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Using conceptions of transnationalism to (re)evaluate the field of comparative and international education (CIE), this chapter analyzes educational programming and policy for migrant refugee youth at the margins and borderlands of the nation-state system. Drawing from newspaper articles about displaced youth on Kenya’s eastern border and the southwestern U.S. border, this chapter focuses on comparative and international education’s potential influence on programming and policies in borderland regions. Both populations present the need for targeted educational programming within and outside of formal education systems and urgency for research linked with practice. We argue that CIE scholars can fill a critical, activist purpose to draw attention to educational access and curricular content in educational projects at the borders of the nation-state system, to investigate programming, and to work with practitioners and policy makers to address the needs of youth on the physical and figurative margins of education.

This paper aims to present an overview of information resources that have been collected, prepared, or organized by librarians in support of information, reference and research needs pertaining to immigration and immigrants in the USA. The overview seeks to shed light on how American libraries have responded to the tides of immigration along with other community services to newcomers.

The paper approaches the topic with a brief historical overview of immigration and library services. Through a comprehensive literature review the author intends to discover the degree to which American libraries have been involved in the provision of collections and services to immigrants.

The literature review indicates that the early decades of the twentieth century left a legacy of library services to immigrants with special patterns of collection development along with various organized programs. As time went by, these services have become more sophisticated and are today integrated into services of many public and academic libraries.

The paper provides perspectives on the social impact of immigration and immigrants – an issue which continues to challenge both public and academic libraries. The annotated bibliography contains items that are helpful to both reference personnel and researchers from academic fields and the general adult population.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of immigration on the labour market outcomes of low-educated natives (i.e. residents without a university diploma). Using the labour market competition theory, which argues that the labour market effects of natives depend on the skill set of immigrants, the paper addresses whether immigrants are complementary to or substitutes for native workers.

Longitudinal matched employer–employee data on Sweden are used to estimate how low-educated natives, in regions experiencing the greatest influx of refugees from the Balkan wars, responded to this supply shock with regard to real wages, employment and job mobility between 1990 and 2003.

First, the analysis shows that low-educated native workers respond to the arrival of immigrants with an increase in real wages. Second, although employment prospects in general worsened for low-skilled workers in most regions, this is not attributable to the regions experiencing the largest supply shock. Third, there are indications that low-skilled natives in immigration-rich regions are more likely to change workplace, particularly in combination with moving upwards in the wage distribution.

Rather than seeing an emergence of the commonly perceived displacement mechanism when an economy is subject to a supply shock, the regional findings suggest that high inflows of immigrants tend to induce a mechanism that pulls native workers upwards in the wage distribution. This is important, as the proportion of immigrants is seldom evenly distributed within a nation.

While many consider court involvement in immigration matters a given, in liberal nation-states, there is actually a substantial degree of variation. This chapter revisits two “critical junctures” in the early immigration histories of Canada and Germany to show that institutions and policy legacies are not just historical backdrop, but actually shaped the strategies of political actors, subsequent institutional configurations, and policy options for long periods of time, thereby revealing unintended consequences, as well as alternative paths that the involvement of the courts (and other actors) could have taken.

This study sought to gain a better understanding of the general life experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) newcomer youth, situated within the broader context of their lives post-migration. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of various forms of oppression experienced by LGBT newcomers and offers recommendations for transforming services to better serve the complex needs of this marginalized population.

The Teens Resisting Urban Trans/Homophobia (TRUTH) project was comprised of ten focus groups with 70 youth (aged 14-29) living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Another three focus groups were conducted with 13 GTA service providers and teachers working with LGBT youth, in addition to one key informant interview. For this paper, the authors drew from a subset of the data including four newcomer-specific focus groups in which there were 39 youth who identified as refugees or immigrants, as well as key informant interviews with four youth (three of whom also participated in focus groups) and one service provider. Participants were asked about “what homophobia and transphobia meant to them”, “where they experienced it”, “in what forms”, and “how it impacted their daily lives”.

The experiences of LGBT newcomer youth in this study involved a complex negotiation of multiple systems of oppression. Youth described experiences of homophobia and racism within interpersonal relationships, in the LGBT community, in their respective diasporic communities, in social service encounters and during the immigration/refugee process. Barriers for LGBT refugee youth included difficulties finding work and accessing health care, as well as the additional burden of proving their sexual orientation during refugee claimant hearings.

While the combination of focus groups and key informant interviews is a strength in this study, it also presents challenges for analysis. In focus groups, it is not always clear who is speaking; because of this, the authors were sometimes unable to differentiate between refugee and immigrant youth (or those without status) in our focus groups, making it often unclear which perspective or experience youth were speaking to. Another limitation was the dominance of the “cisgender gay male voice” in our conclusions. Lesbian and bisexual women were present in fewer numbers and the sample only included three trans youth.

The findings reveal systemic discrimination on the basis of race and sexual orientation that illuminate injustices within Canadian society and systems that can enhance the efforts of those working in policy and service environments. Focused anti-homophobia and anti-racism training, and the implementation of policies designed to enhance accessibility, could improve service provision for newcomer LGBT youth. Furthermore, in order to facilitate a more just settlement process, a broader understanding of sexual identity, gender identity, and gender expression is required of the refugee claimant system.

This study examines the experiences of youth in a large and complex, multicultural, and gay-friendly urban centre, thus providing timely and current data about the well-being of newcomer LGBT youth. As such, it is one of the first studies to offer some insights into the life issues and challenges post-migration of Canadian LGBT newcomer youth.

Immigration has been a subject of intense historical and contemporary debate in US political life. Proponents of immigration cite the important contributions immigrants have made and continue to make to the USA’s national development and evolution. Advocates of more restrictive immigration policies stress concerns over the USA’s ability to support immigrant residents and whether newer immigrants threaten the US national identity and social cohesion. Proponents and opponents of current US immigration policy will use figures from the 2000 census to justify their respective arguments in upcoming debates on this subject. This article examines a variety of immigration literature resources such as scholarly books, government documents, and Websites and seeks to emphasize the subject’s complexities and contradictions along with US and transnational perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a historical and current accounting of the state of refugee education in both the USA and Sweden. The growing diaspora of people around the globe implores educators to utilize effective models and strategies to meet the needs of refugees, as well as to advocate policies that aid in this utilization. Sweden has the highest rate of refugee acceptance in Europe, and the USA has the greatest number of immigrants in the west.

A review of the literature formatted to provide the reader with a historical accounting of the states of refugee education in both host nations, as well as the current states. Strategies and promising policies are introduced based on the literature and the author’s own research conducted in Sweden.

The paper addresses the history and present situations of two host nations, Sweden and the USA, who have differing education systems and histories of immigration. Concerns and two possible solutions offered were to increase opportunities for interaction between native and refugee populations; and bolster funding for the education of refugee school-age children and adolescents, and adults so that effective strategies and environment described in the literature can be put into place by effectively trained educators. These solutions could improve the cultural competence among all peoples in both nations, better enabling the two countries to provide economically and socially sustainable environments for all of their inhabitants.

The examination of these two nations’ education of refugees may shed light on the worldwide challenges of refugees and mass immigration.

The solutions offered in the paper could improve the cultural competence among all peoples in both nations, better enabling the two countries to provide economically and socially sustainable environments for all of their inhabitants.

A comparison of US refugee education with that of a high-volume European host nation does not yet appear to have been published.

The objective of this chapter is to analyze educational leadership policy in New Jersey, US, and Ontario, Canada, focusing on the inclusion of the unique needs of systematically marginalized students, specifically refugees and forced immigrant (RFI) youth. Modes of inquiry are qualitative document analysis of New Jersey and Ontario leadership policies, preparation requirements, and standards. The objective of this paper is to present an extensive literature review of policies related to educational leadership and supporting RFI youth and their teachers as well as to reveal gaps in policies and examine pre- and in-service training requirements. Within the field of comparative and international education, this chapter highlights the institutionalization of trends in educational leadership at state or provincial levels and how these macro-level policies influence educators’ abilities to meet the needs of students from marginalized communities, such as refugees and immigrants.

This paper aims to provide a research guide with recent resources in a variety of formats covering issues related to Haitian Americans and Haitian migration to the USA.

Local and union online catalogs, electronic indexes, bibliographies, and the worldwide web were searched to identify relevant items. Items were annotated after personal examination of the material, or after consultation of published reviews and abstracts.

The literature covering this population group is dominated by research from scholars addressing social identity, health issues, religious practices, and the socio‐economic and political determinants of migration.

No previous print bibliography has been limited in scope to Haitians in the USA. The few bibliographies that do address this population group are dated and do not reference recent literature. Furthermore, none of the previously published bibliographies consulted by the compiler include references to audio‐visual materials and web sites.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test an accessible and culturally appropriate social support intervention designed to meet the support needs and preferences identified by African refugee parents of young children.

The study was built on the research team’s preceding study assessing social support needs and intervention preferences of Sudanese and Zimbabwean refugee parents of young children. Face-to-face support groups led by peer and professional mentors were conducted bi-weekly over seven months. Qualitative data collection methods were employed through group and individual interviews.

In total, 85 refugee parents (48 Sudanese, 37 Zimbabwean; 47 male, 38 female) in two Canadian provinces participated in the social support intervention. Results demonstrated that this intervention increased participants’ social support by: providing information, enhancing spousal relationships, and expanding engagement with their ethnic community. This pilot intervention decreased refugee new parents’ loneliness and isolation, enhanced coping, improved their capacity to attain education and employment, and increased their parenting competence.

Peer mentors who were refugee parents of young children were key to facilitating the support intervention and to enhancing confidence of group members to raise their children in Canada. They acted as role models as they had faced similar challenges. Success of this intervention can also be attributed to its flexibility and participant-centered focus.

This is the first reported study to design and test the impacts of support interventions for African refugee parents of young children.