MAKING FRIENDS and connections is more important to migrant children than their nationality or ethnic difference, a study on the experiences of immigrant children has found.
Dr Piaras MacÉinrí, of the Irish Centre for Migration Studies at UCC, said the study, Tell Me About Yourself : Children and Young People’s Experiences of Moving To and Living in Ireland, underlined the importance of listening to the aspirations of migrant children, and welcoming them, if future social conflict was to be avoided.
The study has just been published by UCC’s departments of geography and law. Research was carried out among 194 migrant children (84 boys and 110 girls) aged three to 18 from a variety of countries and living throughout the State. It looked separately at the experiences of children of African, Eastern European and Latin American migrants, and of returning Irish emigrants.
School was found to be a key factor in children’s wellbeing. Many reported positive experiences. It could also be, however, the place where they first experienced feelings of “being different”.
Significant to this, the report says, is “a lack of resources and in-service training for teachers in schools with pupils from migrant backgrounds”. The response of schools to migrant children could “vary from school to school”.
Migrant children had strong attachments to their home country, but also a strong affinity for the part of Ireland in which they were living. In terms of their own identity, national identities were important but so too were global consumer-based identities and day-to-day interests locally, such as sport, music and fashion.
Migrant children are affected by the same issues as all children, such as poor recreational facilities, poor planning and badly resourced education. These factors could affect migrant children disproportionately, however. “Therefore, it is not sufficient to view migrant children’s issues as a distinct problem.” They had to be viewed in a wider context as issues that affect all children.
Children of African origin were found to be made feel particularly “different”. They found discussions about race difficult. “In many cases the children sought to brush over their experiences of racism.” The mother of one child who had denied experiencing racism described “a lot of name- calling. It wasn’t nice really.”
Dr MacÉinrí said it was known that first-generation immigrant adults would often put up with a lot, even of racist abuse.
“Migrants themselves will tolerate all kinds of exploitation and abuse, but often with only one end in mind: to give their children the life chances and opportunities they did not have themselves.”
Their children, however, “are in a very different space – or rather, in a variety of very different and complex spaces”, and keen to embrace a “hybrid identity” of Irish and immigrant.
It was vital that we listened to their aspirations and expectations if Ireland was to avoid the kind of social conflict seen in France in 2005 and in Toxteth and Bristol in England in the 1980s.
The full report is available at www.migration.ucc.ie/children
