Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on social inequalities related to migration. Through the example of Catalonia, I argue that there is a higher experience of poverty among children in migrated families in southern European countries due to internal and external processes.

Paper long abstract:

In spite of being a rich area within Spain, social inequalities have increased in Catalonia in recent years, whereas efficient systems of social protection to address this have not been developed at the same pace. These inequalities unmistakably affect children in migrated families. And children are central in migration, because migration is always a family issue, a search for better opportunities that will be tested through children's well-being in time. Different forces lead to poverty of children in migrated families, including the legal status of adults, the transnational character of household economies and demands, family fragmentation processes and also the result of social policies addressed to immigration.

Spanish social policies in the areas of early childhood and family-support institutions, health and education are based on the assumption of the permanent settlement of immigrants and standard family composition and this should be called into question, as well as prevailing strategies concerning social transfers that intend to reach the children whose parents' status remains illegal. Partly, this is one of the reasons why even children in migrated families from poorer countries often experience downward mobility of the family, particularly those who have come through reunification after a time of living on remittances that have given higher possibilities of consumption than their home average standards (due to the fear of loss of emotional ties partially compensated by extra investment in children's consumption or by gifts from migrant parents). They may also face downward assimilation—into poverty as well as into local intragenerational norms—which directly affects their subjective perception of well-being, leading them to an increased questioning of their parents' migration projects.

Through the example of Catalonia, I provisionally argue that there is a higher experience of poverty among children in migrated families in Southern European countries due to internal and external processes such as new multi-local/ transnational family strategies of permanent migration from poorer countries, the emergence of a specific situation of social polarisation due to a pattern of immigration that includes families with children from richer countries, and a lower level of social transfer to children in general, as states continue to rely on traditional family networks of support that—to a large extent—migrant families do not usually have.

This paper will mainly examine data from social indicators, immigrant parents' concerns and local social policies related to immigration included in the two CIIMU Reports on Childhood and Immigration (2002, 2004 and 2006) in order to defend the need of a processual approach than can allow us to capture the impact of migration on mobility through children's eyes, in the context of the specific and diverse patterns of migration to Spain from poorer and richer countries