The Immigrant Flourishing and Belonging (IFB) initiative at Boston College serves as a convening hub that connects faculty, students, and partners across disciplines to understand how immigrant-origin children, youth, and adults—and their families—grow, learn, work, and participate in civic life, and how they come to feel that they belong. Grounded in Boston College's commitment to human dignity, formative education, and the common good, the initiative seeks to identify and elevate promising practices and policies that foster flourishing and belonging across institutions.
What is IFB?
IFB brings together scholars, students, practitioners, and community partners to advance knowledge and action on the experiences of immigrant-origin communities. Grounded in a commitment to human dignity, formative education, and the common good, IFB examines the conditions that enable people to learn, grow, work, participate in civic life, and come to feel that they belong.
Advance Knowledge
Foster interdisciplinary research on immigrant-origin lives across childhood, adolescence, adulthood, family life, and aging.
Translate Evidence
Connect research with the work of educators, student-facing professionals, health and social-service providers, community organizations, and policymakers.
Build Connection
Convene people and ideas across Boston College, the Boston area, and beyond.
Why Now?
Immigrant-origin communities are central to the fabric of contemporary migration-receiving societies. At the same time, immigrant origin children, youth, and adults are growing up, forming families, and aging in a context of heightened polarization, rising xenophobia, and persistent inequalities in access to education, health care, employment, and legal protections.
The schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, community and faith-based organizations, and health and social-service systems people encounter can either deepen exclusion or create the conditions for flourishing and belonging. IFB convenes research and action around a defining question of our time: how can service providers and institutions help immigrant-origin communities thrive?
Explore the Initiative
Our Events
Discover upcoming events and announcements related to the initiative.
IFB Hub
Coming soon: a central, searchable resource for discovering Boston College scholarship, people, programs, centers, institutes, projects, courses, and partnerships related to immigrant-origin individuals, families, and communities.
Did you know?
1 in 4
children (birth to 17) lives with at least one immigrant parent
~30%
of working-age adults (ages 16-64) are of immigrant origin
~14%
of adults ages 65 and older are immigrants
Join the Conversation
IFB is building a community of inquiry and practice across Boston College and beyond. We welcome connections with faculty, students, practitioners, community organizations, and others whose work engages immigrant-origin individuals, families, and communities.