Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Panel: Improving Educational Outcomes of Children and Youths from Migrant Families through Research and Policy

(Population and Migration Issues)

Family migration, both intra- and inter- national, profoundly impacts children and youths in many ways. One of the most important aspects of these children and youths’ lives are their educational attainment and achievement, which has long-term impact on their future career, human capital, and life opportunities. This panel focuses on educational outcomes of children/youths from migrant families. The papers in this panel describe the current state of educational achievement of children/youths from migrant families, examine factors that influence their educational outcomes, and discuss approaches to improve their educational outcomes. This panel highlights how we can improve policymaking through empirical research. Our research findings call for collaboration among the government, educational system, and the third sector to improve educational outcomes of children and youths from migrant families. The first paper presents the disparity in academic achievement among immigrant minority youths in the U.S. It examines the effects of race/ethnicity and immigrant status on academic achievement, and, how parental school involvement mediates these effects. While the effects of these factors on immigrant youths’ educational achievement have been discussed individually in literature, this paper fills the gap by identifying the interacting effects among these factors. This paper also highlights the unique challenges facing immigrant youths from different racial/ethnic backgrounds. The findings provide policy implications for the U.S. educational system to design specific programs and services to improve the educational achievement of immigrant youths from various racial/ethnic groups. The second paper analyzes the positive and negative impacts of parental migration on children’s educational outcomes in Romania, a country that has experienced unprecedented labor emigration after its 2007 EU accession. This paper explores two main mechanisms through which parental migration may impact their children: family’s economic gain from remittances and child’s psychological cost due to parental absence. Using the first national survey after Romania’s EU-succession, this paper depicts a dilemma facing migrant families. It notes that governments should lower transaction costs and encourages the flow of remittance in order to maximize the positive effect of remittances on the educational attainment of children from migrant families. The third paper discusses how to use psychosocial approaches to improve the educational outcomes of rural migrant children in China. This study employs an innovative practice – mindfulness-based cognitive and behavioral intervention – in Chinese rural migrant children, a population that totals 35.81 million today. Building upon previous research that found lower educational achievement and more psychosocial problems among these migrant children, this study examines the effect of mindfulness intervention on migrant children’s educational outcomes, and how psychosocial outcomes mediate this effect. The findings call for governments, schools, and families to collaboratively promote migrant children’s educational outcomes through psychosocial development. This paper provides implications for integrating psychosocial development in educational policies for migrant children.