Belonging is civic infrastructure
Re-Imagining Migration helps communities build belonging for immigrant-origin youth and their peers across the institutions they share: schools, libraries, museums, youth programs, and family networks. Locally led, coordinated nationally.
Our Approach
We build belonging through the infrastructure we already have.
Belonging isn't an add-on program — it's a structural condition schools can design for, the way they design for literacy or safety. We don't start from scratch. We take the civic and educational infrastructure already in place and shift what it expects of itself.
Design for the young people farthest from belonging, and you lift the floor for everyone in the building: the infrastructure that helps an immigrant-origin student see herself as a civic actor is the same infrastructure that strengthens every classroom around her.
1 Start with what exists
The schools, families, and community institutions already in every young person's life.
2 Change the norms
Make belonging an expectation of how that infrastructure operates
3 Promote dispositions
The capacity to live, learn, participate and build belonging across difference.
What People Say About Us
Learning Commons
Resources, lessons, learning opportunities, and tools to support educators, families, and communities as they build belonging for immigrant-origin youth and every young person they serve.
Browse Resources by
Questions from the Re-Imagining Migration Framework:
Resources by Keyword:
Resources by Grade Level:
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The Re-Imagining Migration Framework was developed by Verónica Boix-Mansilla at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, during a multi-year collaboration with Carola Suarez Orozco, Adam Strom, Re-Imagining Migration staff, and a group of leading teachers, museum educators, and scholars in the migration education field.
Partners & Collaborators
How do we know our approach is working?
of educators in our webinars feel better equipped to build belonging and support immigrant students
states where our fellows are building belonging ecosystems in 2025/26
growth in fellows’ readiness to lead belonging work, from 2.5 to 4.5 on a 5-point scale
Educators in all 50 US states access our resources every year
students, families, and educators shaped fellows’ local belonging work in 2025/2026
organizations joined the Massachusetts coalition we co-founded to protect immigrant students’ education


















