Abstract
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.
Objectives This systematised review aimed to examine European literature reporting data about adaptative skills and global external functioning of unaccompanied minors (UAMs). Methods We conducted a ...systematised screening of four databases (APA PsycINFO Ovid, Medline Ovid ALL, Embase.com and Web Of Science Core Collection) using a research strategy including social, scholarly and behavioural abilities as well as externalising problems associated with the target population of UAMs. Thirty articles were included using pre-defined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results Our review showed that despite high levels of internalising disorders, socio-behavioural and educational adjustment of UAMs remained positive. It demonstrated how this population displays a strong desire for academic success and prosocial behaviours instead of aggressivity in everyday life. Nevertheless, our review drew attention to the strong tendency of UAMs to internalise their disorders and display chronic distress and problematic behaviours which increased with time spent in the host country. Conclusion Our study draws attention to the risk of underestimating the real mental health needs of refugees, due to preserved external functioning combined with significant settlement pressures.
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.
Abstract
Social workers are confronted with a contradictory task: that of acting as state parents for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, in an era of hostile migration policies and austerity. ...Mobilizing Young’s (2006) concept of ‘responsibility’, we ask: how is state parental responsibility towards unaccompanied minors given meaning, and with what consequences, for both frontline workers and unaccompanied minors alike? Drawing on interviews with frontline workers and unaccompanied minors in the United Kingdom (n = 107), we delineate three modes through which responsibility operates: namely outcomes, capacity and morality. We argue that the underlying logic of responsibility shifts the blame from sociopolitical structures to migrant children themselves, with crucial consequences for questions of social justice.
Unaccompanied youth from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras represent a growing demographic in communities nationwide. This vulnerable group often presents with ...early childhood adversity and repeated traumas that heighten their risk for poor mental health outcomes such as depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress. Harsh and exclusionary policies that result in family separations, extended detention stays, and unequal access to healthcare further exacerbate suffering. For mental health providers, attention to premigration, migration, and post-migration experiences is essential to understanding the youth's mental health trajectory and applying trauma-informed interventions that maximize potential for a successful resettlement. Post-migration environments that offer opportunities for educational attainment and social engagement, promote a sense of belonging, and can enhance recovery and healing.
•Repeated adverse traumatic experiences are common among unaccompanied minors.•Policies that support family separation contribute to poor mental health outcomes.•Post-migration connection and belonging can facilitate healthy adaptation.
The increase in the arrival of unaccompanied minors to Europe rises as a new challenge for the local authorities responsible for the reception. The comparison of two cross-border regions shows the ...possibility of transferring successful practices between European states. According to the stages of this migratory flow, the weaknesses and the strengths of the child care systems' responses are analysed, as well as the strategies minors share to improve their settlement options in the local host societies. It is concluded that the diversity of local institutional responses to this migration is a factor that increases the vulnerability of minors. Therefore, a harmonisation of European legislation on international protection of migrant children becomes necessary.
•Unaccompanied minors face new vulnerabilities as a consequence of institutional reception.•Local authorities deploy different strategies in each European state.•Minors and institutions adapt themselves to each other's changes in their strategies.•Harmonising European legislation on unaccompanied migrant children becomes necessary.
Unaccompanied minors who reach the age of majority often experience this transition as a complex stage. Insecurity and helplessness may arise and, in some cases, survival without the support of the ...institutions and services that previously protected them as minors in the host country may mean becoming at risk for social exclusion. The objective of the present study was to characterize unaccompanied minors in Portugal (N = 67) and understand the processes of transition into the age of majority, using a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative (survey) and qualitative (interviews on autobiographical narratives) methodologies were used as a means of acknowledging the voice of minors/young adults in their trajectories and experiences. Two groups were included, with minors (in residential care) and youths who had already reached adulthood (living independently). Results illustrate diverse reasons for arrival in Portugal and distinct strengths and struggles in the integration experiences, with both positive and negative aspects being identified in the transition to autonomy.
This article starts from our experiences as two Western women of Black mixed-race background, undertaking fieldwork among unaccompanied young men on the move in Europe. We add to scholarship on ...ethnographic accounts of encounters. We do this by reflecting on how our positionality affected the research process along often taken-for-granted social categories and markers of sameness and difference, as they related to our fieldwork and the space created between us and participants. We analyse the ways in which power is infused along multiple intersecting axes such as gender and race, and is imbued with movement in that space, helping people to feel, among other things, safe and unsafe, located and dislocated, and visible and invisible. We find that the social positions and positioning that emerged were tied into vulnerabilities related to gender and age, legal status, dimensions of race, class, and specific histories and imaginaries. We also show how performativity, shifting boundaries, and othering came into play and shaped bordering practices and a sense of belonging.
This paper examines what Central American unaccompanied minors know about the unauthorized journey to the US and protective US immigration laws. I find that, contrary to policymakers' assumptions, ...children know little about US immigration laws, but they are well aware of the dangers of the journey. I argue that the composition of migrant networks and the strength of ties shape how children acquire information and resources indispensable to plan unauthorized trips to the US, for which most respondents relied on smugglers. Unaccompanied minors who had "strong" ties to parents in the US had more access to information and resources than those with "weak" ties to non-parent relatives. Yet even "strong" ties deteriorated after years of family separation imposed by US immigration policy, undermining communication in families across borders, with implications for how trips were organized and what children knew. These findings extend adult-centric migration theories by centering the experiences of children.
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