The Integration of Refugee Children and Youth in receiving countries: A Systematic Review of English, French and German Research Literature

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees reports that more than half of the 65 million refugees identified worldwide are under the age of 18. In this situation, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers need to understand the consequences of forced migration on the integration of minor refugees in their receiving countries. A first step in this regard is constituted by the aggregation of existing findings and the identification of possible research gaps.The aim of this paper is to provide a systematic review of research on refugee’s children and youth integration conducted during the last 30 years. It will discuss different research designs, measures, and methods of analysis. Research desiderata and needs for further studies will be assessed and recommendations for future data collections will be made. The systematic review includes academic journals which publish papers in English, French, and German language. Preliminary work defined three relevant dimensions for this review: Educational, social, and emotional integration. We coded n=1,134 English, n=234 German and n=2,488 French peer reviewed publications. Preliminary results for instance show that most research was conducted in the United States, Australia and Canada. Studies which realized fieldwork in Europe mainly originated in the United Kingdom and Sweden. With regard to the design of the empirical research a clear dominance of cross-sectional and ethnographic studies can be observed. Moreover qualitative research methods were used in almost half of the studies.