Abstract
Given the absence of family support and the depth of shared experiences, friendships for unaccompanied adolescent refugees often take on ‘suffused’ functions which blur the boundaries ...between conventional friendship and family roles. This study explores the ways in which such friendships help unaccompanied adolescent refugees to cope with the migration journey and the challenges of resettlement in Ireland. Innovative composite case material was constructed from my reflections on my psychotherapy work with 33 unaccompanied adolescent refugees (engaging in an average of 16 sessions each), as recorded in a reflective clinical journal and portrayed in eco-map photographs between 2016 and 2020. Reflexive and polytextual thematic analysis identified four themes, which captured the deep emotional and experiential bonds of these friendships, their importance in helping these young people to cope with the stressors of resettlement, perceptions of friends as proxy family, and the importance of God as a friend.
This article explores the concept of mistrust amongst refugee populations by drawing on qualitative interviews with unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors living in the Republic of Ireland. The forced ...migration literature frequently makes reference to the difficulties that asylum seekers and refugees have in creating trusting relationships. However, little is known about the reasons for these difficulties, particularly reasons articulated by asylum seekers themselves. This article addresses this gap in the literature by exploring the reasons why these young people found it difficult to trust. The findings suggest five specific causes of the young people’s mistrust: past experiences; being accustomed to mistrust; being mistrusted by others; not knowing people well; and concerns about truth-telling. The findings suggest that the reasons for mistrust are embedded within the social contexts from which asylum seekers have come and that they are exacerbated by the social contexts in which they are now living. These reasons are discussed in relation to the literature. Implications for professionals and service providers are highlighted.
This article examines how unaccompanied minors from Afghanistan experience migration as a space of both freedom and loneliness situated between competing moral frameworks: family projects, neoliberal ...discourses of independence, and a quest for new ways of being. While migration is devised as a family strategy to financially sustain the household, it also creates new desires for young people: to study, to have fun, and to fulfil individual goals. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the UK, I analyse how youth find themselves caught in moments of moral crisis as both an ethical dilemma and an experience of self-transformation - caused by the tensions between family expectations, social policies, and a search for independence. I argue that young people often struggle to find the moral ground to exercise freedom and to make the good choice, without the guidance of their parents and within neoliberal politics of self-governance. This article considers youth's aspirations and imaginaries of 'good life' within different communities of belonging, and it highlights the importance of the role of kinship for understanding how youth conceptualise their future, and ultimately exercise choice.
The number of unaccompanied minors (UAMs) arriving in the European Union (EU) has been increasing dramatically over recent years resulting in the formulation of EU policy directives around ...safeguarding and well-being. Notably, the majority of UAMs enter Europe irregularly through two main gateways to the European continent: via Italy, using the Central Mediterranean Sea route; or through Greece, transiting through the Eastern Mediterranean route from Turkey, mostly via sea. Profiles of UAMs travelling via the two different routes are significantly diverse, reflecting Italy’s and Greece’s geographical proximity to North Africa and the Middle East, respectively. Although Italy has witnessed a decline since 2018 (Todaro and Romano 2019), the two countries have faced a significant increase in UAMs, and this has required a considerable reorganisation of the reception systems and, more generally, of their welfare systems. However, difficulties in securing adequate reception for UAMs seeking protection have persisted in both countries. Through an analysis of the impact of the pandemic on the Italian and Greek reception systems and social interventions with UAMs, we utilised a multiple embedded case study approach within a comparative analysis, to identify key changes in the main services which should be guaranteed to minors—namely, hosting/housing, guardianship, foster care, family/relatives reunification, school integration, language, job training for care leaving, and preparation for leaving care after 18 years (Di Rosa 2017; Buchanan and Kallinikaki 2018; Barn et al. 2020). Against a background of critical reviews of the main issues related to policies and reported social work practice in a context of COVID-19 precarity, set within a wider EU framework, this paper contributes to the literature with an analysis of the current situation and the tightening of the conditions of reception, inclusion and integration that await UAMs in these gateway countries today. We conclude that with the suspension of key services and amenities, and with a practical halt to the due process of immigration and asylum, social workers are facing a difficult challenge to prevent the deterioration of UAMs’ mental health and well-being.
This article discusses how a selection of service providers talk about unaccompanied minors as a specific group of children and how these constructions relate to the way in which the service ...providers articulate what they see as their prime work and obligations amid these children and youth. The interview data were collected as part of two separate follow-up studies conducted in two different parts of Sweden, where the municipal reception of unaccompanied minors was explored. The analysis points to how three rather different and opposing, yet overlapping, narratives were brought to the fore by the service providers. The unaccompanied minors could be framed as unproblematic youngsters (not in danger), problematic youngsters (possibly dangerous), or examples of any other child in a specific problematic situation (in danger). These constructions influenced what aid or intervention was deemed legitimate. The findings have important policy implications because they point to the need to address and reflect on the underlying categorizations that social workers and service providers maintain and reproduce when they talk about specific client groups, such as unaccompanied children and young people, as these categorizations may come to have real consequences and implications for the unaccompanied children affected by these constructions.
•1.25 generation immigrants encounter gendered barriers to K-12 school enrollment.•Economic needs push 1.25 generation men into low-wage work rather than school.•Unpaid care work and lack of ...information kept 1.25 generation women out of school.•Addressing the 1.25 generation’s enrollment barriers requires targeted approaches.
This paper examines the barriers to school enrollment experienced by 1.25 generation Mexican and Central American immigrants who are undocumented. Arriving between the ages of 13 to 17, a segment of 1.25 generation youth never enroll in traditional K-12 schooling in the United States. Existing literature shows that work demands conflict with traditional U.S. schooling and that lack of information presents barriers to enrollment. I build on existing knowledge by showing that these barriers are gendered. Consistent with existing studies, I find economic needs push 1.25 generation men into low-wage work rather than school. Paid work demands, however, was not the main barrier encountered by 1.25 generation young women. Rather, providing unpaid care work along with lack of information and support kept young women out of school. Ultimately, I urge stakeholders to expand how we think about the work demands keeping 1.25 generation youth out of schooling and call for more targeted supports to address their enrollment barriers.
Abstract
This qualitative study investigated the refugee journey of 17 males who arrived in Australia as unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors between 2009 and 2013, and were granted protection visas. ...The article focuses on the four conceptual challenges of refugee journeys, as identified recently by BenEzer and Zetter: temporal characteristics; drivers and destinations; the process/content of the journey; and the characteristics of the wayfarers. The findings indicate that their mental journey has not yet ended and transcends the physical departure–arrival voyage. Although the primary drivers for the refugee journey were protection reasons, their desire to find a ‘better life’ free from violence and exclusion also played an important role. The irregular character of the journey made it highly unpredictable, exposed these minors to extreme levels of vulnerability and the need to remain invisible, prompted short-lived friendships with other asylum seekers, and created a pervasive feeling of mistrust towards smugglers and other people they met along the way. The study has highlighted the need for interventions to protect unaccompanied minors during their refugee journey.
This article examines how newcomer immigrant teens navigate a heightened, anti-immigrant climate in the United States. Drawing on 24 months of ethnographic observations and interviews with adolescent ...arrivals who immigrated in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, this study highlights the nuanced ways adolescent arrivals negotiate their precarious situations. For newcomer teenagers navigating two life-changing transitions at once - adolescence and immigration - their experiences coalesce producing distinct levels of stress and anxiety for the youth. This study finds that amid hardships and dire circumstances that surround them, the youth use humour as a lens to process their experiences. I find that the youth engage in humour as a form of political expression to make fun of social conditions. They do this by mocking and ridiculing anti-immigrant discourses. This play world created by the youth provides an alternative understanding of immigrant youth culture during contested political times.
A number of researchers have examined undocumented migration from Central America. This literature lacks information about adult beliefs regarding the motivations of minors who journey from Central ...America unaccompanied and undocumented. Using data from a recent survey conducted in Honduras, we examine adult Hondurans’ beliefs about why unaccompanied minors leave the country unaccompanied. The dependent variable is a dummy variable that measures “why children leave the country.” Predictor variables are attitudes toward smuggling, willingness to leave without documentation, deportation experience, age, income, and residence in the northern part of Honduras. Using multinomial logistic regression, we find support for four of the eight hypotheses. Findings indicate that adults from the northern region are most likely to believe minors would leave for reasons associated with undocumented immigration. Those who are younger, with lower incomes, and with less access to sanitation are more likely to believe minors would leave without documentation.
PDF
