Understanding the Challenge
Immigrant-origin students are 26% of the school-aged population in the United States and in many democracies around the world. They are often marginalized due to government policies and programs as well as intensifying prejudice in schools, communities, and media. Immigrants and citizens alike internalize the messages they take in, and we know these messages negatively affect young people’s images of themselves, others, and their behavior.
This has a catastrophic impact on students, schools, and the health of democracy.
Our Mission
Re-imagining Migration’s mission is to advance the education and well-being of immigrant-origin youth, decrease bias and hatred against young people of diverse origins, and help rising generations develop the understanding and habits of heart and mind that are necessary to build and sustain welcoming and inclusive communities.
We will achieve this by changing the narrative about human migration, leveraging educators as pivotal agents of change, and empowering young people as they become civic agents, the life force of vibrant democratic societies.
Our Approach
Given the rapid growth in the number of children and youth from immigrant families and the difficult circumstances they face, neither ignoring the situation nor addressing it with ad hoc solutions is an option. We have developed a fresh, new perspective on migration, recognizing it as one of our most basic human experiences; a new promising practices network of networks, to enable this perspective to be adopted widely and effectively in schools, informal educational settings, and social change organizations; and a robust national campaign addressing this new perspective to positively re-message migration in a way that fosters the academic, social, and emotional needs of immigrant-origin and their peers.
Key Strategies
- Re-imagining Migration creates research-based solutions and provides them to educators.
- Educators then construct research-based interventions for schools, community organizations, and cultural institutions.
- We have also created an international network of educational changemakers and organizations to promote the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that sustain inclusive and welcoming communities so that all young people have the opportunity to thrive and positively contribute to society.
Photograph by Emmanuel Mones
We know that we can’t do this work alone. We have forged active partnerships and collaborations with organizations that reach over 12 million young people a year. Both the depth and breadth of our work is expanding. By 2025, our work will reach approximately half of the school-aged students in the United States.
By providing tools and professional learning for educators, we are nurturing current and future generations with the knowledge, empathy and mindsets that sustain inclusive and welcoming communities.