Immigrant children disadvantaged

Immigrant children and young people get a raw deal in richer countries compared with native children, a new study has found. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said yesterday said that many immigrant children and young people in eight wealthy countries are at disadvantage compared with the native children and young people. The report, for the first time gives figures that can be compared between eight industrialised countries about the number, share and family circumstances of immigrant children in eight industrialized countries.

Carried out by the UNICEF Innocenti Research Center in Florence, Italy, the study compares the fortunes of immigrant children and young people in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. With these of native children. "Despite their differences in cultural, religious, linguistic and ethnic backgrounds, children in immigrant families often are similar to their peers in native families in their family composition and parental employment, but they often experience educational and economic challenges and higher poverty rates," said Professor Donald Hernandez, who is the author of the study and is an expert on social policies.

To even out these differences, the report recommends improving access to health care, education and work opportunities. Fostering civil integration and social inclusion can benefit not only children and parents in immigrant families," said David Parker, Deputy Director of UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, "but also the countries of settlement that the parents in immigrant families have adopted as their own." Children in immigrant families make up a large share of all children in the countries reviewed in the study. However, not much is known about the living conditions of these children.

In many of the countries in the report, most of the children in immigrant families live with two parents, and are more likely than children in native-born families to live in households with two or more brothers and/ or sisters, which means the family’s money often has to go further than their native counterparts. The report also finds that immigrant children’s access to schooling, their risk of not being enrolled, educational and employment outcomes also depend on their country of origin. Children of immigrants from politically unstable countries perform worse at school compared with other immigrant children. "Adult political immigrants face serious negative consequences that can be related to the political situations in their origin countries," said sociologist Mark Levels, at Radboud University in the Netherlands. "We found that these consequences carry across generations to affect their children's educational chances as well.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children