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Trinity College Dublin
Children, Youth and Community Relations Project
The context of the project
From the late 1990’s onwards, Ireland experienced a relatively large increase in inward
migration. This has declined due to recession but many migrants remain. Migration into
Ireland has been characterised by heterogeneity among the nationalities involved and by
relatively highly skilled migrants. As regards children and young people, some communities
and schools have responded locally to the challenges of multi-culturalism. The most
significant national policy development has been the provision of two years English language
support for migrant children, an initiative which has been substantially curtailed in recent
years.
The Children, Youth and Community Relations Project so far
The Children, Youth and Community Relations Projects was founded in 2006 as part of the
Trinity Immigration Initiative. The project aims to promote positive experiences of
immigration and inter-cultural encounters for both immigrant and ‘local’ children and young
people, as they adapt to culturally diverse schools and neighbourhoods.
The first major strand of our work has seen heavy investment in in-depth qualitative research
with children and young people seeking to gain a deeper understanding of their perspectives
on and experiences of inter-ethnic interaction.
The largest of these projects has involved in-depth research with 355 primary school children,
both local and migrant. On the whole a very positive picture emerged of the migrant children
involved with most being highly motivated, very engaged with their education and advanced
in certain aspects of the curriculum. Many instances of warm interaction between migrant and
local children were noted but alongside this there was a marked tendency for children to stay
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separate from other ethnic groups. Racism and bullying were also reported among even very
young children and in some instances this could be very severe. Migrant children often have
very limited social lives outside of school and compared to local peers engage in very few
organised activities other than church. The findings from this project have been published as
a book, ‘Where to from here? Inter-ethnic relations among children in Ireland’ (2011), which
also discusses the policy implications of this research. We are currently involved in a
knowledge exchange project (funded by IRCHSS) which seeks to engage with teachers,
parents and policy makers around some of the key issues identified in this book. The large
amount of data from this study has also been used as the basis for PhD studies which look in
greater depth at issues to do African boys (Lindsey Garratt) and families of migrants (Jennifer
Scholtz).
In conjunction with the leading migrant rights NGO in Ireland we have also conducted a
national qualitative study which involved 167 migrant teenagers. These teenagers talked in a
more articulate and self-conscious way about some of the issues identified in our work with
primary school children, such as racism, separateness and lack of leisure opportunities. The
teenagers also identified issues particular to themselves such as difficulties in communication
and cultural misunderstanding, burdensome home duties and unique difficulties for those who
had arrived at a later age.
Our qualitative work in primary schools lead directly to two projects of a more quantitative
nature. The first of these is systematic review funded by IRCHSS and supported by the
Campbell Collaboration which examines the impact of Cooperative learning on inter-ethnic
interaction in multi-cultural schools. This project is due for publication in September 2011.
The second project is a Phd study by Kate Babineau who is developing a child-centred survey
instrument to measure some of the key outcomes noted in the qualitative project (e.g. crossethnic interaction, racism etc.).
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Our future work
The following are some of the research projects which we have identified as high priority for
studying and positively influencing inter-cultural relations among children in Ireland.

Intervention research which aims to increase inter-ethnic interaction and reduce
prejudice and racial bullying. In particular we are looking at approaches to
intervention which have a strong theoretical and evidence foundation and which are
relatively easy to implement.

Given the expertise that we have built up in the area of systematic reviewing and
meta-analysis we plan to do further systematic reviews of interventions other than
cooperative learning.

We have developed a state-of-the-art, child-centred and validated instrument which
measures children’s perceptions of inter-ethnic contact and conflict. As yet no
representative data has been collected from children in Ireland on these issues. We
plan to survey areas of Ireland with high concentrations of migrant children.

Given the small amount of quantitative and representative data that is available on
migrant children in Ireland we are also working to mine what data is available through
secondary analysis of both the Growing Up in Ireland data and data collected from
school principals for the ESRI Adapting to Diversity study.

We also believe that there are a number of very important qualitative research projects
that need to be done including studies which look at transitions ( primary to secondary
school, secondary school to beyond), migrant parenting practices in relation to
education and peer interaction and a detailed examination of how adults perceive the
rights and norms of the social world of children.