Adolescence is a critical time in the life course when individuals lay the foundation for adult roles. Labor migration is an important household economic strategy, but it is not well understood how this migration affects children as they navigate adolescence. The goal of this project is to understand how family migration context, both past and current, shapes adolescents? family formation expectations and behavior in different settings.
The aims of this project are to 1) describe the distribution of family formation expectations of adolescents across family migration context, 2) understand how family migration context is associated with romantic relationships among adolescents, and 3) assess the association between family migration context and the timing of union formation for adolescents. Throughout the project, we attend to documenting the mediators that link family migration context to family formation expectations and behaviors, such as remittances, parental socialization and supervision, household resources, and adolescent socio-emotional competence. Given the variations in gender roles across our settings, we develop hypotheses sensitive to the different ways gender shapes adolescence in these contexts. This project bring several innovations. First, we conceptualize family migration context in diverse ways that go beyond the migrant and non-migrant dichotomy, using measures such as economic outcomes of migration, number of migration spells by different household members, and the relationship of the migrant to the focal adolescent. Second, we study how family migration context is associated with outcomes specific to adolescence, which is less developed than research on other life course stages; this is particularly true for research on the consequences of migration.
| An, Danming; Eggum-Wilkens, Natalie D; Chae, Sophia et al. (2018) Adults' Conceptualisations of Children's Social Competence in Nepal and Malawi. Psychol Dev Soc J 30:81-104 |
| Glick, Jennifer E; Yabiku, Scott T (2016) Migrant children and migrants' children: Nativity differences in school enrollment in Mexico and the United States. Demogr Res 35:201-228 |
