The proposed pilot project focuses needed attention on the youth of migrant and seasonal farm worker families in America. This population and the families who support them remain largely hidden from our view, despite suffering from poverty, poor health and nutrition, unsafe working and living conditions, low job security, and constrained educational opportunities. It is likely that the children and youth in migrant or seasonal farm worker families face significant obstacles as they develop, attempt to assimilate into U.S. society, and make the transition to adulthood in America, yet surprisingly little is known about them. The proposed project will provide needed information on how the individual, familial, and contextual circumstances of these youth shape their aspirations, expectations and early adult outcomes with regard to educational attainment, labor force participation, and family formation. As important, if successful this pilot project will generate and refine a methodology that will anchor a proposal for a large-scale study of this important yet neglected group of youth. Guided by current theories of the assimilation patterns of second-generation youth, we propose a multi-method design featuring focus group surveys, key informant interviews, face-to-face structured surveys of youth, and administrative data analysis. The focus groups and key informant interviews will provide qualitative information on educational, career, and family issues, with emphasis on barriers to achieving aspirations in these respects. The qualitative data will inform the development of a protocol for a structured face-to-face survey focusing on these issues, to be administered to a representative sample of migrant and seasonal farm worker youth in a 3-county agricultural-dependent region of south-central Pennsylvania. The proposed pilot study is expected to provide essential experience in sampling and interviewing this hard to- reach population, in preparation for a more comprehensive longitudinal study of educational, labor force, family formation and health outcomes of this at-risk group of youth. ? ?
