Understanding the wellbeing of international migrants

CRFR associate director Philomena de Lima introduces her new book International Migration: the wellbeing of migrants, in which she provides a contemporary understanding of migrants and migration processes and trends with a particular focus on issues related to the wellbeing of migrants and their access to services.

Migration appears to provide a dumping ground for all that is perceived to be going wrong with society at present. It has been a focus for articulating the concerns of sections of the electorate aided by specific political interests across Europe against a background of welfare reform, poor access to services, unemployment and anxieties about national identity. This trend was reflected in the UK Brexit referendum results in June 2016, the growth of ‘far right parties’ and xenophobic discourses about migrants in the European Union (EU) and ‘contracting out’ of EU border control to ‘third countries’ such as Turkey. These external border control practices are matched by internal bordering practices; migrants’ rights to access to public services such as health, housing and education are being restricted or withdrawn and regulations regarding immigration and granting asylum are being tightened. This increases the risk of negative impacts on the physical, social, emotional and psychological, cultural and economic wellbeing of migrants.

The international migration landscape is complex and diverse, with some migrants being more welcome than others. The book provides a contemporary understanding of the complexities of international migration focusing on the potential factors impacting on the well-being of migrants throughout the migration journey.

Why focus on international migrants and their wellbeing? The wellbeing of international migrants has tended to be neglected or marginalised in public discourses and in research. The main tendency has been to promote largely ‘instrumental’ views of international migrants from the perspective of host countries. Attention is given to the economic contributions of migrants to host societies and much policy and scholarly attention is spent on how to facilitate the adaptation of migrants (‘integration’) to host societies. That migrants are human beings with similar hopes and aspirations as those of host society populations is lost amid the noise of dehumanising metaphors and emotions of being overwhelmed, which are generated in public discourses. Migrants are members of households, they are parents, children, workers, colleagues and reducing them to their migrant status not only is reductionist, but also conceals their shared interests, emotions, experiences, and concerns with host populations.

Despite the challenges and amid the hysteria about ‘floods of migrants’ arriving at European borders there are also the efforts of concerned citizens and communities supporting migrants, as well as migrants actively involved in self-organising, protesting and demanding a right to speak for themselves.

Migrant wellbeing in the book is understood as a relational process that is created and recreated throughout the migration journey – from pre-arrival to destination and all that occurs in between – and is embedded in social, economic, political and cultural processes. It requires approaches that transcend disciplinary and national boundaries and transverses policy domains.

The book provides an informative overview of international migration issues and debates for social science students, policy-makers and those wrestling on a practical level with the implications of migration.

 
International Migration: the wellbeing of migrants is published by Dunedin Academic Press and is available to purchase on their website.

Children's rights and wellbeing

Kay Tisdall, CRFR co-director

How do children’s rights and children’s wellbeing fit together? I became concerned about this in 2012. The Government proposed new legislation, in Scotland, promising ‘to make rights real’ for children. And the Government said it would legislate for ‘Getting it Right for Every Child’ (GIRFEC), so that the initiative was fully implemented across Scotland. GIRFEC seeks to improve how professionals and agencies work together, encouraging prevention and early intervention with children and their families. GIRFEC is outcomes-based, organised around 8 children’s wellbeing indicators. With both children’s rights and children’s wellbeing placed in the same legislation, an intellectual interest – how do the two concepts fit together? – became a practical policy concern.

Over the next 3 years, I have worked with colleagues, the Common Weal, and then colleagues in Europe and North America, to work out how the concepts are similar and different. If there are differences, do the differences matter? After all, children’s rights can fit into children’s wellbeing; children’s wellbeing can fit into children’s rights.

In the article just published in the Journal of Social Policy, I suggest that the time is past for casually pairing children’s rights and children’s wellbeing. Children’s rights and children’s wellbeing are distinct concepts, each with their own historical, philosophical and practical strengths and weaknesses. Children’s wellbeing benefits from being aspirational and maximising. It can easily incorporate children’s relationships and collective needs. Researchers have developed advanced quantitative methods of measurement, attractive for outcomes-based indicators. But children’s wellbeing risks being apolitical, utilitarian and professionally-led in both measurement and practice. Children’s rights, in contrast, emphasise minimum standards, do not easily include such important matters for children like love and friendship, and has had limited investment in quantitative measures to date. Children’s rights can be accused of over-emphasising individual autonomy and thus antithetical to more collective cultures around the world. Yet, children’s rights are powerful politically, backed by law and hold duty-bearers to account.

Melton claimed in 2014 that ‘the most fundament need in child policy is for due respect towards children as people’. Children’s rights require and underline such respect for children. It is possible for children’s wellbeing to include children’s rights. But this is not essential to how children’s wellbeing is conceptualised, measured or implemented. I thus favour children’s rights, at least for Scotland, where we still have so much to argue for: from children’s access to justice, to unacceptably high and increasing levels of child poverty, to urban estates replete with ‘no ball games’ signs on unused grass.

With children’s wellbeing on the national and international ascendance, a decision needs to be made about whether wellbeing or human rights best frame policy and practice. In Scotland – if only to rationalise dual planning tracks and other confusing policy requirements – we certainly need to do so.

Tisdall, E. K.M. (2015) 'Children’s Rights and Children’s Wellbeing: Equivalent Policy Concepts?' Journal of Social Policy, vol 44, no. 4, pp. 807-823., 10.1017/S0047279415000306

Melton, G. (2014) ‘ ‘Because it’s the right (or wrong) thing to do’: when children’s wellbeing is the wrong outcome’, in Ben-Arieh, A., Casas, F., Frones, I. and Korbin, J. (eds) Handbook of Child Well-Being, Dordrecht: Springer.

===========================================================================
Do you want to develop your skills in research and consultation with children and young people? Take a look at our Continuing Professional Development courses, delivered by Dr Susan Elsley and Professor Kay Tisdall:

10-11th March 2016: Involving children and young people in research and consultation
28-29th April 2016: Using creative methods in research with children and young people

Critical happiness

Christina McMellon, CRFR Research Fellow

Happiness is consistently cited as one of the things that people consider most important in their lives. There is increasing agreement that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is not a sufficient indicator of a Country’s progress, and that alternative measures need to include the subjective aspects of wellbeing, or happiness. However, we must remember that happiness is not a politically neutral concept. If policy makers are to seriously consider happiness (which I believe they should) it is vital to find ways of opening up conversations about our shared understandings of happiness. Such a shared understanding must be grounded in the everyday experiences of the people whose lives social and development polices aim to improve.

My recently completed doctoral research provides rich data about perceptions of and beliefs about happiness based upon 18 months of ethnographic and participative fieldwork with a specific group of young people in Vientiane, Laos. Laos is a country that continues to be affected by a complex political legacy, has a rapidly modernising capital city and a newly visible and vulnerable civil society. With so many interweaving factors influencing the ways that they think about their lives it is unsurprising that the young people think about happiness in many different ways which are, at times, conflicting. However, without making any claim of generalisability, I would suggest that this finding is unlikely to be only relevant for young volunteers in Vientiane.

One way that happiness reveals itself is in the words that people choose and the metaphors that they employ. In this research I identified three key conceptual models used to express happiness including ‘Being Happy’ (happiness is a present moment choice), ‘Becoming Happy’ (happiness is something to be achieved) and ‘Happy Being With Others’ (happiness is located in relationships between people).

Further, I identified three ‘happiness scripts’ that research participants shared to describe different pathways that they believe lead to happiness:

• “The way to be happy is to be a good Lao person”
• “I will be happy if I have the things that I need to be comfortable and to have an easy life”
• “I am happy when I follow my heart”.

These scripts each combine one of the conceptual models of happiness, specific aspects of life that contribute to individual happiness and a set of shared beliefs about happiness. Such beliefs were developed in response to a wide range of social factors including politics, religion, tradition and media. However, young people often followed more than one script at any one time in different areas of their lives, and the research explored the interactions and tensions between expectations inherent in the scripts meant and participants’ real-life experiences.

The socially constructed nature of the happiness scripts and the three models of happiness used by the research participants emphasised the need for self-awareness and transparency in conversations about happiness. The way we think about happiness is not neutral because it is influenced by the things around us in our lives, our communities and in society. In order to consider happiness at policy level we need to be aware of these influencing factors and encourage a critical discussion about which ‘happiness script’ is being promoted by whom. Happiness is both an important experience and a slippery concept; it is critical that we consider it and vital that we remain critical of it.

Beyond GDP: happiness is about more than just individuals

This post is reposted, with permission by Prof Claire Wallace, University of Aberdeen. The article first appeared on The Conversation.

Many readers of this piece will be aware that economists are rethinking the role of happiness and GDP. They question facile assumptions about economic growth alone being good for us. What’s the good of being better off if it doesn’t make people any happier? There has also been a vast literature in psychology looking at individual well-being and its determinants. If money doesn’t make us happy, what does?

Both these groups focus on individual well-being. While this is important it does tend to feed into the neo-liberal agenda by putting less emphasis on collective happiness. It also supports the burgeoning self-help industry. It implies that if you are not happy you should do something about it. Happiness is an individual problem.

Happiness is a fleeting and ephemeral emotion that is difficult to capture in statistical analysis. For this reason, social scientists have tended to focus on various measures of well-being in addition to emotional states, such as life satisfaction, freedom to flourish and also negative states – the absence of well-being. Again the emphasis is on the individual and their immediate environment.

Society on the agenda

But what sort of society allows people to live well? The focus on economy tends to look at money -– is it enough? The focus on individual well-being asks, what can I do to make my life happier? But both these approaches neglect the social context, even though it is tremendously important for explaining well-being and could also be an important focus for policy developers. What aspects of society can foster well-being?

There has been a long tradition of quality-of-life research in Europe measured through social indicators. The University of Mannheim in Germany collates and analyses them across various categories: work, family, housing, health, and so forth. This research has influenced the EU policy agenda as well as that of particular nations such as Italy, Austria and Germany.

The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions has been carrying out surveys and publishing reports to help our understanding of well-being across Europe since 2003 including both the EU and accession countries.

In the UK, a question on well-being has been added to standard national surveys, which should help us understand what affects it in future. The Scottish parliament this week held a meeting and exhibition to present well-being measures to look at how they could be incorporated into the country’s national performance framework.

More policy bodies are starting to pay attention to all this research. The OECD, for example, has launched a “Better Life” initiative and the EU a set of measures for measuring life quality through Eurostat.

Component parts

We know well-being can be influenced by public services and social policies. It is clear for example that in Turkey, the recent strides in improving public policies and services have had an impact on well-being. Even really poor countries such as Rwanda have been able to improve their quality of life by focusing on policies to improve societal well-being.

On the other hand, societies where social safety nets have been removed and where people are subject to sudden and bewildering change have plummeting well-being. This is noticeable in the former Soviet Union and other ex-communist countries in eastern Europe. Yet equally those that joined the EU and have enjoyed improved social services have seen their well-being improve once more.

Based on these kinds of insights, my research team uses a framework called “social quality” to analyse the happiness of a society. This involves combining objective assessments of well-being – are basic needs such as shelter, social security, health fulfilled? – with subjective measures such as how people assess their economic well-being, health and housing. You may have a good house or a bad house – but is it what you want?

We look at four main aspects: socio-economic security, social cohesion, social inclusion and social empowerment. In looking at socio-economic security we have found that a person’s actual income plays only a part in explaining life satisfaction.

More important is how adequately people view their income and the extent to which their life is secured over the longer term. This depends on the social security environment in which they live, which forms part of what researchers sometimes call the “social wage”. This helps support a decent living standard across the age groups and in reducing differences between rich and poor (up to a point).

Social cohesion has long been studied by sociologists. It is a slippery concept, perhaps more so than life satisfaction, but we know it is closely linked to happiness. A recent study identified three main elements of social cohesion: deep social ties and networks, a sense of belonging to a nation or community and a focus on the common good. Trust is an important indicator of the first and second of these elements - including trust in other people and trust in public institutions.

In testing these perceptions across the world, Scandinavia came top – small, wealthy, well managed societies seem to have an advantage here. Yet some larger and more diversified countries scored next-highest, including Australia and Canada (along with New Zealand). The UK and most of the remainder of Europe appear one group further down the rankings.

 The same writers have also shown that social cohesion can change. Greece for example has lost social cohesion on account of the economic crisis since 2009, while Slovakia and Romania have gained it. Rising inequality can disrupt social cohesion leading to less trust and less connectedness. And inequality is not just bad for the worst off, since it has a negative impact on social cohesion as a whole. Civil strife and conflict also undermine cohesion.

Inclusion and empowerment

If social cohesion refers to the glue holding society together, social inclusion involves the extent to which individuals feel part of it and the mechanisms for including them. This can be through being part of the workforce, membership of clubs and associations and also families – those in such partnerships are generally happier. Being involved in a local community or through voluntary activity can play an important part too, while fear of crime and violence might isolate people.

Finally, social empowerment refers to the extent to which people have control over their lives and feel enabled to live as they would like. This requires a reasonable standard of health and education as a condition for participation, for example. Feeling disempowered is one of the most important elements for explaining lack of happiness.

These different elements are important for describing the decent society, which is also the happy society. They can help to explain how we can build better societies, too. Any approach to measure or increase happiness that ignores this side of the equation is insufficient.

---

This article is part of an ongoing series of blogs by The Conversation on Beyond GDP, looking at the dominance of GDP in economic thinking and how that might change.

Prof Wallace has received grants from the European foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions for analysing the European Quality of Life Surveys and is writing a book “The Decent Society” for Routledge with Pamela Abbott and Roger Sapsford.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
       

Now they are 7: what influences children's wellbeing?

The most recent findings from Growing Up in Scotland (GUS) explore the possible influences on children’s wellbeing and their behavioural and emotional difficulties. Lesley Kelly, GUS Dissemination Officer, outlines key findings.

GUS aims to find out about how the circumstances and experiences of children in Scotland are changing, and how early experiences influence later outcomes. The first group of children invited into the study are now 7 years old and for the first time they have answered questions themselves. This provides a really interesting aspect to the study as we find out about both mother and child perspectives.

This new research uses information collected from over 3,000 mothers and children, interviewed during 2012/13. Mothers were asked about their child’s emotional and behavioural difficulties using a behavioural screening tool called the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). The children were asked about their life satisfaction using a series of questions including ‘do you feel your life is going well?’ and ‘do you wish your life was different?’ (adapted from the Huebner Student Life Satisfaction Scale). 

Researchers were interested in learning about the role of child and family characteristics , parenting behaviours, school experiences, friendships, leisure activities and the importance of materialistic attitudes, ie having ‘expensive things’ on both child mental health and well-being. The researchers measured for behavioural and emotional problems as reported by the mother and low sense of well-being as reported by the child.

The numbers

• This research suggests that 1 in 25 children in Scotland experience both mental health problems and low subjective well-being:
• 11% of children in the study were classed as having high levels of behavioural and emotional problems, while 25% reported low life satisfaction. 4% of children experienced both.
• 21% of children had low life satisfaction but no behavioural and emotional difficulties. 7% had a high level of difficulties but did not report low life satisfaction.
• Children with high levels of difficulties were more likely to report low well-being (39%) than those with normal levels (24%).

The factors

Children who had both child mental health problems and low life satisfaction were more likely to experience: greater conflict in the mother-child relationship; lower parental knowledge of the child’s activities or relationships when not at school; difficulties adjusting to the learning or social environment at primary school; and poorer quality friendships with other children.

 

Economic factors and some other aspects of family life (including family structure and the child’s leisure activities) were not clearly associated with either measure of social and emotional well-being, after allowing for other influences. Materialistic values (the importance of ‘expensive things’ to the child) were not associated with their life satisfaction.

 

The research also found that family ‘stressors’ such as mother’s experiencing poor health, family mental health/ substance use problems and low levels of warmth in the mother-child relationship were associated with child mental health difficulties but not the child’s sense of well-being. Conversely, experiencing a recent bereavement, illness or accident in the family, and less positive parenting (defined as less positive reinforcement of good behaviour and less involvement in the child’s activities) did appear to affect children’s life satisfaction, irrespective of whether they experienced behavioural and emotional difficulties.

 

The implications

This research supports the idea that social relationships, involving parents, teachers and friends, are of key importance for children’s well-being. A holistic approach, which recognises the different components of well-being and the range of influencing factors, should be adopted. Approaches to promoting social and emotional well-being could be developed for use in both family and school settings.

 

These findings help to identify which children are at risk of low well-being and might benefit from some targeted support. Parents and children could be offered better access to professional and advice and support services to improve parent-child relationships and to effectively manage behavioural problems. Given the importance of adjustment to the learning and social environment at school, greater attention to the transition to school may be required for some children. Children who experience difficulties making friends might also be helped by initiatives designed to help build relationships within and outwith school. Finally, support for children and families experiencing ill health and/or bereavement is crucial. Good practice in these areas should be extended so that every child can access the support they need for their emotional health and wellbeing.

 

The full report ‘Growing Up in Scotland: Family and school influences on children’s social and emotional well-being’ by Alison Parkes, Helen Sweeting and Daniel Wight is available from the GUS website www.growingupinscotland.org.uk.

 

GUS is funded by the Scottish Government and is carried out by ScotCen Social Research in collaboration with the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships at the University of Edinburgh and the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit at the University of Glasgow. 

 

Contact Lesley by email 

Creating Good Lives and Decent Societies

GLADS - Good Lives and Decent Societies, is one of five projects funded under the 2014 Scottish Universities Insight Institute wellbeing programme. A collaboration between academics, policy makers and practitioners, here Marie-Amelie Viatte and Christine McMellon take time to describe what is being discussed.

Development has historically focused on reducing poverty and gaining financial wealth, as measured by GDP. This, however, raises questions about what it is that makes life worth living and presents several problems:

• It implies that acquiring wealth will necessarily improve people's quality of life, and yet there is extensive evidence that, at least after basic needs are met, money is not necessarily one of the key determinants of happiness.
• Economic growth can have a directly negative impact on wellbeing as it often leads to pollution and the depletion of resources.
• Events which can have a negative impact on wellbeing - such as natural disasters, crime and divorce, can sometimes increase GDP.

The GLADS seminar series provides an opportunity to take stock of what has been said on wellbeing, what has been said about measuring wellbeing, and what it means for policy and practice. Wellbeing is an important concept across disciplines, but meaningful conversations can be challenging and it is important to be clear about whether we are referring to the same things when we use terms such as 'wellbeing', 'quality of life' and 'happiness'. Wellbeing is related to both individual lives and broader social issues. It is relevant across time and is at the core of many of the issues, such as education, health, and governance, being addressed in policy and practice settings. GLADS is focusing on three themes: health; place and space; and welfare and employment.

The Scottish Government, like other countries, is trying to move away from from a narrow, GPD-based definition of development, to a more holistic approach - setting indicators within a National Performance Framework, Scotland Performs, to measure the progress of Government in 'creating a more successful country'. GLADS is facilitating discussion around these issues, bringing together key people to look at the connections between these issues and explore strategies to tackle them.

The first event took place in February 2014, to define wellbeing and open up discussion on how to assess wellbeing. It attracted presentations from The University of Edinburgh, Scottish Government, The Office for National Statistics, OECD and Oxfam Scotland. Copies of the presentations are available on the website.

The second event is taking place on 14 and 15 May. It focuses on the practice promoting wellbeing. If you are interested in being part of the discussion and contributing to GLADS please take a look at the website and register online. 

Read the GLADS blog and follow us on twitter @ScotGLADS #gladsmay

Consulting on a Children & Young People Bill

CRFR recently submitted a response to the Scottish Government's consultation on a proposal for a Children & Young People Bill.

CRFR has undertaken a range of relevant research, to comment on key aspects of the Bill: i.e. children's rights, children's wellbeing and early learning and child care provision.

Our view was that the proposed Bill, if underlined by processes and commitments, could ensure that children's rights are given more breadth and depth in policy making and practice. Certainly, the Ministerial support for 'making rights real' for children is very welcome.

However, we raised a number of points for consideration. 

• The Government should include a much clearer statement on how it will incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights on the Child (UNCRC) into domestic law, including timeframes.
• There needs to be more clarity on the duty on Scottish Ministers to "take appropriate steps to further the rights of children and young" and the duty should be extended to public bodies.
• Children's rights need to be the overarching framework for the Bill, and duties on public bodies should be focused on improving rights -- which incorporate children's wellbeing.
• Any strategies aimed at improving school readiness via a pre-school setting need to include, for disadvantaged children, strategies that seek to influence the child's home environment and parenting experiences at the same time.
• Children should be consulted, along with parents, to develop early learning and childcare provision.
• Developments in early learning and childcare must marry the need for high-quality care with flexible and accessible provision that also enables parents to take up employment. This is not happening for many families, particularly those in more disadvantaged circumstances or who are affected by disability.

 Please read our full response, with links to evidence, at:

http://www.crfr.ac.uk/consultations.html