Guest Editors' Introduction: Children and Youth in Asian Migration

Abstract

Beginning in the 1990s, migration scholars in the United States began to pay greater attention to the experiences of youth and the children of migrants. Heeding the call of Portes and Zhou (1993), many looked to the experiences of children to measure the extent of immigrant integration. In contrast, children including young persons have remained largely invisible in studies of migration in Asia (Alipio et al. 2015). Perhaps this is because most do not migrate but instead stay behind in the country of origin as members of transnational families (Beazley and Ball, this issue; Parreñas 2005). It is only in recent years that scholars have begun to focus on the question of youth and children in Asian migration. In 2015, Children’s Geography dedicated a special issue to Asian children and transnational migration, which it identified as comprising four primary groups of leftbehind children of migrant parents, educational migrants, child labor migrants, and adoptees.