"A Home of My Own": The Experience of Children of International Migrants

Abstract

There is a lack of research on children’s acculturation processes following international migration. As such, this article presents a study conducted among 10 latency-age children (10–11 years old), living in Israel, whose parents were work migrants/refugees/asylum seekers, via their artwork and through the lens of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model. The findings revealed that the migrant children expressed their acculturation and sense of belonging to the host country through three main themes: (1) a longing to have a room of their own; (2) a wish to separate and individuate, as is typical of pre-adolescents and adolescents universally; and (3) the need to rely on their youth movement as an alternative to the family and as a bridge to Israeli society. An examination of the weaknesses of the children’s microsystems and mesosystems highlights the need for continued efforts to strengthen their connection with the macrosystem, which provides them with a sense of home. Findings suggest that art is a useful mode of expression that can help migrant children explore their past, present, and future lives. They also highlight the importance of changing existing exclusionist policies in order to improve migrant children's sense of belonging and security.

Full text

Vol.:(0123456789)
1 3
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-021-00811-1
ORIGINAL PAPER
"A Home ofMy Own": The Experience ofChildren ofInternational
Migrants
NoaWiner1· OritNuttman‑Shwartz2 · EphratHuss1
Accepted: 6 June 2021
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021
Abstract
There is a lack of research on children’s acculturation processes following international migration. As such, this article
presents a study conducted among 10 latency-age children (10–11years old), living in Israel, whose parents were work
migrants/refugees/asylum seekers, via their artwork and through the lens of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model. The findings
revealed that the migrant children expressed their acculturation and sense of belonging to the host country through three main
themes: (1) a longing to have a room of their own; (2) a wish to separate and individuate, as is typical of pre-adolescents and
adolescents universally; and (3) the need to rely on their youth movement as an alternative to the family and as a bridge to
Israeli society. An examination of the weaknesses of the children’s microsystems and mesosystems highlights the need for
continued efforts to strengthen their connection with the macrosystem, which provides them with a sense of home. Findings
suggest that art is a useful mode of expression that can help migrant children explore their past, present, and future lives.
They also highlight the importance of changing existing exclusionist policies in order to improve migrant children’s sense
of belonging and security.
Keywords Acculturation· Art therapy· International migration· Latency-age children
Introduction
Today, approximately 31 million children live outside of
their country of origin. Of these children, 10 million are
refugees, including approximately one million children liv-
ing without supervision, and orphans who have been defined
as asylum seekers (Donato, 2018). Findings indicate that
the challenges for children of migrants include having to
deal with new learning environments as well as with pres-
sure from parents to succeed in school. They also have to
internalize new rules that require them to change their pre-
viously held social and cultural perspectives. Moreover, as
children generally adjust to their new cultures more rapidly
than do their parents, and because parents often miss and
long for their country of origin (Spiegler etal., 2019), the
parent–child relationship is marked by a new complexity.
This complexity creates a variety of problems including par-
ent–child conflicts, parent–child communication problems,
and problems in the children’s adjustment both to the new
culture and to the host country (Kim & Park, 2011). Addi-
tionally, many parents become dependent on their children,
a phenomenon that poses a threat to the parental role, and
changes the traditional, accepted, and long-held division of
roles (Edison & Curtis, 2007).
Within this context of being so deeply and traumatically
uprooted from their homes, how do children of international
migrants gain an attachment to their host homes, communi-
ties, and places? In an attempt to conceptualize the com-
plexity of coping with migration, Berry (1997) developed
the acculturation theory. This theory characterizes migra-
tion processes as resulting from migrants’ encounters with
new cultures that challenge their value systems, identities,
and behaviors, as well as their culture and lifestyle (Berry
etal., 2006). According to Berry, cultural and psychological
changes—such as changes in language and eating habits,
and changes in social and cultural activities—naturally take
place in the process of migration. At the same time, changes
are also taking place in the individual’s sense of belong-
ing and identity. Essentially, the encounter of the old and
* Orit Nuttman-Shwartz
orits@sapir.ac.il
1 Spitzer Department ofSocial Work atBen-Gurion
University oftheNegev, BeerSheva, Israel
2 School ofSocial Work, Sapir College, Sderot, Israel
/ Published online: 14 June 2021
Clinical Social Work Journal (2021) 49:325–335
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.