The purpose of this study is to identify and illustrate the psychological impacts on left-behind children and the different effects on their academic performance due to one or both parents’ migration. Additionally, the study also identifies the roles of various actors not limited to parents but also schools, teachers, and and school administration.
The Act Relating Children, 2075 (2018) chapter 2(7) of Nepal states that the right of children to live with parents and to have proper care, protection, love, and affection from both parents or other guardians. UNCRC Article 10 and 18 also emphasise ‘Family Reunification’ and ‘Parental Primary Care Responsibility’, which focus on the rights of children to be with parents regularly and the primary responsibility of parents toward children for upbringing and development of the child.
Although the parents/guardians have the primary responsibility for upbringing and development of the children, many Nepali parents leave their children at their hometown or a city like Kathmandu under the care and supervision of grandparents, guardians, and boarding schools. Such children are known as ‘Children Left Behind’ (CLB), and according to UNICEF (n.d.), CLB refers to children who were ‘raised in their home countries or in their countries of habitual residence, who have been left behind by adult migrants’.
In the context of Nepali migration, the migrated population rate had increased aproximetly double from 8.7 percent in 2001 to 24.5 percent in 2021(UN-world population prospects, Macrotrend, 2022). The labor force rate of working abroad has reached 25 percent and the increase in rate of female migration is comparatively higher than male (World Bank 2020). The key aspiration of parents working abroad is to give their children a good education. If both parents are absent, the children are mostly left with grandparents, guardians, or kept at a private boarding school. Private hostel facilities are commonly available in many boarding schools and some renowned community schools as well. As an infrastructural facility, hostels become the best accommodation choice for left-behind children. However, a long-term foreign employment/migration of parents has a negative impact on both children’s psychological and academic performance (Zhao,C., et al. 2018) .
A research method involving both quantitative and qualitative methods like questionnaire survey, case study, Focus Group Discussions, semi-structured interviews, Key Informant Interviews has been adopted for this study. Major stakeholders of the study are: a) School-going children whose parents (one or both) are currently migrated abroad, and b) Principals and caretakers of boarding school. For the case study of CLB a private “B” ranked boarding school has been selected as a sample school.
The finding shows that left-behind children are reluctant to share their problems with their parents since they know that parents cannot solve them due to physical and psychological distances. The findings also shows that due to the educational background of parents, their presence or absences did not provide any support on CLB’s school education. Chain migration of family members, specifically elder sibling’s and male sibling’s migration, creates a feeling of abandonment. Prevailing gender discrimination directly or indirectly also affects negatively the relationship of grandparents/guardians and CLB.
