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While children have always been a part of migration flows, migration scholarship has, until recently, ignored their experiences. Seminal theories focused on adult male migrants, concentrating on how individuals or family units make rational decisions to maximize return on labor, diversify income sources, and pursue socioeconomic mobility by migrating to places where wages are higher.
In the 1970s, feminist scholarship began to question the validity of these explanatory frameworks, bringing attention to the experiences of women as independent migratory actors with their own agency and…
In February 2023, the New York Times published “Alone and Exploited,” an article on the experiences of newly-arrived migrant children in the United States who are often exploited for their work in dangerous jobs that violate child labor laws. Having crossed the U.S. southern border unaccompanied, many of these young people are under pressure to earn money to support their families back home, pay rent and living expenses, as well as debts to smugglers, while also…
Background
Mentoring, specifically peer mentoring, emerged in the child welfare setting in the early 2000s. Peer parent programs provide child welfare involved families a unique opportunity to connect with parents that have successfully navigated the child welfare system and who share similar lived experiences. No …
Research pertaining to effective foster care reunification strategies is well established. However, a gap exists in the literature surrounding social services for rural families post-reunification due to a lack of service provision for families following reunification. Reunified families often need additional support to prevent future reentry into foster care. Caseworkers work closely with families, offering a unique perspective as to what social services are most effective at preventing reentry into foster care.
Due to recruitment constraints in during the COVID-19 pandemic, a pilot study…
Family reunification occurs when migrants relocate without intact family units, and later reunite in new countries. Family serial migration and reunification is a global issue, relating to both voluntary and involuntary migrants who seek physical safety, psychological well-being, and economic self-sufficiency in new countries. Early studies alluded to a joyful family reconsolidation, while recent studies have found stressful reunions. This study provides an overview of the family reunification process of Latinx adolescents who have migrated to join their families in the United States.
The…
Beyond Family: Separation and reunification for young people negotiating transnational relationships
This paper explores perspectives on family reunification and emergent forms of separation among young migrants. These young people lived apart from and later reunited with their migrant parents who moved from the Philippines to Canada for work. The author draws from 15 months of ethnographic, arts-based, and participatory research with ten participants living in Greater Vancouver. While reunification literature and child rights discourse often focus on the process of a mother and child coming back together, this can obscure the relationships that young people form with others in the meantime…
Providing effective mental health services to unaccompanied children released from federal immigration custody is both critically important and incredibly challenging. Developed by children’s rights attorneys and mental health experts on trauma and immigration, this Guide is grounded in the voices and experiences of unaccompanied children. The Guide provides context on the distinctive experiences unaccompanied children carry with them and offers guidance on how to meet the therapeutic needs of these children. Featured quotes from detained unaccompanied children throughout the Guide come from…
When children must be removed from their families to ensure their safety, the first goal is to reunite them with their families as soon as possible. Children reunited into safe, stable, and loving family environments tend to perform better in school and have better social skills than those who remain in foster care.
Making reunification the primary goal of out-of-home care requires child welfare agencies to execute intensive, family-centered services to support a safe and stable family. Services should be tailored to each family's circumstances and address the issues that brought the child…
This factsheet shares the experiences and advice of families who have had relatives in kinship care arrangements to highlight the dynamics and steps that can support reunification.
This article argues that the U.S. Congress should make changes to extend protections under Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS). First, says the author, Congress should pass legislation to eliminate the requirement that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) must consent to grants of SIJS. Next, Congress should eliminate the per-country limitation on SIJS-based adjustment of status visas and triple the number of visas allocated per year in order to account for all the unaccompanied minors that may be eligible for SIJS. These implementations would give effect…