Governing adolescent mobility: The elusive role of children’s rights principles in contemporary migration practice

Abstract

Child migration is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon spanning continents, age groups, and family patterns governed by two intersecting but not overlapping governance regimes. One of these two regimes is the migration regime, designed to uphold sovereign state borders and manage migration flows. The other is the child rights regime, a governance framework that privileges the protection of the best interests of the child. This article focuses on the mobility of adolescents, their needs, their challenges, and the implications of the complex and sometimes contradictory governance regimes impinging on these youthful migrations.

Unaccompanied Minors in Greece and Italy: An Exploration of the Challenges for Social Work within Tighter Immigration and Resource Constraints in Pandemic Times

“…Schumacher et al (2019, p. 4) report that "even though detention of migrant children is considered to contradict the best interests of the child principle, it is still applied in a number of EU Member States". With growing unease about immigration and a framework of nativist populism, the ever-changing immigration laws and neo-liberal policies are said to be resulting in widespread confusion and paralysis among policymakers and practitioners, to the detriment of UAMs (Bhabha 2002(Bhabha , 2014(Bhabha , 2019Hammarberg 2010;Humphris and Sigona 2019).…”

Empowered inclusion: theorizing global justice for children and youth

“…A fundamental problem of the injustices facing young migrants is that many in practice lack access to basic resources such as education, health, security and political representation (Bhabha, 2009;Bhabha et al, 2018;Josefsson, 2017bJosefsson, , 2019. The precarious situation of young migrants has in the last decade led to several global efforts to address and find governance structures for the protection of rights for this group (Bhabha, 2019). Most recently, the 2018 UN Global Compacts on Migration (GCM) have sought to ensure 'a safe, orderly and regulated migration' which specifically 'upholds the principle of the best interests of the child at all times, as a primary consideration in all situations concerning children in the context of international migration' (A/CONF.231/3, Art 15(h)).…”

“…Nevertheless, despite decades of efforts to mainstream and implement rights of young migrants through policy work and governance institutions, the simultaneous enforcement of restrictive immigration politics by recipient states, primarly democracies of the Global North, has undercut the possibility of realizing rights of young migrants (Bhabha, 2009(Bhabha, , 2019Bhabha et al, 2018;Josefsson, 2017b;Sedmak et al, 2018;Smyth, 2014). Scholarship has shown how child rights principles such as the best interest principle not only have poor normative force in asylum procedures, but moreover can be interpreted and used by migration authorities and courts in such a way as to enforce and legitimize deportations in the name of protection or family reunification (Anderson, 2012;Josefsson, 2017a, Lind, 2019, Sedmak et al, 2019.…”

Distinctive ethical challenges in qualitative research with migrant children

“…Moreover, it demonstrates that researchers need to be aware that migrant children are required to “straddle and balance the different experiences and expectations placed on children and childhood in the different countries with which they are associated” (Redmond, 2003, p. 18). These moral expectations are further reflected in global legislation concerning children, and on local applications of this, with migrant children facing conflicting systems of governance (Bhabha, 2019).…”

“…To address this limitation, the author spent the study's first year reflecting on the research questions foundations, evaluating different aspects of the research regarding his own standing. This was done through self-reflection and reflection upon other work in the field, including on representations of migrant children and on the field's evolution through the eyes of scholarly lenses (Bhabha, 2019). This included wider scholarship on ethics with children in the qualitative sphere (Thomas and O'Kane, 1998).…”