Abstract
Given that children and adolescents constitute a growing and significant share of forced migrants worldwide, assessing the state of research on and the methods used to study the acculturation of this group is both timely and essential. The acculturation of refugee children and adolescents in host countries occurs primarily within educational institutions and through the acquisition of the language of the new host society. This scoping review of peer-reviewed journal articles published between 1987 and 2016 (N = 192 eligible studies) examined the extent to which individual-level factors (e.g., gender, age) and contextual factors (e.g., country of residence) emphasized by acculturation models have been considered in research involving young refugees in the educational domain. In addition, the research designs and methods applied in these studies were evaluated, and content analysis was performed to examine whether individual-level factors considered in the sample of studies were related to educational outcomes of young refugees. Overall, the review revealed that very few studies provided adequate information on sample composition, or considered individual and contextual factors, thus leaving crucial gaps in the knowledge about the acculturation of young refugees. Guidelines for future research are proposed to remedy the identified research deficits.
Highlights
The sharp increase in global forced migration flows in recent years is reflected in the increased number of refugee students enrolled in schools in receiving countries (OECD 2015)
As a first step in this direction, and with a specific focus on education as a crucial acculturation domain, the present scoping review set out to ascertain the degree to which studies on refugee children and adolescents published between 1987 and 2016 had taken into account individual-level and contextual factors that are considered important by established acculturation models in the field of psychology
The present review revealed that educational institutions were the most common study settings
Summary
The sharp increase in global forced migration flows in recent years is reflected in the increased number of refugee students enrolled in schools in receiving countries (OECD 2015). For refugee children and adolescents, educational institutions are both the principal sites of integration and the main settings in which individual and contextual factors shape the process of adaptation to the host society (e.g., Bean et al 2007; SuárezOrozco et al 2018). Psychological models prevalent in the study of immigrant acculturation suggest that several individual-level factors (e.g., gender, age) and contextual factors (e.g., country of residence) affect the process of immigrants’ adaptation to their new environment (e.g., Arends-Tóth and van de Vijver 2006; Suárez-Orozco et al 2018).
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