Growing over time: left-behind children in the past three decades

Migrants from Southeast Asia and elsewhere have often reasoned their migration as for the family and/or children’s sake. While children may enjoy various potential benefits from their parent’s migration, they are also coping with the inherent ruptures of living prolonged periods without one or both parents, and/or under the care of surrogate parents. The growing research on left-behind children have gradually revealed the mixed impacts of parental migration on the development and well-being of a diverse group of children from different regions. Nonetheless, it is still difficult to assemble a complete understanding of ‘left-behind’ childhoods over time. By exploring the evolving research/findings on left-behind children from the nineties till present, this chapter examines the challenges and underlying issues involved in studying left-behind children. It then highlights how future studies can expand understandings of the impact of parental migration by researching changes in left-behind children’s (non)migration experiences over their life course.