 Hi, I'm Rodrig Silva. Let's talk about social inclusion. In the words of today's speaker and their colleagues, many youth in global self-countries whose parents have migrated abroad while they have stayed, the so-called stayer youth, also aspire to migrate. But how do their aspirations change over time? How well do aspirations and capability to migrate match with each other? Analia Oasei from Masrich University in the Netherlands is our speaker today and she will give us some insight on the practices and aspirations of these stayer youth, specifically in Ghana. Hi Analia, welcome to our episode. Hi Rodrigo, thanks for inviting me to be here. The first question for you would be why is this topic so important? Yeah, that's really a great question because there are ongoing research about young people left so said to be left behind in origin countries by their migrant parents and we know that most of the literature focuses on how the parents migration in some way automatically leads these young people to aspire to move. But in response to critical youth study calls, it is important to highlight youth voices, likewise their agency for their experiences and their aspirations. And so we decided to engage with the so-called left behind, which as you rightly introduced, we call them stayer youth, to understand how they choose to aspire to stay or move whilst their parents are international migrants and how that changes over time in relationship with the required means for that aspirations they have set for themselves. And we think this information can shape many actors' decisions about these young people, including academics who write about their experiences and aspirations in life. Of course, I don't know if there was maybe you could tell us if there was any research before. So when you started your research with your colleagues, so what were you hoping to find? What was the research gap? Yeah, so like I said before international parental migration puts stayer children and youth in different positions to try and navigate social factors like aspiring to migrate. But these youth perspectives have been often overlooked in existing literature and the existing evidence about their migration aspirations shows that once their parents move out of the origin country, they also aspire to move. Hence this nature of constructing their migration aspirations sort of rip them off of their agency for their lives, including their migration aspirations. So we entered the field considering that stayer youth in early adults would may pursue their migration aspirations with significant others, especially migrant parents, or they may pursue them independently. As a result, we envisage that they will adapt their aspiration to the required abilities by relying on broad social network support when they come to the need to do so. And some of these needs are that includes finance or moral assistance when they are not forthcoming or really existent in their transnational families. Of course, Analia, let us know about the findings of the article now. So our article first shows when there are alignment or misalignment between stayer youth migration aspirations and the required means to pursue those initial migration dreams, desires or wishes. We also show how the young people try to acquire the necessary means for changing aspirations over time. Our brothers observation is that stayer youth migration aspirations are not static as we often assume or has been found. Those who change their migration aspirations over time lack specific resources for their initial aspirations. Hence, these young people activate their agency through various means to feel on track for their migration aspirations. Breaking that broad observation down there are two specific categories. The first group of stayer youth consists of those whose initial migration aspirations fit the required means for moving or staying. And these were very few in the sample of 38 that we qualitatively interviewed on the field. It is important to note that these young people prefer to stay in the origin country after completing secondary school so that they could take advantage of local opportunities for tertiary schooling. Then later, they either aspire to join their parents and siblings abroad or they go for a visit and then return to the origin country to continue pursuing local opportunities that they desire there. The majority of the young people are in the second category and it is important to note that their initial aspirations does not line up with the required abilities or capabilities for wanting to move out. So it is said that they are experiencing what is called involuntary waiting to migrate. These young people prefer to move out of to move out of the origin country as soon as they complete secondary school, either for family unification or for international students mobility and international labor migration. To them, it is better to move out for the so-called better opportunities abroad than stay in the origin country where opportunities for their future are limited. So they adopt various strategies that we want to encourage your participants to assess our article on your website to learn more about the different strategies these young people try to navigate, try to use to navigate their migration aspirations in relation to the required abilities for that. And my question would be, so what now? Can you indicate to the researchers and our listeners what comes next in this topic? So what's the research get? Because your article focuses on Ghana. So perhaps another geography is to be considered and other education levels to be considered. What can you tell us about that? This study, unlike most of the existing literature, used temporal ways of collecting the data and also analyzing the data. So we realized that there is a need for more longitudinal studies to better understand how parental migration, specifically shapes, stay-at-youth experiences and aspirations in different family contexts and also in different locations, possibly as you said. But there is also the need to engage these young people more to understand how they perceive and relate with international parental migration, hence trying to show all the agency that young people employ to sort of navigate the things that happen whilst their parents live elsewhere from them. By so doing youth centric studies and longitudinal studies are able to enrich what cross sectional and auditory centric perceptives help us to understand about stay-at-youth lives. And are there any materials about this topic that you would like to share with our listeners? Yes, so I would like to say a bit more about the Montreal Project, which the study is a part of. Montreal broadly looks at the mobility trajectories and the life chances of different groups of children with migration background in both global north and south. And on our Montreal website, which is www.multrile.com, you would find some podcast stories from young people with different migrations backgrounds. Over there, you will also find publications by my co-authors, who are Professor Valentina Mazzucato and Dr. Caroline Haxman on the website about the stay-at-youth. Professor Valentina is the principal investigator of this ERC funded Montreal Project. So there is a lot of information on our site about different groups of young people with migration background. Of course, I always finish these episodes with a punchline. So if there is anything that you'd like our audience or our listeners to remember about this talk, what would it be, Analia? I would like to echo that generally more stay-at-youth desire to move out of the origin country for different types of migration. However, they do not often have the required needs for their aspirations, so they are cut up mostly in involuntary weighthood. Notwithstanding, stay-at-youth try to exercise their agency for their lives, including their migration aspiration through a broad social network. For example, for migration information, emotional support and the required finances for their migration aspirations. And it is nice to be here to talk about the perspectives of different groups of stay-at-youth. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Thank you, Analia. This episode is available on the Let's Talk About Social Inclusion website, on Koshitatu's YouTube channel, as well as in Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts and other directories. Analia, it was a pleasure. Same. Thanks. Have a nice day.