Peer-reviewed article
Find your village: a call for culturally coordinated understanding and action with migrant heritage families in the Global North
Tom Allport, Fatumo Osman ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This is a debate paper about migrant and refugee families in wealthy countries of the Global North, with a focus on Somali families. It argues that parental stress, isolation and disadvantage are linked to concerns about children's early development, and that these experiences should be understood in context. The authors call for culturally coordinated understanding and action built on three 'pillars' to create a 'village' for migrant children and families. They refer to a peer support approach called Find Your Village, described in a linked paper. The paper is an argument and does not report a test of the approach.
Key points
- Refugees and forced migrants in the Global North experience high rates of stress and isolation.
- Migrant communities report their children being referred at higher rates for early developmental difficulties, later learning difficulties and conditions such as autism.
- Parents from cultures where 'it takes a village to raise a child' may find parenting in individualistic western societies particularly hard when also facing stress, trauma, isolation and disadvantage.
- An Ecocultural model and a targeted, preventive peer support approach called Find Your Village are described in a linked paper.
- The authors suggest that co-production, inequality reduction and integration could break cycles of disadvantage and save costs to society.
Limitations
The abstract is a debate or position piece and does not present data or evaluate an intervention's effects. The claimed benefits and cost savings are potential, not demonstrated, and the abstract does not say which countries the work covers beyond what the metadata hints.
Abstract
Refugees and forced migrants coming to the 'Global North' experience high rates of stress and isolation. Migrant communities are concerned about their young peoples' long-term health, educational and social outcomes; there are reports of their children being referred at higher rates with early developmental difficulties and subsequently learning difficulties and conditions such as autism. We argue that these distressing experiences are interconnected and understandable in context, and we would like to engage with these accounts as indicating a need for more understanding, debate, negotiation, opportunities, connections and resources. Parents from cultures where 'it takes a village to raise a child' may find it particularly challenging to bring up children in individualistic western societies when they also experience stress, trauma, isolation and environmental disadvantage. In a linked paper, we describe an Ecocultural model that seeks to explain challenges to parental wellbeing and early child development for Somali refugee families in its local and international context, and the development of a flexible approach to targeted, preventive peer support intervention we have called Find Your Village, which has the potential to meet these challenges. In this debate paper, we advocate for the development of culturally coordinated understanding and action, describing three 'pillars' to build a 'village' for migrant children and families in the Global North, and suggest resources and approaches that have the potential to stop cycles of disadvantage, provide multiple benefits, and save costs to society through co-production, inequality reduction and integration.