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PurposeThis paper describes distinctive ethical challenges encountered in qualitative research with migrant children. It brings attention to how the exploratory nature of qualitative research, intersected with the multifaced realities of migrant children, shapes stances towards these ethical challenges.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is developed through conceptual and reflective contributions. It narrates distinctiveness within ethical challenges via the literature. It then illustrates these, through the author's experiences of negotiating such tensions on a project with a category of migrant children, namely, separated children.FindingsEthical choices are made throughout the research processes. These choices need to be matched to distinctive childhood and migration intersections, and methodological frameworks must reflect these, including when applied to standardised ethical guidelines. Transparency, reflexivity and positionality influence these choices, and researchers have enhanced responsibility to minimise harm in how they research migrant children.Research limitations/implicationsFindings relate to work in development, where sensitivities regarding research conduct are still present. The scope is therefore on particular challenges of dealing with ethical codes and practices. The intention of the author is for this to be a reflective discussion producing paper, but not a practice guide.Originality/valueIts value is centred on taking generalised ethical challenges in qualitative work with children and systematically contextualising these regarding factors specific to migrant children, arguing that the way which migrant children are represented is in itself a key ethical challenge. It further contributes to the body of knowledge by describing procedures of a qualitative study which address some of this distinctiveness.

In the intense pursuit of the states and the international organizations to address the challenges of migrant processes, the focus on child security neglects the value of the migrant child's personality. Often, a migrant child is given the status of a caretaker by being "attached" to an adult – a situation that guarantees the child's limited ability to participate in decision-making processes that directly affect him/her. Insisting of the young people to participate in decision-making processes goes beyond creating rules in the "adult world" and raises previously unknown political and administrative challenges, as well as professional and public debates to ensure that all children have access to their rights. Opportunities for the participation of migrant children in the decision-making process cause a synchronization globally of understanding and implementation of the child's right to participate and to express own views. These opportunities should be applied interregional and transnationally and, together with that, developed and supported at political and practical levels. It is therefore important to review the current policy framework, to highlight good practice examples and to mark some opportunities for further social and organizational development.

AbstractUK statutory guidance for practitioners suggests that indebtedness is an area where safeguarding red flags should be raised and action taken to minimize the risk of exploitation. Yet, our research shows that unaccompanied migrant children have complex indebted relationships, which can range from extractive to connective. Drawing on interviews with unaccompanied children, we show that these indebted relationships can include financial debt to smugglers, responsibilities to support transnational families, as well as social obligations to peers and others. Their accounts present a nuanced understanding of the taboo nature of indebted relationships, not to be shared with the practitioners in their lives. This is due, in part, to the potential threat of reporting to the Home Office, which might jeopardize their immigration status. In response to this weaponization of social care, we demonstrate how children turn to peer networks of support, creating their own alternative forms of social protection. In so doing, we complicate critiques of adultification, which traditionally highlight the ways that racially minoritized children may be treated as adults—to their detriment. In so doing, we show that because indebtedness is normatively linked to adulthood, unaccompanied children's hopes and fears may be rendered unsayable and therefore unsupportable in social care, all in the name of safeguarding.

"The growing crisis of refugee and migrant children presents, for the first time, comprehensive, global data about refugee and migrant children--where they were born, where they move and some of the dangers they face along the way. The report sheds light on the truly global nature of childhood migration and displacement, highlighting the major challenges faced by child migrants and refugees in every region."--Publisher's website

The purpose of the present study was to explore the morbidity, especially psychiatric and psychosomatic morbidity, of Finnish remigrant children and adolescents who have lived part of their lives in Sweden. The study subjects consisted of 287 remigrants and 305 controls. Hospital admissions in these two groups were analyzed over an eleven year period after the study subjects' remigration to Finland. We found psychiatric morbidity, frequent hospitalizations and infectious diseases to be more common among the remigrants. These findings were consistent with the previous studies on Finnish remigrants from Sweden.

AbstractWhen it comes to academic debates about the integration of migrant children, the field is thoroughly heterogeneous in terms of the methods used and topics discussed. Research ranges from questions of belonging, acculturation, and hybrid identities to a focus on education, religion, family, well‐being and mental health, peer dynamics, integration support measures, nationalism, xenophobia, and discrimination. The initiative to publish a special issue on the integration of migrant children emerged from the project Migrant Children and Communities in a Transforming Europe (MiCREATE), a Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action, which aimed to identify effective child‐centred integration approaches for use in education and at the policy level across the European Union. The overarching goal of this special issue is to reflect on how nationalism manifests itself at different levels of social life and how it is reproduced in integration practices. The articles collected here examine how migrant children, education professionals, and policy‐makers understand, navigate, and experience the processes of integration, and how these processes are in turn influenced by discourses on nationalism and multiculturalism.