Research Project on Migrant Children at Schools

The problem of the younger migrant generation’s integration is important both for science and contemporary society. This field is still insufficiently explored in Russia: there aren’t enough the simplest data on the quantity of migrant children at schools, their educational and professional expectations and intentions, interaction with contemporaries and teachers.

Our long-term research is aimed at studying educational situation and  revelation of factors influencing migrant children’s life trajectories and adaptation strategies in the light of interaction between the educational system and migrant community. We set ourselves the following research questions: do ethnicity and migration (the fact of moving from one country to another) lead to unequal educational achievements no matter what the other socioeconomic characteristics of a family are? How removals influence  children’s teaching and is it possible to divide the ethnicity effect from migration (removal) effect?  How does the social capital influence migrant children’s educational trajectories and their future plans? How does the contemporaries’ environment determine the integration and which factors influence the forming of groups of friends and coalitions at school?  

An important goal of our work is elaboration and approbation of instruments for monitoring and analysis of the educational situation in the condition of migrant children’s inflow. Both qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (questionnaires) methods are applied in the research. Two lines of investigation intensify each other. The questionnaire database allows us to verify or refute the hypotheses which are formulated on the basis of interviews’ analysis.  In turn, the method of in-depth detailed interviewing gives us an opportunity to receive data which can’t be recorded by a questionnaire.  An original instrument was elaborated in order to estimate a pupil’s attitude to school and education, his or her feeling of inclusion into school life. Questions about network relationships in classes were added to the questionnaire. They allow us to measure social in(ex)clusion directly, not only by analyzing attitudes. It should be emphasized, that the surveys are carried out in the whole class (not only among migrants) so that we could compare children with different ethnicities and migration stories.  

Our research is based on social network analysis (SNA) methods. The collected data on relationships between schoolchildren will make it possible to study the structure of interactions in each class. The SNA methodology has been rapidly developing during last few years. A number of special mathematical methods for network data processing has been created. They are to measure relationships between actors.   The application of SNA approach provides us with a new outlook for studying inter-ethnic relations and allows us to measure the interconnection between inclusion into social networks and integration. 

The work began in 2008. As a result of consultations with educational institutions’ employees, several schools in Saint-Petersburg were selected. Qualitative research was carried out there: interviews and participant observation. These schools were similar to each other by some parameters: a simple enrollment procedure; lack of pupils in all classes; the schools were situated in the non-prestigious parts of districts.  The majority of migrant families within each school knew each other well, lived close to each other, sometimes in the same building.

The empirical base of the research was extended sufficiently in 2009: 1200 pupils filled in questionnaires at 22 schools. The survey was supplemented with interviewing of pupils and teachers (the questionnaire elaboration and the survey were carried out together with the “Region” center in Ulyanovsk).   In order to include more children with different ethnicities into the sample, schools with a high number of migrants from 3 districts of Saint-Petersburg  were selected for the survey.  We couldn’t be guided by official city statistics while selecting schools, because there is no such statistics. Due to that, the schools were chosen on the basis of consultations with employees of the districts’ educational management institutions.

The surveys were held in 7^th and 10^th grades, the questionnaires were filled in by all pupils in the class. Six schools with the highest number of migrants were selected for more profound qualitative analysis. Interviews with pupils of different ethnicities, their parents, teachers and administration were carried out. Moreover, 2 expert interviews with teachers, social workers, heads of teaching departments were held in each school. There were 58 interviews with children, 31 interview with parents and 64 interviews with teachers and school administration carried out. 

The questionnaire was significantly changed in 2010 and used for large surveys at schools in Saint-Petersburg and Moscow region. These regions were chosen because they accept the most part of migrants: according to the Federal State Statistics Service, 26% migrants come to Moscow region, 12% - to Saint-Petersburg. A lot of labor migrants with families, who work in Moscow, live in the Moscow region, and their children go to schools outside the Moscow ring road. Our preliminary results show, that the share of children from migrant families in Saint-Petersburg is much bigger in schools with a relatively small number of pupils and low Unified State Exam grades. These schools, due to their unpopularity among local population, are permanently short of pupils. That is why they are interested in migrants.  At the same time, according to statistics provided by the Center for Educational Monitoring and Statistics in the Moscow Region, migrants are distributed much more equally among schools.

The research in Saint-Petersburg was based on a stratified representative sample (104 schools, 7300 pupils), pupils from 8^th and 10^th grades were surveyed. The survey in Moscow region was held in six municipal unions and was based on a representative sample (50 schools, 3800 pupils), pupils from 9^th and 10^th grades were surveyed.The analysis of migrants’ interaction with the school demonstrates that school is the most important adaptation mechanism for migrants. The adaptation mechanism through school affects not only children from labor migrants’ families, but also their parents, because school is a space, where migrants face the “official” world. They encounter the necessity for processing documents and providing information about the family; the requirement to follow rules within the school; the need for changing practices formed in the family (use of Russian language, food practices).

The teachers and school’s administration translate new norms of behavior to the migrant families through talk about children’s upbringing. The socialization experience through schools is especially important for women, who don’t work and hardly interact with the outer (outside the family) world. Women-housekeepers face the “outer” world practically only at schools. School as an institute (and parental networks which form around the school) serve them as a one of the significant sources of information about the life beyond their house. 

The main migrant children’s problem at school is their poor Russian language skills. The adaptation strategies are connected with a child’s age at the moment of moving and the extent of integration into the Russian social environment, also with his or her socialization experience. The more the children are integrated into the Russian context, the higher the probability of their easier and faster adaptation to the school environment is. The integration usually occurs through kindergarten or at least primary school attendance.

Poor Russian language skills of migrant children are the main problem for the school teachers and administration also. This problem emerges as the number of children with different ethnicities grows. Schools don’t possess enough resources for independent solution of these problems. As the teachers note, the schools are interested in elaboration of recommendations and practical measures of language adaptation of migrant children as one of the applied results of the research. Schools which have been working with such children for a long time work out strategies of younger children’s language adaptation (tutoring, help during the extended school day, participation in the city program for adaptation of children with different ethnicities). 

Schools with small numbers of pupils consider the increase of migrants not only as a problem, but also as a possible resource or the school in the conditions of competition for pupils during the period of demographic recession. The implementation of the per capita financing law has led to the fact that schools are obliged to struggle for pupils. Any source of pupils is a mean of survival for incomplete schools. It should be taken into account that schools without additional specializations, which now work with migrant children, used to work with the guest workers’ children and have accumulated experience of work with difficult children and parents. This experience from the Soviet times, the traditions of correction pedagogics, teachers’ work together with speech therapists and defectologists can become an important resource during the work with children who speak different languages.

The inequality of educational opportunities is not so much connected with ethnicity as with the level of education in the family. The inequality shows itself in the opportunities of enrollment into a school.   As it has been said, migrant children are enrolled mostly into regular schools, where their socialization takes place in a low-competitive environment among children from working families, which often have some social or medical problems. Regarding the learning process, there is no difference between migrant and Russian children in school performance. There is also no difference in their plans concerning higher education.

The migrants who have been living in Russia for a long time, are well integrated into the social system, and/or have educated parents, and migrants who moved to Russia recently, and are poorly integrated, differ in their future plans and choices of the further professional trajectories, the extent of the choices’ perception.   It is important to point out that almost all migrants are planning to continue their education after school and consider school as an important resource of integration into Russian society.