Well‐being of Migrant Children and Migrant Youth in Europe
This paper provides an overview of existing approaches and findings, and asks further questions about how migration influences the well‐being of children and youth who have migrated to European countries. Particular emphasis is given to migrant children and youth's perspective.
The article is structured in four main parts. A first section provides a synopsis of the relatively sparse existing studies on the well-being of migrant children and migrant youth in Europe. A second section brings in more extensive research to-date on the topic from traditional immigrant countries such as Australia, the United States, and Canada, which can serve as a useful starting point for further investigation in Europe. Next, the paper explores which indicators are relevant and necessary to measure the well‐being of migrant children and migrant youth. In order to identify these, a conceptual framework is developed to capture the many dimensions of migrant children and migrant youth well‐being. Finally, a fourth section provides a survey of existing data on the well‐being of migrant children and discusses the limitations of these data.
This review of existing literature and data brings to light the fact that there is a huge amount of heterogeneity in the well‐being of migrant children and youth across Europe. Whilst differing migrant characteristics might provide a partial explanation, this heterogeneity might also be strongly related to the very diverse approaches to immigration and integration pursued by different European countries and across different periods of time. Standard approaches which measure economic and social integration by simply comparing natives and immigrants will miss many of these differences.