The new issue of Migration Policy Practice (MPP) focuses on children in the current Central America–Mexico–United States context. It identifies critical blind spots of child-related migration data and sheds light on aspects that have gotten lost in the noise generated by graphic depictions of child migration in the Central America–Mexico–United States pathway. Articles in this special edition encourage readers to recognize, first and foremost, migrant children as critical and not peripheral actors on the migration stage; as capable of identifying the issues that drive them to migrate and of articulating solutions; and as ignored and miscatalogued in data-collection processes, yet deserving of being accounted for when alive, and also when missing or dead.

Authors in this special issue, drawn from academia, international organizations and non-governmental organizations, include Gabriella Sanchez, Marta Sánchez Dionis, Andrea García Borja, Kate Dearden, Yaatsil Guevara González, Alexandra Elena Lestón, Lauren Heidbrink, Amelia Frank-Vitale, Lisa Frydman, Elba Coria Márquez, Catherine Mongeon and Caitlyn Yates.

This issue of MPP also includes an article by Louis Volante, Don A. Klinger and Melissa Siegel, which discusses the importance of social protection and education policies that help mediate achievement gaps as well as the prominent mental and physical health challenges disproportionately faced by immigrant students. Recent research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the growing necessity of broader notions of academic resilience that recognize important psychosocial and physical well-being issues among immigrants, which are typically not captured by large-scale assessment measures. The article outlines a range of possible policy directions in a post-COVID-19 world.