Three 4 year PhD positions within the project “Mobility trajectories of young lives: Life chances of transnational youth in Global South and North (MO-TRAYL)”

Applications are invited for three 4 year PhD positions within the project “Mobility trajectories of young lives: Life chances of transnational youth in Global South and North (MO-TRAYL)”. The project is funded by the European Research Council (Consolidator Grant), awarded to the principal investigator, Valentina Mazzucato.

Research project
Mobility patterns of young people of migrant background are not well understood, in part because young people have been assumed to have similar patterns to their parents, or to have no mobility by having been ‘left behind’. The Mobility trajectories of young lives (MO-TRAYL) project seeks to break open these assumptions by studying in detail the mobility trajectories of youth of migrant background. In specific it asks how young people’s life-chances, defined as their educational performance, psychological well-being and transitions into adulthood, are impacted by the way they move between their or their parents’ country of origin and the country where they reside. This will be investigated in 4 case study countries, with the interest of understanding how mobility and life chances are intertwined in diverse educational systems and under different migration regimes. The project focuses on youth of Ghanaian background in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Ghana.
A team of researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds will investigate this question through the use of a comparative, mixed-method research design that combines ethnographic fieldwork (PhDs) and survey research (Post-doc). By specifically tracing youth mobility trajectories, the resulting different family compositions along the way, and how both affect life chances within different institutional contexts, the MO-TRAYL project aims to re-conceptualize youth mobility and family and add a longitudinal dimension to the study of migration and life chance outcomes.

Starting date: 1 March 2017 (or thereabout)

Inquiries about the position or the project may be addressed to Valentina Mazzucato: v.mazzucato@maastrichtuniversity.nl

For more information about the research project and about the Maastricht Center for Citizenship, Migration and Development see: https://macimide.maastrichtuniversity.nl/mo-trayl/

For more information about the Globalisation, Transnationalism and Development research programme of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, see: https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/globalisation-transnationalism-and-development