The Conceptual Framework of IMMERSE has brought together the findings of two main research areas: migration literature on integration and the literature on socio-educational inclusion of children. Contrasting this synthesis with children and stakeholders’ perspectives on integration, IMMERSE has defined five constitutive dimensions of children integration results – legal, language and culture, well-being, social relations, and educational achievements at the micro level – and their key barriers and facilitators at the meso and macro levels.
Besides this synthesis, the central IMMERSE contribution has been the development of a dashboard of 30 indicators to measure integration results (14) and key barriers and facilitators (16). IMMERSE has collected the necessary data and made it available through an interactive Dashboard. The project followed a co-creation stepwise methodology that engaged children, families, and other stakeholders’ voices in the key turning points for decision-making of the indicators’ development process. At the ending of the project, more than 30.000 children, families and other stakeholders have contributed to mapping refugee and migrant’s children integration in Europe and to elaborate a set of policy recommendations addressing the main problems faced by migrant and refugee children. The co-creation strategies implemented during the whole project allowed to incorporate these communities’ voices, recognising their power to identify their own needs and resources as well as to indirectly gain confidence in their own ability to solve some of their challenges.
In parallel, researchers have identified and evaluated a comprehensive collection of positive, innovative, and effective 109 good practices and resources for the socio-educational inclusion of migrant and refugee children. In addition to their identification and description, some strategies to promote their replicability were indicated.
