Introduction

This chapter describes the objectives and the overall design of the CHILD-UP project with a view to highlighting its main points of interest. Specifically, it accounts for the reasons foregrounding our research relative to how the enhancement of migrant children’s ability to participate in changing their social and cultural conditions of integration is currently achieved, and the ways this ability is accounted for and engaged with in educational interventions and policies. The chapter also describes the conceptual background of the CHILD-UP research concerning the ways of enhancing and supporting migrant children’s agency in activities that can improve hybrid integration in the education system. The aims of CHILD-UP, as will be shown in the chapter, are to improve policies and interventions, suggesting methods that can be applied in educational institutions across Europe, to support migrant children’s opportunities for participating creatively and autonomously in the production of their education. Finally, the chapter describes the project methodology, a prevalently qualitative inquiry that has been used to investigate the policies and practices of integration of migrant children, the professionals’ and migrant children’s narratives about the education system, the classroom activities facilitating children’s agency and dialogue, and finally interpreting/mediation in parent-teacher interactions.