Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società

Descrizione del progetto

FUTURES will critically investigate the conditions for the integration of migrant children by mapping legal, administrative, cultural and social barriers and facilitators, and to identify innovative practices to secure access and inclusion. The integration of migrant children represents a critical challenge for sustainable development, globally as well as in the EU.
Integration, however, is a contested concept, and what counts as successful integration may have gendered implications and differ depending on the perspective from which it is defined. FUTURES therefore employs a multi-method comparative approach, drawing on ethnographic and participatory methods to elicit the perspectives of migrant children and actors at the community level, multilevel analyses of existing cross-national survey data and analyses of national administrative data and legal frameworks. The aim of the project design is to maximize this comparative project’s potential impact in terms of policyrelevant knowledge, societal impact, and scientific excellence. FUTURES builds on and moves beyond existing empirical studies of the integration of migrant children in schools and of refugee education as well as on conceptual insights from studies of childhood and migrancy, integration, and inequality. It will increase scientific understanding of the challenges to and success factors for the integration of migrant children and propose a piloting conceptual framework to monitor the integration of migrant children cross-nationally. Further, FUTURES will identify innovative practices for integration and promote these through an e-learning tool targeting teachers, children, parents, and policy makers. FUTURES’ impact will be realized through the combined expertise of the consortium members that include academic institutions and civil society organizations from seven EU and three non-EU countries and the active involvement of migrant children, local communities, and other national and European stakeholders.