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"You can feel the hardship, but you also have to do whatever. What I mean to say is that when they are left alone it’s not that they are not loved, that is the truth, but it’s because of the situation."
-
Noluthando
, South African mother who left her children behind to migrate for work, from
Fragmenting the family?: The complexity of household migration strategies in post-apartheid South Africa
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Focus on Transnational Families
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As the international community prepares to attend the
Intergovernmental Conference
to adopt the
Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration
in Marrakech on the 10th and 11th December 2018, we focus this issue of the newsletter on the growing body of literature exploring the impact of migration on children’s care and well-being. While we previously highlighted recent research and resources on children who have themselves migrated, either with their families or unaccompanied, we focus here on articles exploring the situations of children whose parents or other caregivers have migrated within their country or across borders. Understanding the diversity of care arrangements in those contexts and their relationship to child rights and well-being is essential for governments and practitioners working to inform policy and services to support appropriate care. Going beyond the concept of ‘left behind children,' recent research is exploring the complex reality of transnational families and transnational care.
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Population, Space and Place
Special Issue on Transnational Families
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This special issue of the journal of
Population, Space and Place
, with several open access articles, aims to address the gap in transnational families studies by identifying if there are common patterns and effects of transnational family life across countries and regions, using cross‐country comparative analyses.
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The authors of this study from
Population, Space and Place
use data from surveys in three countries to document the frequency and variability of intensive, engaged transnational parenting in the diverse global regions of
Asia
,
Africa
, and the
Americas
.
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This multimethod qualitative study from
Population, Space and Place
in 4 high‐migration communities in East Lombok,
Indonesia
, explored the strategic actions migrant parents take regarding birth registration.
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In this paper from
Population, Space and Place
, the authors examine the reunification patterns of children left‐behind by parents who migrated to
France
and
Spain
in order to understand whether children from standard two‐parent families differ in their chances of joining their migrant parents in the destination country compared to children in non‐standard families (single parent and blended families), as well as the potential role of immigration policies on these chances.
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This open access paper from
Population, Space and Place
aims to fill a knowledge gap by comparing transnational and nontransnational
African
families with parents living in
Europe
to understand their different family structures.
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This study from
Population, Space and Place
is a pioneer effort to comparatively examine how the life satisfaction of children is influenced by their experiences of migration and by their interactions with parents in two geographical contexts:
Ghana
and
China
.
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This study from
Population, Space and Place
provides the first estimates of the prevalence of parental absence via migration that are comparable across populations in contemporary
Latin America
.
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Other Resources on Transnational Families
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The Global Migration Indicators 2018 report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is a snapshot of what is known about migration today. The report reviews key trends in
global
migration, including sections on remittances and the migration of women and children, and highlights the relevant SDGs and Global Compact objectives.
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In this chapter from the
Handbook of Migration and Globalisation
, the authors examine the relationship between family, globalisation and migration through the lens of care, focusing specifically on the experiences of transnational families around the
world
.
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In this mixed methods study from
United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research
, the authors use nationally representative panel data from
South Africa
to investigate migration patterns when viewed from the perspective of children.
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According to some estimates, a third of the adult
Moldovan
population is working abroad, often 'leaving behind’ children in the care of relatives, neighbors or in orphanages. This paper from the
Journal of European Studies
investigates how such high migration rates affect Moldovan family life and personal definitions of identity and success.
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This study from
Child Indicators Research
empirically measures the perceptions towards maternal and paternal migration of male and female children who stay behind in
Ghana
.
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This paper from the
Social Sciences and Education Research Review
examines the situation of children in
Romania
whose parents are going to work abroad, leaving the children without parental care.
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This chapter from
Migration between Africa and Europe
investigates family life in the context of international migration between
Ghana
and Europe (the
UK
and the
Netherlands
). The chapter finds that transnational family forms, in which one or more members of the nuclear family are living abroad while the other members remain in the home or another country, are common.
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This study from the journal of
Comparative Migration Studies
uses nationally representative data collected in 2011–2012 in
Moldova
and
Georgia
to investigate how children’s health associates with five transnational characteristics: migrant and return-migrant household types, parental migration and parental divorce, maternal and/or paternal migration and caregiver’s identity, the duration of migration, and remittances.
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This study from the
International Journal for Equity in Health
aims to explore unintentional injury disparity among schooling left-behind children, migrant children and residential children in
China
, and to examine the risk factors of unintentional injury among the three types of children based on a multi-level system framework.
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The authors of this article from
Childhood and Parenting in Transnational Settings
have started to conduct a qualitative research intending to determine, if and to which extent, children left behind are vulnerable to human trafficking in
Romania
.
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This paper from the
Human Resource Management Review
provides a typology that can be applied to the transnational family as a theoretical lens through which diverse forms of transnational families can be understood.
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The aim of this chapter from
Childhood and Parenting in Transnational Settings
is to explore how caregiving arrangements among parents of the recent
East European
labour migrants in
Sweden
develop in a transnational setting.
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This article from
Childhood and Parenting in Transnational Settings
examines the case of three groups of young people in
Filipino
transnational families: stay-behind children of migrant parents, migrant children reunited with their parents in their receiving country, and children of ‘mixed’ couples.
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This study from the journal of
Migration Studies
explores the experiences of
Jamaican
transnational mothers in New York City,
US
and documents their stories in light of current research which investigates how transnational motherhood transgresses gender stereotypes and pushes the boundaries of gender roles and expectations.
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This article from the journal of
Ethnography
looks at the interaction between transnational family relationships in
Cape Verde
, on the one hand, and family-related immigration policies, on the other.
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This paper from
Euromentor
aims to analyze the situation of children of
Romanian
migrants left at home in the care of a parent or other guardian (with or without legal forms).
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Understanding the Situation
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The aim of this study from JAMA Psychiatry was to examine trajectories of latent psychopathology factors—general (P), internalizing (INT), and externalizing (EXT)—among children reared in institutions in
Romania
and to evaluate whether randomization to foster care is associated with reductions in psychopathology from middle childhood through adolescence. This study is part of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project.
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This study from the journal of Child Development examined disruptions in caregiving, as well as the association of these disruptions, with cognitive, behavioral, and social outcomes at age 12 in a sample of 136
Romanian
children who were abandoned to institutions as infants and who experienced a range of subsequent types of care.
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The Chronicle of Social Change, a
US
national news site focused on children, youth and families, has released this ambitious data and reporting project to examine where kids go when they’re removed from home. The project yielded significant findings about states’ struggles to recruit and retain foster homes, and their increased reliance on relatives and group homes.
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This report from Anglicare Tasmania looks at the nature and extent of the income and housing challenges faced by families in Tasmania,
Australia
who have had children removed by Child Safety Services, and the impacts those challenges may have on positive family reunification outcomes.
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This paper from The World Bank Research Observer summarizes evidence on six perceptions associated with cash transfer programming, using eight rigorous evaluations conducted on large-scale government unconditional cash transfers in
sub-Saharan Africa
under the Transfer Project, including the
Kenya
Cash Transfers for Orphans and Vulnerable Children, the
Lesotho
Child Grant Program, the
Zambia
Child Grant Program, and more.
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Among the findings from the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES) in
Tanzania
, this report highlights data related to the gendered differences in childcare responsibilities in households, violence experienced at home during childhood, household living arrangements (including those who grew up primarily in alternative or kinship care), and the situation of "non-resident" children.
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In this study from
PLoS ONE
, the relationship between family structure and positive adolescent sexual behaviour, measured as delay in sexual debut, in
sub-Saharan Africa
was examined using the bioecological theory framed by a risk and resilience perspective. After controlling for other covariates, the study found that adolescents living with neither parent had lower odds of delaying sexual debut although results were only significant for males.
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Policies, Standards, and Guidelines
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The purpose of this report from the Kisumu Street Children Rehabilitation Consortium of
Kenya
is to share with local and national governmental leaders about Kisumu’s successes in significantly reducing the street population within the city and to inform others of the successful (and unsuccessful) interventions deployed in order to achieve these results.
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This report by The Brotherhood of St Laurence presents an evaluation of the second stage of the the Developing Independence (DI) in Out-of-home care (OOHC) pilot in Melbourne,
Australia.
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This paper from the
First Peoples Child & Family Review
documents findings from an evaluation of the Live-In Family Enhancement (LIFE) program in Manitoba,
Canada
, and recommends that this approach be expanded for use in prevention as well as reunification.
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This study from the
Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review
reviews a series of interrelated studies on the development of children residing in institutions (i.e., orphanages) in the
Russian Federation
or placed with families in the
USA
and the Russian Federation.
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The purpose of this paper from the
Journal of Children's Services
is to validate measures of professional self-efficacy for detecting and responding to child abuse and neglect presentations, and then evaluate a clinical training program for health professionals in a tertiary-level hospital in
Vietnam
.
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This paper from the journal of
Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk
discusses the experiences of parents receiving family reunification services because their children have been placed in child and youth care centres in
South Africa
.
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In this issue, we highlight the care-related Concluding Observations adopted by the
Committee on the Rights of the Child
at its
79
th Session
held 17 September - 5 October 2018, with a particular focus on sections addressing children's care.
Click below to read the Country Care Reviews for the following countries:
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This video from Focus in Africa, BBC World News highlights findings from a recent Disability Rights International (DRI) report which explores the practice of infanticide of children born with disabilities in
Kenya
.
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UK Department for Education, 26 October 2018
Huffington Post, 25 October 2018
BBC News, 22 October 2018
The Nation, 15 October 2018
AP, 15 October 2018
All Africa, 14 October 2018
Arab News, 13 October 2018
GroundUp, 12 October 2018
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Newsday, 11 October 2018
Thomson Reuters Foundation, 10 October 2018
Reuters, 9 October 2018
The Citizen, 9 October 2018
PRI's The World, 9 October 2018
The Chronicle of Social Change, 9 October 2018
Eurasia Review, 6 October 2018
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24 June 2019
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
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15-17 September 2019
Glasgow, Scotland
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29-31 October 2019
Tel Aviv, Israel
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Newsletter participants, currently 4,187 in total, work on issues related to the care and support of vulnerable children across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas. The purpose of the newsletter is to enable members to exchange information on matters of mutual concern. If you would like to share a document, raise a specific issue, request a newsletter subscription, or reach out in any other way to the Network, please send the information to us at
contact@bettercarenetwork.org
or visit our website at
www.bettercarenetwork.org.
Thank you!
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Better Care Network | 601 West 26th Street Suite 325-19, New York, NY 10001 - USA
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