Child and Adolescent Migration, Mental Health, and Language

Child and Adolescent Migration, Mental Health, and Language, focuses on migration and the socio-affective significance of language. It examines how this influences children’s and adolescents’ development, subjectivity, identifications, and identity formations. By taking a thorough approach to the intricacy of migrancy, this timely publication examines the many challenges that young economic migrants, environmental migrants, refugees, irregular migrants, and asylum seekers encounter prior to and following their geographic, sociocultural, and linguistic relocations. While not disregarding the benefits that can stem from international relocations, Carra-Salsberg also addresses contemporary concerns influencing young migrants’ socio-affective experiences.

As part of the book’s discussion on the subjective significance of language, it takes a semiotic, pedagogic, and psychoanalytic approach to study the effects of foreign-language immersions and significant language learning, and how these can add to pre-existing traumas. The developmental importance of language is considered through theory, the analysis of memoirs, and the author’s depiction and understanding of her own experiences between languages. Written for academics, psychologists, psychiatrists, pedagogues, counsellors, human rights advocates, and policy-makers, this book highlights the intricate connections between language, migration, and mental health. The restorative significance of language is also reflected upon in relation to migrants’ natural need to grieve, testify, and find meaning within their past and present sense of self.