Beyond school gates: children’s contribution to community integration

This project will investigate how children’s perceptions, experiences, and attitudes contribute to community integration.  

Community integration is a central part of the government’s levelling up agenda, but the role of children and schools remains underexplored. Policy initiatives have focused on limiting social segregation between children. A more nuanced understanding of how children’s social cognition, experiences of integration, and friendship networks are affected by local schools, children’s services, and youth programmes will allow for more effective policy at the local and national level.  

The research team will focus on nine state primary schools across three large, ethnically diverse towns in Northwest England. The research will be situated within the history of each town, including policy and planning shifts over the years, and the children’s lived experiences of migration and integration. Four strands of research will be conducted: 

• Strand 1: Interpreting national and local records that document children’s first-hand accounts of migration. These will include a national archive of children’s literature, and children’s and teachers’ responses to these books, as well as school archives.
• Strand 2: Conducting a survey with 300 children aged 9-11 across the 9 schools to examine differences between towns and children, and probe children’s intuition about integration using established psychological measures.  
• Strand 3: Hosting in-depth interviews with children to explore their interactions in various contexts, barriers to and facilitators of integration, intergroup anxiety, self-efficacy, and intuitions about diversity. Children will also be asked to visually map their social networks. An online survey with parents will capture information on demographics, family engagement with community organisations, parent social networks, children’s out of school activities, and perceived community integration and relations.  
• Strand 4: Examining the impact of the institutional and policy environment on the levers available to local policymakers. This will involve interviews and focus groups with policymakers and community stakeholders to explore hurdles and potential opportunities. 

The research aims to increase our understanding of how children’s social cognition, experiences of integration, and friendship networks impact community integration; and extend the framework of action available to local and central policymakers. Dissemination activities are designed around these two objectives. Workshops with policymakers will explore emergent findings and a briefing will be produced to capture and share findings from the event. A final report will bring together the findings and be promoted through speeches, popular sector publications, and social media. Individual strands of research will be analysed in greater detail in peer-reviewed journals and conferences.