Special issue: Nationalism and the integration of migrant children INTRODUCTION

When it comes to academic debates about the integration of migrant children, the field is thoroughly heterogeneous in terms of the methods used and topics discussed. Research ranges from questions of belonging, acculturation, and hybrid identities to a focus on education, religion, family, well-being and mental health, peer dynamics, integration support measures, nationalism, xenophobia, and discrimination. The initiative to publish a special issue on the integration of migrant children emerged from the project Migrant Children and Communities in a Transforming Europe (MiCREATE), a Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action, which aimed to identify effective child-centred integration approaches for use in education and at the policy level across the European Union. The overarching goal of this special issue is to reflect on how nationalism manifests itself at different levels of social life and how it is reproduced in integration practices. The articles collected here examine how migrant children, education professionals, and policy-makers understand, navigate, and experience the processes of integration, and how these processes are in turn influenced by discourses on nationalism and multiculturalism.