Title: The Educational and Health Care Outcomes of the Binational Population of Children of Immigrants in Mexico and the United States

Speaker: Erin R Hamilton
Date: Friday, November 14th, 2025
Time: 11:00am-12:00pm
Location: Social Science Centre 5220

Child migration is common, reflects a unique process of migration, and has important implications for child and family wellbeing across the life course. We combine Mexican and U.S. census data from 2019 and 2020 to analyze the educational outcomes and health insurance coverage of five generations of Mexican-origin children: the 0.5 generation, who is born in the United States but resides in Mexico; the 1.5 generation, who is born in Mexico but resides in the United States, in comparison to the “0 generation” of Mexican-born children who reside in Mexico; the 2nd generation of U.S.-born children of at least one Mexican-born parent; and the 3rd+ generation of U.S.-born children of U.S.-born parent(s) of Mexican ethnicity. We uncover a unique disadvantage for the 0.5 generation of U.S.-born children in Mexico. For education, there is a disadvantage associated with residence in Mexico, with lower levels of school attendance and higher rates of educational lag for both the 0 and the 0.5 generations. But rates of uninsurance were higher for the two groups of child immigrants in the binational population, the 0.5, U.S.-born in Mexico, and the 1.5, Mexican-born in the United States. We find that disparities persist after adjusting for parental education, suggesting that institutional context specific to the place of residence, rather than individual characteristics, drive binational, generational disparities in child wellbeing.

Title: Framing the Youth Opioid Problem in Denmark: How Non-Prescription Opioids Gained a Distinct Position in Danish Drug Policy and Differ from Other Youth Drug Practices

Speaker: Jeanette Ostergaard
Date: Thursday, March 26th, 2026
Time: 11:00am-12:00pm
Location: Social Science Centre 5220

Abstract:

In late 2024, the Danish government launched Youth without Opioids (Ungdom uden opioider) to address rising non-medical use of prescription opioids among young people aged 15-25. The initiative followed sustained media attention on tramadol and oxycodone misuse, including among children in lower secondary school. Media coverage highlighted accessibility and portrayed young people as targeted by dealers distributing cheap pills, framing the issue as an emerging “epidemic” with parallels to international crises. Concerns focus on availability and reduced risk perception, particularly as pills are sold in repackaged blister packs signaling legitimacy. A Rockwool Foundation report (Østergaard et al., 2024) found that 4% of adolescents aged 15-19 reported lifetime opioid use, with higher prevalence among 15-year-olds and similar rates across genders - a pattern differing from cannabis and cocaine use. Opioids thus appeared as the second most common illicit substance among very young people, surpassing cocaine.
In this presentation, I will show preliminary findings from ongoing research on youth non-prescription opioid use in Denmark. The research project is based upon a newly collected Nighttime survey, collected in situ at bars across the whole country (n = 1,900), and a nationally representative survey of 15-25-year-olds (n = 5,000). The research project uses these surveys to estimate the prevalence of opioids and other widespread substances such as cocaine and cannabis, informing a critical assessment of whether Denmark faces an opioid crisis.
The presentation also draws on 22 focus group interviews with young people aged 17-20 (n = 132) in which participants ranked substances by perceived danger and social acceptability. Preliminary findings highlight tensions related to stigma and gender, hinting at why it has been so difficult to recruit young non-prescription opioid users, especially girls, for in-depth interviews.
Finally, drawing on 15 individual interviews with young people who have used opioids and other illegal drugs, I investigate young people’s non-prescription opioid use through a temporal lens (Baraitser 2017). Findings suggest that synthetic opioids produce a distinctive experience of slowing, suspending, or stopping time. This contrasts sharply with the accelerated, future-oriented temporalities associated with drugs such as cocaine or MDMA. Participants describe opioid use as legitimizing a mode of “doing nothing,” suspending expectations of productivity, progress, and self-optimization.

Biography

Jeanette Østergaard is Research Professor at the Rockwool Foundation, Denmark. She holds a PhD in Sociology from University of Copenhagen. Her research interests are young people’s transition to adulthood as explored from the perspective of everyday life, marginality, and risk behavior (drinking and drug use), often from a longitudinal mixed methods perspective. She has established several largescale empirical studies, including quantitative and qualitative longitudinal studies focusing on young people.