A qualitative study to explore young migrants’ perspectives on the health impact of migration

This PhD will be located within the Child and Family Health and Wellbeing research group of the School of Nursing and Midwifery. Our work is interdisciplinary in nature and focuses upon the health and wellbeing of children, young people and families. Research is theoretically driven and underpinned by concern for inequity, vulnerability, responsibilisation and resilience, and their impacts on family health and wellbeing.

We welcome applications that address the outline title above. Migration is a significant contemporary phenomenon and the health of migrants is the focus of much recent academic and policy interest. The vast majority of research undertaken to date, however, is broadly quantitative in nature and focuses on pre-defined health outcomes. Echoing a broader picture within health research where children and young people’s views are often overlooked, we know very little about the perspectives of migrant children themselves. This contrasts sharply with scholarship within the Social Studies of Childhood, which has shown that children are active in and experts upon their own lives and that their health-relevant experiences and perspectives are important for both their current and future health practices and outcomes. Further, much of the empirical evidence conflates family migration status with children’s migration status. It is often not possible to identify data which relates specifically to children who have migrated within their lifetime. This research will address these gaps by using a qualitative approach to explore young migrants’ perspectives on the health impact of migration.
In the development of your research proposal you should demonstrate how you plan to utilise qualitative research approaches to access children’s own perspectives.