This article discusses how important social markers surrounding the figure of the unaccompanied minor, such as 'integration' and 'deservingness' are negotiated and made sense of by unaccompanied ...refugee youth and their teachers in a Swiss integration class. Starting from the premise of the classroom as both, a project of future-making and control, I investigate the ambiguous potential of education in creating and obstructing refugee youth's pathways into the larger society. By zooming in on the interactions between teachers and students in an educational project in Switzerland that was specifically designed to cater for the needs of unaccompanied refugee youth, I show how a project that is celebrated amongst practitioners as a best practice example for integration in fact creates an insurmountable number of new obstacles for the young people. I suggest that the ambiguous treatment of unaccompanied refugee youth as vulnerable victims in need of protection and integration on the one hand and as threats to the economic and cultural integrity of the Swiss 'national order of things' (Malkki, Liisa. 1995. "Refugees and Exile: From 'Refugee Studies' to the National Order of Things." Annual Review in Anthropology 24: 494-523) on the other, produces paradoxical dynamics whereby young people find themselves left outside whilst seemingly being 'in'.
In this article, we listen to young people having arrived in Sweden asunaccompanied minors, in relation to how they talk about andrelate to religion, belief and practice. There is still a lack ...ofresearch focusing on these young people’s own narratives andexperiences in their everyday life. This is particularly noteworthysince this category of young people, and especially those with a‘Muslim heritage’, have received increased attention both inresearch and in public discourse. For two years, we haveethnographically followed 20 young people with asylum status inSweden, who all arrived as unaccompanied minors and all camefrom areas of the world where Islam is the dominant religion. Theconclusions are that these young people both need to navigateand are affected by the current political and social contextquestioning Muslim people, and that this is the case regardless of their own personal relationship to Islam. Further, religious faithneeds to be related to its social and emotional embodiments,since it is here religious belief, shifts, changes and resistance, takeplace. Finally, we discuss how physical, temporal and socialdistance makes it possible to create other identities, and otherways of being religious or not.
This paper deals with the unaccompanied minor migrants' journey to Italy. In particular, it takes into account the minors arrived in Italy during the so-called summer of the refugee crisis. It aims ...to analyses the interrelation between the journey, the reasons to leave and how they affect the migration process. The present proposal illustrates the results of analysis of 21 interviews collected during a field survey carried out in 2016 by the author for the Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies of National Research Council (CNR-IRPPS), on behalf of the Italian Committee of Unicef - United Nation Children Found. The key objective of research was of detecting the minor's experience in relation to their migratory experience and to reconstruct their journey towards Italy which can be considered as true turning point for their biography.
The past decades have been characterized by sharp increases in the number of families, mainly from Central America's Northern Triangle, apprehended by US Border Patrol. In an effort to stem those ...flows, the Trump administration implemented a zero-tolerance policy (ZTP) aimed at criminally prosecuting all adults crossing the border without authorization, regardless of whether they traveled with children or sought asylum upon entry. Thousands of children were separated from their parents, reclassified as “unaccompanied,” and referred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Yet, to date, there has not been a careful evaluation of the impacts of the policy. We examine how ZTP affected the volume of unaccompanied minors, their time in ORR custody, and their likelihood of family reunification. We show that ZTP boosted the ranks of unaccompanied children through family separations by 48 percent, lowered their discharge rate from ORR's custody by 38 percent, and reduced their odds of family reunification by 49 percent. Given the growing number of families from the Northern Triangle seeking asylum in the United States, the documented mental health problems of separated children, and the rotating nature of immigration policies based on the administration in place, understanding the implications of policies like ZTP is imperative.
Young people arriving alone in the UK due to forced migration face significant hardships including, but not limited to, their history of experiences, current and future uncertainties, and cultural ...differences. This paper took a critical perspective of current dominant theories of refugee youth through in-depth exploration of lived experiences of coping. Following the authors' involvement in a community youth project and consultation, five young people took part in individual interviews. The participants were living in semi-independent accommodation in or near London, and were all male, while four identified as Muslim and one as Christian.
Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), a culturally relative understanding of coping was developed. These young people were found to be taking active roles in managing their lives in the context of extensive loss, and gaining independence through connection to others. Religious practices were important, with young people making sense of their experiences through worldviews shaped by religious beliefs. While religion was described predominantly in a positive and beneficial light, an area for further investigation is the experience of religious struggle, and how this may impact experiences and coping. Implications for support for young people both from services and in communities are suggested.
In 2014, the United States saw a greater than 50% increase in the number of unaccompanied children from Mexico and Central America arriving at the U.S./Mexico border, and unaccompanied children ...continue to migrate to the United States in consistent numbers. The dramatic increase of 2014 exposed gaps in policies aimed at supporting unaccompanied children as they await legal adjudication. This paper begins with a historic review of immigration policies in the United States aimed at supporting unaccompanied migrant children. An analytic review is provided of existing immigration policies in the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, highlighting the competing paradigms created by missions of security‐focused policy versus child‐centred policy. A close examination of the values that influenced policy development in this area is included, along with a discussion of how social work practice can infuse elements of social justice into immigration policy reform. Areas for future research to reform immigration policy focused on supporting unaccompanied undocumented minors are highlighted.
Drawing on ethnographic research at a legal aid organization, I analyse the legal brokerage of youths' asylum applications. As youths increasingly seek asylum alone, the US has adopted policy changes ...allowing them more favourable access to the asylum process than adults. Despite this opening, I argue that mediating youths' asylum claims remains challenging. First, youths have more difficulty sharing their stories than adults, and I identify three youth-specific interviewing strategies that legal intermediaries employ to elicit their accounts of forced migration. Second, I analyse how intermediaries edit these accounts to satisfy the asylum system's expectations about childhood, as well as forced migration, constructing narratives that distance youths from criminalized adult identities and depict them as innocent child-refugees, which configures the asylum process as a victimizing and infantilizing rite of reverse passage.
The increase of unaccompanied refugee minors in Sweden during the last decades is reflected in an increase in the proportion of unaccompanied male minors subjected to compulsory placements in secure ...care. Reports have shown that this group differed from other youths in secure care, but research on reasons for compulsory care is scarce regarding unaccompanied minors. In this article, unaccompanied male minors (UAMM) subjected to compulsory care, and whether these differ in relation to other youths, is investigated. We also examine variation within the group of UAMM. A general comparison shows that the grounds invoked for the compulsory placement of UAMM follow general gender patterns in certain respects, while in others they are more similar to the grounds described in relation to assessments of girls’ behaviour. The UAMM were more often placed in secure institutions. Three groups of UAMM were identified with relatively different problems, although a placement in secure care is the most common one regardless of problem profile. It is argued that the UAMM in some respects seem to be subjected to legal uncertainty with both harsher interventions than appropriate, and as a result, not receiving the care to which they are entitled.
Relying on ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews with undocumented Latinx young adults (18-31) who arrived in Los Angeles, California, as unaccompanied minors (11-17), this study examines ...immigrant youth workers' migration motives, their transnational ties and transnationalism's effect on their imagined futures. Findings show that, in the context of structural and community violence and poverty, Central American and Mexican youth migrate alone at young ages, in part to fulfill moral obligations to provide financial and emotional support within networks of care for the families they eventually leave behind. For many, left-behind family's needs increase as parents and siblings age into new life stages. Unmarried transnational youth workers are especially likely to shoulder moral obligations. This is while they transition into young adulthood in the US and weigh their own prospects for education and occupational mobility in Los Angeles or their home communities. Maintaining moral obligations established in adolescence throughout the transition into young adulthood can cause youth to reimagine futures to include the possibility of staying and other alternatives. This research offers important insights into the changing nature of transnational families, unaccompanied minors' coming of age, and the lives of migrant youth workers in the US.
Background and aim: We aimed to
assess rates and background factors of suicide among unaccompanied minors/youth (10-21 years
of age) seeking asylum in Sweden in 2017, and to compare these rates with ...rates in the
Swedish general population of the same age. Method: Data were collected and validated using
information from four governmental agencies and two nongovernmental organizations. Suicide
rates were calculated for 100,000 individuals. Results: The suicide rate was 51.2 per
100,000 among unaccompanied minors/youth, which compares to 6.1 per 100,000 in the host
population. Characteristics of asylum seekers who died by suicide were: male gender (100%)
and from Afghanistan (83%). Hanging was the predominant method (60%). Limitations: As
estimation of an exact population of asylum seekers is difficult; we overestimated the
number of individuals in the population of asylum seekers, resulting in an underestimation
of their suicide rates. Conclusion: The suicide rate in unaccompanied minors/youth seeking
asylum in 2017 in Sweden can be regarded as very high. Rapid implementation of suicide
preventive measures is warranted.
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