The Impact of Parents’ Work Migration on the Social, Communication and Educational Experiences of Left-Behind Adolescents

Parental work migration can pose important risks for adolescents, such as joining inappropriate peer-groups, poor results in education or school drop-out. It can also facilitate positive changes in young people’s behaviour, as many become aware of the sacrifices their parents make to provide them with a better lifestyle and education and behave responsibly in return. Given that the literature highlights both negative and positive transformations related to parents’ migration, our aim is to address the impact of migration on adolescents left behind in rural Romania from their own perspective. We focus on teenagers’ experiences of separation from their mother, father or both, in different situations (family life, communication and relationships, caring and concern for others, school achievements, future migration plans). Young people’s agency – their capacity to self-educate and organise themselves to perform well at school and in everyday activities following parental migration – is less studied in Romania. Thus, in addition to making the reality of these adolescents better known, our approach provides information that can be turned into policy solutions aimed at improving their life quality.