Project Summary/Abstract
Migration affects hundreds of millions of families worldwide. Migrants often leave family members in their origin
communities, which can challenge the wellbeing among the children. It is not well understood how migration
influences left-behind family members’ socialization of children or children’s social competence and adjustment
problems in sending communities. Migration is expected to alter how family members engage with, make
expectations for, and provide for children, and alter children’s experiences and resources. These challenges
and opportunities are expected to affect children’s social competence and adjustment problems. For instance,
family members’ migration is hypothesized to predict less monitoring by left-behind caregivers and, in turn,
higher drug and alcohol use for children. Benefits of migration are also anticipated, for instance, children’s
increased responsibilities may positively predict their behavioral control. The project will follow children who
previously participated in 2 time points of data collection and provide new data on the children, their primary
caregivers, and their fathers at 2 additional time points. In combination with the prior waves of data from the
same children and their caregivers, the project will yield high-quality information about children (5 to 17 years
old at Time 1) across 6 years in a large sample that is representative of the study area. Key developmental
transitions into school, adolescence, and adulthood are captured. The research will illustrate the complex ways
in which family members’ migration predicts children’s socio-emotional outcomes. The specific aims of the
project are: 1) to investigate reciprocal effects of caregivers’ socialization and children’s socio-emotional
development, 2) to determine how family members’ migration is associated with socio-emotional outcomes,
and how child, family, and migration characteristics moderate associations, and 3) to explore fathers’ roles in
children’s socio-emotional outcomes, and compare fathers’ familial relationships and socialization for those
who do versus do not participate in migration. This is an innovative extension of prior research; the project will
provide a longer and more detailed view of children’s development and the dynamics of migration in and out of
their households. Furthermore, including migrating and non-migrating fathers’ interviews supports an
innovative investigation of their unique contributions to children’s socio-emotional development that goes
beyond their economic contributions. Migrating fathers are expected to have poorer marital quality than non-
migrating fathers, which may indirectly affect children’s socio-emotional outcomes via parent-child
relationships. The new knowledge developed about migration’s costs and benefits will be useful for families as
they adapt to changes migration brings to relationships and caregiving, help policy makers anticipate the
challenges migration poses to children’s socio-emotional wellbeing, and inform children’s rights protections.