This paper explores the semantic and rhetorical elements of media discourse on “unaccompanied minors”. The lexico-semantic analysis of a press corpus shows that the hegemony of media discourse is ...based on administrative hetero-designations and meritocratic portraits or, conversely, figures of delinquency, which do not account for the complexity and specificities of the migratory biographies of these isolated young migrants. These results are discussed in the light of a paradox that runs through the media and legal treatment of representations of “unaccompanied minors”, perceived alternately as “young people to protect” and “migrants to control”.
With the undeniable increase in asylum requests from unaccompanied alleged minors, age estimation of living individuals has become an essential part of the routine work in European forensic centers. ...This study aims to review the forensic age estimations performed in our center since 2010, to evaluate the state-of-the-art of this practice in Switzerland with the evolution of the methodology according to upcoming recommendations. Our institute's expert reports performed between 2010 and 2022 were retrospectively analyzed. We gathered the following parameters: demographic data, morphological characteristics, alleged age compared with the assessed minimum age, sexual maturation, dental and bone age. When available, we collected personal and family history, medical history, records of torture-related/self-inflicted injuries, and information about eating habits that might affect skeletal development. Data collection amounted to 656 cases. Forensic age estimations ordered by the Swiss Secretariat for Migration (SEM) represented 76.4% of cases, with 23.6% of them ordered by the Court/Public Prosecutor. Most alleged minors were male (94.5%) and came from Afghanistan (53.4%). Adjunction of CT scans of the sternoclavicular joints was necessary in 86.4% of cases. Only 25.2% of our reports concluded on most probable minority, with 55.6% of definite majors; in 19.2% of our cases, minority could not be excluded. This study aspires to further broaden our expertise regarding forensic age estimations. Given the increasing migratory flows, we can expect a notable increase in the frequency of these requests. Consequently, this study aims to promote a multidisciplinary approach and the international standardization of the methodology of these estimations.
Between October 2013 and July 2016, over 156,000 children travelling without their guardians were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border and transferred to the care of the Office of Refugee ...Resettlement (ORR). During that same period, ORR placed over 123,000 unaccompanied migrant youth - predominantly from Central America - with a parent or other adult sponsor residing in the U.S. Following placement, local communities are tasked with integrating migrant youth, many of whom experience pre- and in-transit migration traumas, family separation, limited/interrupted schooling, and unauthorised legal status, placing them at heightened risk for psychological distress, academic disengagement, maltreatment, and human trafficking. Nonetheless, fewer than 10% of young people receive formal post-release services (PRS). This paper addresses the paucity of research on the experiences of the 90% of children and youth without access to PRS. To bridge this gap, this article: (a) describes the post-release experiences of unaccompanied youth, focusing on legal, family, health, and educational contexts; (b) identifies methodological and ethical challenges and solutions in conducting research with this population of young people and their families; and (c) proposes research to identify structural challenges to the provision of services and to inform best practices in support of unaccompanied youth. 196 words
The exploratory study investigates how unaccompanied minors (UAMs) in Italy dealt with social isolation at the time of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Have they suffered from the effects of ...the lockdown? How did their relationships change? What feelings characterised their experience? What factors helped them? Did ICT help them, or did it increase their social and economic marginalisation? Very little research has investigated the issues of UAMs, socialisation, technologies, and pandemics together. The data were collected through a purpose-built questionnaire that obtained an excellent Cronbach Alpha index (0.91) for internal consistency, which was administered to the migrant students of a school in North-East Italy. The answers indicated that they perceived the change in their social relations; but they coped with it, thanks to their internal resources, such as resilience and self-efficacy, and external ones, including digital devices and social support from family and teachers. Their friendship networks are regrettably fragile, and the youths do not rely much on them. On the other hand, the results show the crucial role of adults for the UAMs’ well-being: everyone, from the developers of policies to teachers, should take this aspect into account. Providing teenagers with appropriate communication technologies, ensuring the support of caregivers and teachers, and organising activities that strengthen peer networks are the actions of paramount importance, to ensure their welfare.
Using the election of the far‐right populist coalition government in Italy in 2018 and resultant legislative changes to immigration it brought about as an analytic lens, I examine the material and ...emotional impact of these changes on young African men, hosted as “unaccompanied minors” in a reception centre in a northern Italian town. I refer to these changes as an “ill wind” and in this paper examine its impacts using Christina Sharpe’s notion of “weathering” to refer to the totality of the ongoingness of the anti‐Black climate and its effect on Black bodies. I contextualise the young men’s experiences within the Italian race landscape, thus drawing attention to the postcolonial legacies of race and racialisation still underpinning Italian society today. I present how historical structures of racial governmentality are integral to the geography of subordination and produce the racialised figure of the migrant, leaving some strangers to remain stranger than others.
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This article considers memories, mementos, and memorialization in stories by unaccompanied young people and their journeys within Europe. It looks at their ‘navigation’ of remembering and ...forgetting and how this intertwines with movement and stillness. It is based on a study about Afghan males aged 15–24 years in Norway and Greece. Participants differed in terms of their backgrounds, migration projects, and their legal status. In their various circumstances, their narratives point to how memories unfold, are shared, must be negotiated, and sometimes, forgotten as they navigate towards a sense of safety and a sustainable future. They also point to how mementos may take different forms while on the move, as traces along the migration trail that have the potential to become part of the memories of others who come across them. Finally, their narratives point to practices of memorialization, and how they too are intimately connected to remembering and forgetting.
Abstract
Intending to support the cultural integration of unaccompanied refugee minors into the Swedish society, the Save the Children charity organization arranged meeting places in 2018 in four ...municipalities in Sweden. The mentors for the activities at these meeting places were recruited among former refugees who themselves had arrived in Sweden as unaccompanied minors. The study aimed to explore the experiences of being a mentor offering peer support to unaccompanied minor refugees at the meeting places. In this study, four semi-structured group interviews were conducted at the meeting places with 14 mentors, also former refugees. Data were analysed using thematic network analysis. Although the respondents expressed frustration concerning the Swedish migration politics, they all perceived the helping role as of utmost importance and connected this to positive emotions. The study highlights the unique contributions of peer support to the integration process of refugee minors by mentors providing social support, sharing experience-based knowledge and helping minors to navigate an often confusing and complex welfare system.
This paper explores the ambivalent positioning of separated child migrants in the UK with a focus on the care that they provide for each other. Drawing on interview data with state and non-state ...adult stakeholders involved in the immigration-welfare nexus, we consider how children's care practices are viewed and represented. We argue that separated children's caring practices assume an absent presence in the discourses mobilised by these actors: either difficult to articulate or represented in negative and morally-laden terms, reflective of the UK's 'hostile environment' towards migrants and advanced capitalist constructions of childhood. Such an examination sheds light on the complex state attempts to manage the care and migration regimes, and the way that care can serve as a way of making and marking inclusions and exclusions. Here we emphasise the political consequences for separated child migrants in an age of neoliberal state retrenchment from public provision of care and rising xenophobic nationalism.
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