Shoba Arun

Globalization has become characterized by its disjunctions, which the COVID-19 crisis has thrown into sharp relief (Steger and James 2020). The contradictions (and disjunctures) between the dependence of receiving countries on economic migration and the visible tensions associated with migration, and the precarious experiences of migrants at the COVID-19 front line marked new insecurities in migratory paths and shocks to already insecure work circuits. The fault lines revealed by the COVID-19 crisis identified in this article raise fundamental questions for globalization and migration scholars and policymakers around the sustainability of the “migration/value” nexus. We advocate an approach that moves away from a reductivist conception of migration as solely legitimized via the generation of economic value, toward a sustainable recovery and future after the COVID-19 crisis. We argue for a human rights–based approach to migration that fosters mobilities and that ensures that all individuals are deemed of value, of public value. We believe this can inform and help set a tenacious framework that “resettles” the current disjunctures of globalization, through acknowledging different formations of mobilities through globalization for an inclusive global society. This article is part of the Global Perspectives “Interrogating Global Studies” special collection, guest edited by Jill Timms and Alison Hulme, as a tribute to Dr. Paul Kennedy, an ardent pioneer in the field of global studies.

This book presents a child-centred approach to migrant children’s experiences in education. Using a decolonising framework, the book interrogates the diversity of migrant experiences in the global South and North. The book brings together researchers and practitioners from education, childhood studies, sociology, and linguistics to debate and theorise key methodological and empirical issues in migrant children’s experiences through education. It focuses on how diverse forms of global mobilities are key to transforming educational experiences of children and considers the interplay of class, race, gender, geography, and learning settings. By doing so, the book uncovers particular challenges for addressing sustainable development goals relating to education and inclusive development. Diversifying the study of migration and development, the book challenges the Eurocentrism of the discipline and contributes to ongoing efforts to liberate the field from labels and discourses that further marginalise migrant children. Using an intersectional and decolonising approach to address an important gap in the diversity of migrant experiences, the book will be of great interest to researchers, scholars, and students in the field of migration studies, sociology of education, intercultural education, and international development.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has changed ‘normality’ and everyday life including education, which has altered dramatically for an estimated 1.2 billion children forced out of the classroom globally. The measures taken by national governments all over Europe to contain the pandemic have particularly affected vulnerable groups such as migrant children. In all the countries under study, governments decided in mid-March 2020 to close schools for pupils of all ages, and in the UK, only a handful of children of key workers, special needs and vulnerable children have continued to attend classes on a daily basis. The majority of pupils have had to rely on tele-schooling, which has not only proven challenging for pupils, teachers and parents alike but has also highlighted and amplified existing inequalities within British society. Based on interviews with children from a public secondary school in Manchester, this chapter intends to critically evaluate the consequences of the school lockdown and the switch to online learning using a child-centred approach. Furthermore, it proposes new ways of stimulating the sustainable integration of migrant pupils in future from their perspective. The chapter presents the challenges faced by children during the lockdown and outlines solutions to and recommendations for establishing a systematic and holistic inclusion policy for migrant pupils going forward.

This chapter presents an overview of the cutting-edge research and studies presented throughout this book. Through drawing on global, national, and European perspective, this chapter summarises both theoretical and practical issues of migrant children’s integration in educational settings within the field. It calls for moving away from Euro-centric perspectives on migration through focussing on sociology of childhood lens that amplifies a child-centred approach to understanding migrant children experiences. By taking an inter-disciplinary approach and bringing together researchers and practitioners from the disciplines of education, childhood studies sociology and linguistics to debate and theorise key issues in migrant children’s experiences through education, and through a global north-south context, this chapter amplifies the interconnected and compelling case for addressing migration and child integration as a pressing global challenge.

This introductory chapter provides a compelling case for examining migrant children’s experiences as a global issue as it directly speaks to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) on education, gender, inequality, and the increasing rates and diversity of migration. The chapter outlines a child-centred approach, stemming from the sociology of childhood and child rights charter, and the barriers to achieving global aims in relation to migrant children in light of the vision of education for all, and the quest to ‘leave no one behind’. For this, the chapter offers an overview of some of the patterns in migration and diversity of children’s experiences in schools, examining barriers through an intersectional lens of race, gender, age, and geography, the impact of the pandemic on migrant children, drawing on research from both the Global North and the Global South. The conclusion points to the need to decolonise migration studies to make meaningful changes to our young and equal futures within a global context.

Girls from single-parent households in South Africa (90 percent of whom are Black African or coloured) have significantly lower educational outcomes than other demographics. Through a methodology of life-history interviews, we explore the experiences of 30 women in single-headed households who have been successful in their educational endeavours as university students or graduates. Results show that pressures on girls from single-headed households to look after the family and domestic sphere and to protect their bodies from sexual abuse leave many girls depleted of the time, energy, and mental capacity required to study. Despite these challenges, these participants have escaped the perceived weight of their female burden in a post-apartheid, patriarchal society and reclaim their bodies and sense of agency through educational success.

This Special Issue covers an intersectional approach to extreme labour exploitation. We provide concrete empirical studies and new theoretical frameworks. This overview paper analyses how modern slavery theories might influence policy options. The theories examined in this Special Issue include supply-chain theories, feminist approaches to work, diffusion of innovation theory, intersectional gender-and-development theory, and the social construction of narratives around bonded and forced labour. Evidence is given from the garment industry, farming, and other sectors based on field research and questionnaire surveys dated 2015–2020. Women in paid jobs are widely exposed to extreme exploitation, coerced overtime, having their papers held by the employer, and subject to threats/violence. In care work, the gender worktime difference is large, and evidence is given from India of girl children’s work hours being much longer, on average, than boys’ hours. Extreme exploitation rests upon gaping social and economic inequalities which deserve policy attention.

This paper questions if enough is done to tackle modern slavery within the ready-made garments (RMG) supply chains, through the lens of disclosures in improving work practices. Using evidence from Bangladesh, we find how there is a continuum of labour exploitation where the reality of forced labour is not a static one, but a continuum of experiences highlighting the complexity of the exploitative environment within the dominant neoliberal logic of transparency disclosures. It is imperative not only to make disclosures more robust through due diligence, but support capacity to address exploitation at the lower end of the supply chain.