Page 37 - IJPS-8-2

International Journal of
Population Studies URM Education, Economic, and Social Outcomes

and English level to determine if they have an influence on Author contributions
these outcomes as well as consider confounding outcomes
such as mental health that can influence well-being in these Conceptualization: Kerri Evans
areas. Importantly, qualitative studies could take place to Formal analysis: Kerri Evans
ask questions and explain some of the findings in this paper Writing – original draft: Kerri Evans
Writing – review & editing: Hannah Ferguson
such as why educational attainment is lower for Somali and The data owned by Hannah Ferguson.
Eritrean youth as compared to others. Understanding the
root causes of these struggles could help URM programs to Ethics approval and consent to participate
seek funding and build interventions that will assist a larger
number of youth in reaching successful outcomes. Second, University of Maryland Baltimore County IRB approved
by pooling data over the years, or working collaboratively secondary data analysis for this study.
with the other federally granted agency that provides URM Consent for publication
care, we could possibly increase the number of youth and,
therefore, conduct similar analyses for youth of other Hannah Ferguson, staff member of LIRS and owner of the
countries of origin. If we had larger sample sizes through administrative data set provided consent for publication.
these methods, regression analyses and structural equation
modeling could be used to better assess the relationship Availability of data
between these variables as it is possible that multiple of As this data is administrative in nature and stems from files
them could have influences in various ways. for youth in foster care, this data is not publicly available.
5. Conclusion References

This study provides descriptive statistics and correlations Ager, A., & Strang, A. (2008). Understanding integration:
to help us understand some basic outcomes for youth A conceptual framework. Journal of Refugee Studies,
from Eritrea, Somalia, the DRC, and Myanmar, which are 21(2):166-191.
countries with some of the highest enrollment rates in the https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fen016
URM program. Results show that youths from Myanmar Avery, R.J. (2011). The potential contribution of mentor programs
are most likely to be enrolled in college and employed at to relational permanency for youth aging out of foster care.
time of discharge when compared to youth from other Child Welfare, 90(3):9-26.
countries. Youths from the DRC are equally likely to be
enrolled in college or to have only completed a GED or Baffoe, M. (2011). Navigating two worlds: New identity
high school diploma. Eritrean youths were more likely to be constructions as determinants for successful integration
of new Black immigrant and refugee youth in Canadian
lacking economic self-sufficiency at time of discharge than society. Journal of Social Sciences, 7(4):475-484.
youth from other countries. The study found no statistically
significant findings when it comes to social ties. While https://doi.org/10.3844/jssp.2011.475.484
these findings are interesting and can assist case managers Bankston, C.L. 3 . (2014). Immigrant Networks and Social
rd
in adapting service plans for youth of specific backgrounds, Capital. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
they also provide questions for future research. Bell, M. (2005). Integration: Refugee children in Britain and
Europe. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 24(4):105-108.
Acknowledgments
https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdi091
None.
Betancourt, T.S., Abdi, S., & Ito, B.S. (2015). We left one war
Funding and came to another: Resource loss, acculturative stress,
and caregiver-child relationships in Somali refugee
The Boston College Center for Human Rights and families. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology,
International Justice Summer Research Grant Program 21(1):114-125.
provided a small amount of funding for preliminary https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037538
analyses, which were later used in this manuscript. LIRS
funded the open access fees for International Journal of Calvo, R., Egmont, W., Ortiz, L., Rosales, R., Padilla, Y.C.,
Population Studies. Figuereo, V., et al. (2016). Achieving Equal Opportunity
and Justice: The Integration of Latina/Oimmigrants into
Conflict of interest American society. American Academy of Social Work and
Social Welfare. Available from: https://www.aaswsw.org/
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare. wp-content/uploads/2016/02/WP-20.pdf [Last accessed on

Volume 8 Issue 2 (2022) 31 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.v8i2.304