 to March 2010, the research mainly concentrated in Nanjing. The second round of the survey was conducted from June 2013 to January 2014, the research hold in Nanjing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. A total of 2396 questionnaires were returned ,with 2268 valid, including 1537 migrant children and 731 urban children as the reference sample.Male ratio was 52.8%, the proportion of girls was 47.2%, from the ages of nine to fourteen. Given the reality, the situation of migrant children's education is divided into two different categories, one is enrolled in some special schools for migrant children, one is enrolled in some urban school on a temporary basis. The former is a typical "homogeneous" combination of education situation, the latter is a typical "heterogeneous" combination of education contexts. In those school environment, life often exhibit different characteristics to the migrant children.[6] To make a reasonable interpretation for the real living conditions of migrant children, the study took these two types of students into account in the sample.The migrant children interviewed in the semi-structured, in-depth interview part represent different profiles of the population. The snowball method applied in selecting the sample sought to attain a balance according to three primary variables: length of residence in the city, gender and age. The analysis of the findings is presented in four sections: The findings revealed that the internet was one of the favorite media for migrant children, although most of them began to use it only after immigration to the city. The migrant children use the Internet to achieve the re-aggregation of strong relationship network. The study showed that 28.4 percent of migrant children usually can not meet and chat with their friends face to face. Most of the migrant children "usually communicate with friends via online chat tools ". QQ chat tool is the main one they chose to usel. Among the migrant children's online chat list, classmates, fellow-villagers, relatives accounted for a large proportion. Internet provided the homogeneous groups a virtual platform to get together and share feelings. This link is not blurred, but the strengthening of the reality ties. The internet has become an important channel for the migrant children to expand the weak ties[7] of social network,though the expansion of weak ties based on internet is difficult to turn virtual into the real. The migrant children' s enthusiasm of using the internet to expand their social circle had some relation with their age and the real amount of peer interaction channels. Interviews showed that migrant children's exchanges with the network of weak ties mainly focused on aspects of sharing of information, such as the information of schools, certain events, as well as the views of some pop stars. But it's still pretty hard for the web-based weak ties to expand into the real level interaction. Network pseudonym made contacts and relations between anonymous individuals fragile. It is difficult to develop to further practical level. And once the expansion of weak ties got frustrated, migrant children tend to be more retreated into their homogeneous groups. Migrant children enjoyed alternative exchanges in the participation of some online role-playing-games. [8]Migrant boys prefered games of conquer type, accumulating communicative capital between peers in obtaining alternative interactive experience[9]; though the girls prefer online virtual communities games, having fun from the integration of the dreamy community. However, the compensation got from online games is apt to make the group more addicted to the internet. In summary, the new media weaved a reconstructive field of public communication networks for the migrant children. Here, the individual could expand the scope of social interaction to some extend, getting reach to the circle of urban people which is far away from them in reality. But after all, since the online media contact is virtual, getting too immersed into it is no good for the healthy development of the children. Media's funtion in remodeling the migrant children is noteworthy. And the social problems cencerning the media behavior of the migrant children is worth further studying. References Nelly Elias and Dafna Lemish (2008).Media Uses in Immigrant Families: Torn between 'Inward' and 'Outward' Paths of Integration. International Communication Gazette, 70, 21 Zhang,Li Zhong (2007). Social integration of migrant children in the city and its countermeasures. South China Rural Area, 2,44-47. Li,Haixiu(2013)."migrant childre more than 35 million",Guang Ming Daily,2013.5.16 Woronov,T.E..In the Eye of the Chicken: Hierarchy and marginality among Beijing'smigrant schoolchildren.Ethnography,2004(5):289-313 Lin, Chongde (2008).Developmental psychology. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Education Publishing House. Ma, Liang (2007). Analysis on the interactive process between the migrating children compulsory education policy and the reality. In Gu,Xuebin,Ruan Zengyuanqi (ed.), Practice-based Chinese local social work research. Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press. Mark S. Granovetter(1973).The Strength of Weak Ties. The American Journal of Sociology, 78(6):1360-1380. Yang, Yinjuan (2009) An Empirical Study on the Intrinsic Motivation of Children's Participation in Mole Online Game. Journal of International Communication, 12, 99-104. Lin, Yuling (2007). Schoolchildren's Game-Playing Practices and Gender Construction: A Case Study of Elementary School Pupils in a Remote Area. Mass Communication Research (Taipei), 90, 43-99.&nbsp

State Against the Migrant Child:US Government Systems and Legal Processes in Dealing with Undocumented Youth Catherine Appleton (bio) Boehm, Deborah A., and Susan J. Terrio, editors. Illegal Encounters: The Effect of Detention and Deportation on Young People. NYU P, 2019. pp. $30.00 pb. ISBN 9781479861071. At a time when millions of people, including children, are fleeing from poverty, violence, and mortal danger, Deborah A. Boehm and Susan J. Terrio's Illegal Encounters: The Effect of Detention and Deportation on Young People adds to a global conversation about issues to do with migrant and refugee children. Donald Trump came to power in the US, promising, when so many are desperately seeking safety, to build a wall to stop illegal immigration from Central and South America to the North. This book clearly outlines the metaphorical wall of inhumane policies and laws that impact the lives of migrant young people in the US, highlighting the clear national mission to keep immigrants out or send them back to where they theoretically came from. Illegal Encounters features personal stories that describe how harsh immigration laws mean that families are separated in the deportation of young people, even though some have spent the majority of their lives in the US. Other stories focus on children who witness and suffer the deportation of other unauthorized family members. The tight immigration laws and policies in the US come from a long legacy of national "ideas about race, imperialism, and state power" (6); thus, the government holds much weight in restricting and controlling who is allowed into the country. Currently, the Trump administration has given increased power to immigration authorities by reducing immigrant protections and expanding concepts of "illegality" by blurring the difference between immigration and criminal law (6). The impact on migrant children has been profound, as detailed in Boehm and Terrio's comprehensive anthology. The Illegal Encounters anthology addresses "young people's interactions or encounters with the different legal systems that regulate immigration" (2). The writings come from experts, who describe the complex range [End Page 340] of circumstances that make up this young, powerless migrant category and identify the challenges that these children face. In the US in 2018, of the "11 million unauthorized migrants living in the country, more than 2.5 million" are young people (8). Some undocumented children come into the US illegally with their parents, while almost a quarter of a million come alone. The book offers a multidisciplinary perspective to add to a growing immigration debate. Contributions come from a mix of academics, practitioners, as well as migrant youth, building an alarming picture of the ways youth are mistreated in a system that encourages them to remain vulnerable and outside the American legal system. The scholars include academics from anthropology, education, sociology, and legal studies, while other contributions come from practitioners who work directly with young people, including social workers, attorneys, and judges. Importantly, the collection is unique in the way that the voices of young people are prioritized to highlight their personal experiences with the immigration process: all authors include quotations, stories, or details from interviews with migrant youth. For instance, the introduction begins with accounts of personal experiences and ends with a quote from a fifteen-year-old Colombian who questions Donald Trump's campaign to make America great again: "I would tell him that if America was not great, no one would want to come here. And I wouldn't be here" (14). The legal systems of control that can apprehend, detain, and deport undocumented youth are strongly biased against them, resulting in many children remaining unauthorized and living on the social fringes. To probe the power imbalances of this system, the book is structured around three stages of government control, labelled in the book as, "in, through, and out" (5). These themes divide the book into three parts, and each has equal weight, consisting of three chapters and two short essays. The collection begins with "Part I – In: Confronting Enforcement, Detention, and Deportation" (15) and describes how youth enter in the government systems when they come into the country. They confront rough laws in the process of moving through, discussed in "Part II – Through: Navigating...

Research on child migrants emerged as a substantial field in its own right around the beginning of the twenty-first century. This can be linked to the emergence of childhood studies as an interdisciplinary field, as well as the growing recognition within migration studies of the diversity of migration experiences. The emerging area of child migration research has been influenced by a number of trends—among these, in particular, the growing acceptance internationally of the need to uphold children’s rights, along with the postmodern and feminist turns in migration studies, which challenged conventional constructions of migration and began to foreground previously negated migration identities such as those of children. Since then, the field has expanded and developed into a major body of scholarship—one of such a scale that it is a challenge to summarize it in one article. A key characteristic of research on child migrants is its multidisciplinarity, with major contributions from anthropology, geography, law, psychology, and sociology, as well as education, history, social work, cultural studies, development studies, and others. Each discipline brings its own perspective, and certain disciplinary trends can be identified. However, considerable interdisciplinarity is also evident, reflected in the dominance of migration studies, refugee studies, and childhood studies journals among the published work. Taken as a whole, scholarship on child migrants has made a number of major contributions to knowledge, some of which has challenged disciplinary norms and expanded conventional disciplinary boundaries. A key contribution has been to foreground the agency and subjectivity of child migrants as a worthy focus of research, and in doing so to undermine adultist assumptions in migration research. Secondly, research on child migrants has highlighted the many ways in which migration regimes undermine children’s rights and threaten their well-being, often highlighting contradictions between states’ commitments to children’s best interests, on the one hand, and their immigration laws, on the other. The works listed in this article represent a small proportion of all published work on child migrants, selected with the goal of providing an overview of the key themes and key sources. The focus is on child migrants, understood here as children who have themselves experienced migration; hence research focusing primarily on other related themes has been excluded—for example, on children “left behind” by migrant parents, on second-generation children born to immigrant parents, or on older youth migrants. While acknowledging the difficulties in defining the category of “children,” for the purposes of this article, the UNCRC definition of a child as someone under the age of eighteen is used as a reference point. However, to avoid overreliance on a universalizing definition of childhood, the article also reflects definitions or categories as they are used in the literature. Some of the works cited here may use terminology other than “child” to refer to young people aged under eighteen, and some works combine under- and over-eighteens in the same research. The focus is primarily on transnational migration, although internal migration at a subcontinental scale, such as within China, is also included. The article relies on English-language research, largely published through major Western publishing houses; therefore research by Global South authors, and research published in languages other than English, is unfortunately underrepresented.

PurposeThis paper aims to make the case for early action approaches with migrant families, introducing a set of principles for practice, mapped against the Professional Capabilities Framework for social work and the Social Work England professional standards.Design/methodology/approachThe paper first explores the context of social work with migrant families, outlining the challenges and gaps in our conceptual understanding of this work. The paper then introduces a conceptual model of work with migrant families which draws on the literature from social work and allied professions, and informed by social work values and ethics.FindingsCurrent social work practice with migrant children has been criticised as defensive, procedural and lacking a coherent conceptual basis, particularly for those who are subject to the no recourse to public funds (NRPF) rule. This field of social work practice would benefit from an evidence-informed model of practice, anchored in human rights approaches and focused on early action. Eight principles, drawn from existing good practice in other social work and social care contexts, are outlined as the basis for a new model of practice in social work with migrant families.Originality/valueThe NRPF rule is a provision in the immigration rules that prevents people who are subject to immigration control from claiming most social security benefits in the UK. In recent years, there has been an increased interest in research about the NRPF rule and its negative impact on children. However, there is currently no evaluated model of social work practice for children and families with NRPF.

Contents Chapter 1 Child Welfare Systems and Migrant Families: An Introduction Part I. Family service oriented child welfare systems within social democratic welfare states Chapter 2 How the Finnish child protection system meets migrant families and children Chapter 3 How the Norwegian child welfare system approaches migrant children Chapter 4 Immigrant Children and Families in the Child Welfare System: The Netherlands Chapter 5 Immigrant Children and Families in the Child Welfare System in Austria Part II. Family service oriented child welfare systems within conservative (and Latin) welfare states Chapter 6 Child Welfare Systems and Immigrant Families: The Case of Spain Chapter 7 Public services and migrant minors in Italy: A new path for social work Part III. Child protection oriented child welfare systems within liberal welfare states Chapter 8 The United States: Child Protection in the Context of Competing Policy Mandates Chapter 9 Child Welfare Systems and Immigrant Families: Canada Chapter 10 Child welfare and migrant families and children: A case study of England Chapter 11 Child protection of migrants in Australia Chapter 12 Immigrant Children and Families in Estonian Child Protection System Part IV. Concluding remarks Chapter13 Migrant Children and Child Welfare: A Contested Challenge Appendix - Survey method overview Index

Compared with their non-migrant peers, migrant children in China face major risks and challenges that may cause them to develop behavioral and psychological problems. Nevertheless, research has seldom addressed their victimization by bullies and its association with their mental health outcomes, much less the roles of intrapersonal and interpersonal sources of resilience in that relationship. In response, this study was designed to examine how bullying victimization both directly and indirectly influences migrant children’s mental health through intrapersonal and interpersonal sources of resilience. Data were collected from a school-based multistage random sample of 1,132 migrant children in Grades 4–9 (mean age = 11.88 years, range = 8–17 years; boys = 55.6%) attending public schools in Nanjing and private schools in Guangzhou, China. Structural equation modeling performed with Amos 25.0 revealed that both intrapersonal and interpersonal sources of resilience mediated the effect of bullying victimization on migrant children’s mental health, albeit intrapersonal sources demonstrated a slightly stronger mediation effect. The results thus suggest that social workers and educators should provide effective prevention and intervention strategies that promote intrapersonal and interpersonal sources of resilience among migrant children in China.

Migrant children who are vulnerable to statelessness are a growing at-risk population worldwide, and in South Africa. Migrant children often travel unaccompanied or become separated from their families during the journey, thus increasing their vulnerability. These children are often denied their rights in countries of transit and resettlement and might even be detained due to lack of documentation. They are subject to high levels of violence and status-exclusion within the migratory process. This paper considers statelessness in migrant children in South Africa, and undertakes a review of the literature to understand this phenomenon. The results show that a considerable number of migrant children in South Africa are at risk of statelessness. While all children may have roots that can be traced, situations and technicalities arise within the migration and registration framework that result either in children becoming stateless or at risk of becoming such. These children’s childhoods fall through the gaps as they lack a sense of belonging. They also have limited rights and none of the protection that goes with being recognized as nationals. Social workers are able to play a significant role in assessing and determining if migrant children are either stateless or at risk of becoming stateless and offer appropriate intervention to help them realize their rights, potential and contributions.

The article explores the features of the Moldovan migrant's children integration in Italy and the dynamics and particularities of the second-generation formation. The study is based on statistical data analysis on the Moldovan communities of immigrants in Italy and the integration of migrant children into educational institutions. The risk factors of social adaptation of children of Moldovan migrants based on the sociological quantitative and qualitative research conducted in 2015-2019 are analyzed. The study results show that the children of Moldovan migrants face difficulties integrating into Italian society, even though they have more opportunities than their parents. There are specific differences in children's integration depending on the age of arrival in Italy, the success in learning the Italian language, the type of family (full or single parent, mixed family), and the intensity of social contacts. Children of migrants born in Italy do not experience significant difficulties in social integration, primarily thanks to their knowledge of the Italian language. Children from mixed families where one of the parents is an Italian citizen also do not have a problem. The most significant difficulties are encountered by young people who arrived in Italy as teenagers and have lived in Moldova for a long time with other relatives since their parents moved abroad for work. The need to reunite with the family after 5-10 years of separation from parents, sometimes with a new mixt family, creates additional psychological and sociocultural barriers in the process of integrating children in Italy.

The chapter presents a critical analysis of the reception system for non-asylum seeking unaccompanied migrant children in Calabria, a region of South Italy. It focuses on the main features of local welfare for migrants’ children emerging from a qualitative research carried out by mixing different sources: analysis of literature and semi-structured interviews to different stakeholders (politician, local administrators, juvenile judges, social workers, management of foster-care communities, and educators). Shortages in individualized planning, lack of resources for qualifying the educational staff, economic difficulties of local administrators, frequent absence of a cultural and linguistic mediator, lengthy delays in appointing tutelary judge, weakness of social territorial services to support communities, difficulties in organizing training and creating job opportunities, lack of verification and monitoring of inclusion interventions, organizational isolation of reception communities, fragility of networking and sporadic collaboration among different stakeholders involved in protection system, and inadequate collection of data and information about migrant children hosted in foster-care communities are salient limits of the local policies and interventions for non-asylum seeking migrants’ children. The chapter also includes a brief presentation of latest innovation in this policies filed, highlighting some of the best practices in education, training, and employment conducted in the Protection System for Refugees and Asylum Seekers, better organized, more specialized, and supported by the national government.

Responsible Management and Challenges of Inclusion in Multicultural School Environment in Slovenia

As the rural-to-urban migration continues, millions of children accompany their families into urban environments, where they face complex challenges adapting to urban life, resulting in mental health issues. This paper delves into the current academic conversations to dissect the mental health challenges faced by migrant children due to their struggles with social adaptation to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the developmental barriers experienced by migrant children in China. Drawing on Bronfenbrenners ecological systems theory, this paper also advocates for a multilevel intervention framework across four domains: family, school, community, and society. Implementing this comprehensive framework offers migrant children improved adaptation to urban life and a reduced risk of mental health issues. While practical challenges exist, increased attention from social workers, educators, and policymakers, as well as supportive legislation, can enhance the well-being and adaptation of migrant children in Chinas evolving society.

This study aimed at documenting real-world challenges encountered by interdisciplinary professionals in conducting assessments for learning disabilities as well as generating evidence to inform policy reforms focused on culturally responsive assessment protocols for non-native Greek-speaking children (MIS 5162111). The HMU Interdisciplinary Mobile Unit is a field-based service designed to bring psychoeducational support to under-resourced areas of Crete. Each multidisciplinary team includes a psychologist, school nurse, special educator, speech therapist, and social worker. The unit conducts on-site assessments in schools using standardized protocols aligned with KEDASY procedures. Between 2020 and 2023, the unit reached 20 school sites. Assessments included cognitive screening (WISC-V GR), developmental history interviews with parents, teacher consultations and collaborative case discussions. Of the 272 children assessed, 18 (6.7%) were migrant children (primarily Albanian and Arabic) whose mother tongue was not Greek. Formal assessment could not be completed due to language barriers and the absence of validated tools in their native languages. This gap raises the risk of mislabeling language acquisition challenges as learning disabilities or, conversely, missing genuine learning needs. Qualitative observations and family interviews also revealed elevated emotional distress, low self-esteem, and experiences of social exclusion among affected children. Families reported confusion, frustration, and disengagement from school systems due to language and institutional barriers. The experience of the Mobile Unit highlights deep structural inequities in Greece's current learning disability assessment framework. Migrant children are excluded from diagnostic procedures due to the lack of multilingual tools and adapted protocols. Reforms are needed to develop culturally and linguistically appropriate assessments and ensure compliance with national inclusion laws.Key messages• Migrant children face exclusion from learning disability assessment due to lack of culturally adapted tools.• Inclusive, multilingual assessment protocols are urgently needed to ensure fair access for all children.

Safeguarding Refugee and Asylum‐seeking Children

This study attempts to explore the impact of multi-dimensional social capital and resilience on migrant children’s social integration, in China so as to provide theoretical and practical implications for social policies and social work intervention toward Chinese migrant children. A total of 461 valid samples from primary schools of Guangzhou were surveyed for analysis. By running three regression models, the direct and indirect effects of family, school, and community social capital were observed. Besides, the mediation effect of the resilience was estimated. In order to confirm the mediation effect of the resilience, the Bootstrap method was used to examine the mediating effect of the resilience. The results showed resilience is the most influential factor, followed by three forms of social capital, family social capital, school social capital, community social capital. In addition, length of time living in Guangzhou, self-efficacy, the frequency of engaging in activities provided by social workers, and average monthly household income were significant factors. It is worth noting that three forms of social capitals have a direct impact on social integration, and they also affect social integration through the mediating role of the resilience. Further research can examined the causal relationship amongst the integration, social capital and resilience of migrant children by collecting longitudinal data or panel data. Moreover, future research could investigate how welfare policies and social work practice improve social integration of migrant children through effecting both their social capital and individual resilience.