Migration processes and education

Monitoring of the Migrant Children Status and Position at Schools of Saint-Petersburg

Project coordinator: Svetlana Savelieva

The Laboratory in the framework of a joint program with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Red Cross launched a project on monitoring of the migrant children’s situation in Saint-Petersburg in 2011. The objectives of this large study are analysis of migrant children’s problems and needs in Saint-Petersburg and  elaboration of corresponding recommendations.

The research tasks include displaying migrant children’s social portrait, studying language, educational, medical and other barriers which these children encounter in Saint-Petersburg. The situation monitoring will be held by several methods: in-depth interviews with children from Saint-Petersburg schools, face-to-face interviews and focus groups. 

Research Project on Migrant Children at Schools

Project coordinator: Valeria Ivanushina

The research on migrant children which has been held for many years in the Laboratory aims to study 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 studies 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? 

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Research on ethnic communities in the social network www.vkontakte.ru

Project coordinator: Irina Khvan

The research project on ethnic communities in social networks was launched in November 2010 at SESL. Mostly first year bachelor students are taking part in the project. The researchers examined social communities on the "vkontakte.ru" website from three points of view: the number of newcoming students, unions of students with the same ethnicity and connectedness of the groups with each other. They are going to continue their studies, but only within this website. The students intend to cover other social networks in the Internet. 

“Parallel Saint-Petersburg” exhibition

Project coordinator: Veronica Kostenko

SESL took part in creation of the interactive exhibition “Parallel Saint-Petersburg” in the framework of the research project on adaptation of migrant children in October - November 2010. The exhibition was devoted to migrant children and teenagers of different nationalities whose families have been living for many years in Saint-Petersburg. SESL researchers together with photographer Solmaz Guseynova and producer Mihail Zheleznikov took about 100 interviews with high school pupils of different nationalities. The children told about how they see the city, their traditions and celebrations, plans and dreams.

Brochure “Children from migrant families at schools of St. Petersburg”

Project coordinators: Daniel Alexandrov, Valeria Ivanushina, Vlada Baranova

The main topic of the brochure is adaptation of children from migrant families at school. The first results of a longitude research project “Migrant children at Russian schools” that collected data from 22 schools of St. Petersburg are represented in this brochure.

This work covers several issues: ethnic composition of schoolchildren in St. Petersburg, school-parents relations, school – migrant children relations, strategies of adaptation in relation to the age when they immigrated into the country and various aspects of language adaptation.

The method was based on network analysis of children interpersonal communication for evaluation of social exclusion and inclusion. The brochure is in Russian.