International Comparisons and Measurement of Child Well-Being

In principle, systematic comparisons across nations that represent distinct contexts of reception should provide novel insights about the conditions necessary for the successful integration of immigrant youth. However, comparative research on immigrant integration conducted over the past couple of years by the Princeton Global Network on Child Migration has exposed numerous challenges. Research is frequently hampered by the lack of comparable data sets, imperfect comparability of key outcome measures, and the absence of survey questions needed to identify youth with migration backgrounds in nationally representative surveys.

Marta Tienda and Alicia Adsera propose to organize a workshop to discuss three aspects of comparability that warrant systematic scrutiny in order to advance the understanding of integration experiences of youth with migration backgrounds from a comparative international perspective: (1) Differences in contexts of reception: participants will identify institutional arrangements that are relevant to understanding the integration of youth with migration backgrounds, and discuss strategies to develop core measures for use in comparative analyses; (2) Differences in outcome measures: participants will evaluate measurements in existing data that are suitable for the study of integration and development of children with migration backgrounds; and (3) Data omissions: participants will identify key data sets whose analytic utility for the study of child well-being would be greatly expanded by adding strategic questions about birthplace and migration timing. The ultimate goal of the workshop is to develop an international research project to study how institutional arrangements influence integration prospects of youth with migration backgrounds.