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Unaccompanied migrant children face multiple challenges, which, with the right support, professionals can help them overcome

This paper considers dilemmas around 'value' and the 'valuing' of children and childhood(s) in schools. I argue that in neo‐liberal contexts, processes of children's identity making become aligned with the idea of the corporate citizen – value and worth derived from the capacity to produce, excel, self‐regulate as well as consume in an ever expanding marketplace. Taking the positioning of migrant children as an exemplar, the paper explores the tensions in pedagogic practices between the valuing of migrant children and their 'added value' that is communicated through spheres of re/action in schools. The paper argues for education that is radical and strategic; careful and nurturing. In its absence, being valued differently involves reproducing negative patterns in a circular dialectical loop that naturalises under achievement of migrant children and other children at risk, to deficiencies in culture and identity.

Alejandro Portes and Alejandro Rivas examine how young immigrants are adapting to life in the United States. They begin by noting the existence of two distinct pan-ethnic populations: Asian Americans, who tend to be the offspring of high-human-capital migrants, and Hispanics, many of whose parents are manual workers. Vast differences in each, both in human capital origins and in their reception in the United States, mean large disparities in resources available to the families and ethnic communities raising the new generation. Research on the assimilation of these children falls into two theoretical perspectives. Culturalist researchers emphasize the newcomers' place in the cultural and linguistic life of the host society; structuralists, their place in the socioeconomic hierarchy. Within each camp, views range from darkly pessimistic—that disadvantaged children of immigrants are simply not joining the American mainstream—to optimistic—that assimilation is taking place today just as it has in the past. A middle ground is that although poorly endowed immigrant families face distinct barriers to upward mobility, their children can overcome these obstacles through learning the language and culture of the host society while preserving their home country language, values, and customs. Empirical work shows that immigrants make much progress, on average, from the first to the second generation, both culturally and socioeconomically. The overall advancement of the immigrant population, however, is largely driven by the good performance and outcomes of youths from professional immigrant families, positively received in America. For immigrants at the other end of the spectrum, average socioeconomic outcomes are driven down by the poorer educational and economic performance of children from unskilled migrant families, who are often handicapped further by an unauthorized or insecure legal status. Racial stereotypes produce a positive self-identity for white and Asian students but a negative one for blacks and Latinos, and racialized self-perceptions among Mexican American students endure into the third and fourth generations. From a policy viewpoint, these children must be the population of greatest concern.
The authors cite two important policy measures for immigrant youth. One is to legalize unauthorized migrants lest, barred from conventional mobility channels, they turn to unorthodox means of self-affirmation and survival. The other is to provide volunteer programs and other forms of outside assistance to guide the most disadvantaged members of this population and help them stay in school.

AbstractRecently, crises seem to predominate migration policymaking. They are commonly seen as critical junctures which precipitate major policy change. However, rather than creation of something new, crises can instead be vehicles for restoring the order of the past. This article examines the case of asylum‐seeking unaccompanied minors in Sweden, where drastic changes have been made in the aftermath of the perceived "migration crisis" of 2015. Employing historical institutionalist theory, it examines decades of Swedish migration policymaking through analysis of state inquiries, law proposals and court rulings. It argues that the changes introduced 2015 were not qualitatively new, but rather a result of long‐simmering tensions. These tensions lie between state attempts to control migration, particularly of "unidentifiable" individuals, and the rights accorded to migrants. The article shows that Sweden's migration framework of bounded universalism has gradually been altered by tools that categorize migrants, with implications for migration policy as a whole.

AbstractDrawn from 14 educational policy documents and 26 interviews with educators of internal migrant children in China, this paper examines the design and implementation of educational policy for Chinese internal migrant children in the past three decades through the theoretical lens of social justice. Taking Guiyang city as the focus, this study demonstrates that educational policy and provision for migrant children are part of an evolving process impacted by interrelations between issues, such as the hukou system, (lack of) government funding and tensions between central and local governments. Although migrant children increasingly have access to improved opportunities, their outcomes remain poor relative to their peers from urban areas. New policies aiming to mitigate the disadvantages of migrant children are needed.

The state of class consciousness of working-class children in China has received scant attention in the scholarly literature. This study examines the class consciousness of rural migrant children as they are about to join their migrant parents and become "China's new workers." Qualitative investigations were conducted in two primary schools in Beijing. Focus group and individual interviews were held with 87 fifth- and sixth-grade migrant children in the two case schools and 324 valid student questionnaires were collected. The findings reveal that migrant children are aware of the unequal class relationships suffered by migrant workers; however, their interpretations of class-based injustices exhibit false consciousness, shadowed by individualism, meritocracy and the duality of images. Family and school may play vital roles in shaping migrant children's class consciousness. (China Q / GIGA)