The making of unaccompanied children

This paper deals with the management of unaccompanied child migration. A legal framework laid out in international law aims to give internationally recognised human rights to children. These legal texts (re)invent the label of “child”, and more specifically, of “unaccompanied child”. This is a legally prescribed lexical label that discursively produces the figure of “child” as a legal, psychological and biometric surveillance object, resulting in ambivalent management of the children. In this paper, I show how this figure of the unaccompanied child is (re)invented in legal texts and then circulates in the humanitarian world via a process of entextualisation on supra/national and local levels in Greece. Drawing on eight months of ethnography on Lesvos Island, I demonstrate the tensions, disruptions, refusals and unsettling moments of struggle that arise when this definition and its related policies are implemented on the ground.

The Emergence of Planetary Pediatrics

Pediatrics has witnessed an evolution from primary care, family-centered care, community pediatrics, social pediatrics and global pediatrics, which has shifted our attention beyond the clinic setting to an appreciation of children in their lived environment. We are witnessing the emergence of planetary pediatrics that further broadens the focus of children’s health to include the continued importance of clinical care, but also the impacts of climate change, environmental degradation, child migration, unrelenting war and conflict, social injustice, pandemics and violence against children. If we do not acknowledge the present and ever-increasing adverse planetary changes of what children are experiencing now and in the future, we will have failed to adequately protect them from impending catastrophes. The hope of pediatrics for the future is to improve the health and well-being of all children. This hope remains as relevant today as it was for our predecessors and serves as a beacon for the voyage through the remainder of the twenty-first century.

‘A troublesome girl is pushed through’: Morality, biological determinism, resistance, resilience, and the Canadian child migration schemes, 1883–1939

This article critically analyses correspondence and decisions regarding children/young people who were included in the Canadian child migration schemes that ran between 1883 and 1939, and those who were deemed ‘undeserving’ and outside the scope of the schemes. Drawing on critical realist ontology, a metatheory that centralises the causal non-linear dynamics and generative mechanisms in the individual, the cultural sphere, and wider society, the research starts from the premise that the principle of ‘less or more eligibility’ lies at the heart of the British welfare system, both now and historically. Through analysing case files and correspondence relating to children sent to Canada via the Waifs and Strays Society and Fegan Homes, I shed light on the complex interplay between morality, biological determinism, resistance, and resilience in decisions around which children should be included or excluded. I argue that it was the complex interplay and nuance between the moral/immoral, desirable/undesirable, degenerate, and capable/incapable child that guided practice with vulnerable children in the late 1800s. In judgements around ‘deservedness’, related stigmas around poverty and ‘bad’ behaviour were rife. Within this, the child was punished for his/her ‘immoral tendencies’ and ‘inherited traits’, with little regard for the underlying reasons (e.g. abuse and neglect) for their (abnormal) behaviour and ‘mental deficiencies’.

“I will Enter the Suitcase and I will not Make a Sound until we Pass the Border…”

The article elaborates the crossborder experiences and strategies of family divide and unaccompanied childhoods in the context of crossborder migrations and smuggling across Bulgaria-Turkey border between the years of 1990-2001. The authors dig into the longrun impact of smuggling and imposed illegality on the migrant children and the means, manners, strategies and dangers hidden within crossborder cyclical mobility and administrative construction of illegality under the political and economic transitions and turbulence across sending and receiving countries. Left to the forgetfulness of the history unaccompanied child migration experiences between Bulgaria and Turkey contain significant lessons in regard to the role of restrictive and security based visa and migration policies. Our study aims at further investigation and understanding of these experiences via fieldwork containing semistructured interviews with 13 smuggled children and their parents. The article begins with introduction to the political and economic conditions that led to irregularization of child migrations across Bulgaria-Turkey border between 1990-2001. It follows presentation of data collected during the Istanbul University BAP Research Center supported fieldwork and follows elaboration on the memories, experiences and prevailing perceptions of these crossborder experiences by the trafficked children and their parents.The article elaborates the crossborder experiences and strategies of family divide and unaccompanied childhoods in the context of crossborder migrations and smuggling across Bulgaria-Turkey border between the years of 1990-2001. The authors dig into the longrun impact of smuggling and imposed illegality on the migrant children and the means, manners, strategies and dangers hidden within crossborder cyclical mobility and administrative construction of illegality under the political and economic transitions and turbulence across sending and receiving countries. Left to the forgetfulness of the history unaccompanied child migration experiences between Bulgaria and Turkey contain significant lessons in regard to the role of restrictive and security based visa and migration policies. Our study aims at further investigation and under-standing of these experiences via fieldwork containing semi-structured interviews with 13 smuggled children and their parents. The article begins with introduction to the political and economic conditions that led to irregularization of child migrations across Bulgaria-Turkey border between 1990-2001. It follows presentation of data collected during the Istanbul University BAP Research Center supported fieldwork and follows elaboration on the memories, experiences and prevailing perceptions of these crossborder experiences by the trafficked children and their parents.

Social constructions of childhood and migration: what does it mean for child participation in NGO programming in Guatemala?

This MRP uses a children’s rights theoretical perspective to explore the connection between child participation and the surge in unaccompanied child migration to the United States. It argues that children’s rights in the Northern Triangle have been missing from the discourse, with a focus on the lack of participation and empowerment of Guatemalan children and youth, in the creation of policies and programs that directly affect their livelihoods. Therefore, development interventions must include both children and youth in participatory planning processes in order to work towards a future of a more empowered generation that can create sustainable alternatives to migration. This MRP analyzes social constructions of childhood and migration extracted from interviews and observations, as well as YouTube videos on the influx of child migration to the United States, in order to understand how these conceptualizations inform the role that child participation plays in NGO programs in Guatemala.

Social constructions of childhood and migration: what does it mean for child participation in NGO programming in Guatemala?

This MRP uses a children’s rights theoretical perspective to explore the connection between child participation and the surge in unaccompanied child migration to the United States. It argues that children’s rights in the Northern Triangle have been missing from the discourse, with a focus on the lack of participation and empowerment of Guatemalan children and youth, in the creation of policies and programs that directly affect their livelihoods. Therefore, development interventions must include both children and youth in participatory planning processes in order to work towards a future of a more empowered generation that can create sustainable alternatives to migration. This MRP analyzes social constructions of childhood and migration extracted from interviews and observations, as well as YouTube videos on the influx of child migration to the United States, in order to understand how these conceptualizations inform the role that child participation plays in NGO programs in Guatemala.

‘The Risk Involved is Inappreciable… and the Gain Exceptional’: Child Migration to Australia and Empire Settlement Policy, 1913–1939

This chapter examines the development of UK child migration to Australia in the inter-war period. Following the opening of Kingsley Fairbridge’s experimental farm school for child migrants at Pinjarra in 1913, the 1920s and 1930s saw a gradual increase in the number of voluntary societies involved in this work and of residential institutions in Australia receiving child migrants. The growth of these programmes in the wider context of the UK Government’s assisted migration policies is discussed. During the 1930s, the global financial depression weakened governmental support for assisted migration, and greater caution emerged within the UK Government about the value of some planned migration schemes. Nevertheless, by 1939, child migration to Australia was seen by UK policy-makers as a small but important part of the attempt to strengthen ties with Britain’s Dominions and to make more efficient use of their collective human and material resources.