Seeking Asylum Alone: Unaccompanied and Separated Children and Refugee Protection in the U.S.

Abstract

Among the scholars working on problems of today's children is Jacqueline Bhabha, an expert in international law, migration, and children's rights, who, with Susan Schmidt, has just completed a study comparing the (often harrowing) experiences in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, of children who, increasingly, find themselves applying for asylum alone. This study has growing significance in the post 9/11 world as developed countries erect higher and higher barriers in the way of asylum seekers and as asylum seekers increasingly include children traveling on their own.-M.S.

‘They don’t look like children’: child asylum-seekers, the Dubs amendment and the politics of childhood

“…It also shows just how heavily politicised the issue of age assessment has become (Kvittingen 2010). For although we could easily dismiss the response to the Dubs children as typical only of the anti-immigration discourse of right-wing newspapers, in reality many child asylum-seekers are subjected to suspicion about their age upon entering Britain, and age-assessment disputes are on the rise (see Bhaba and Finch 2006;Crawley 2007). Indeed, the rhetoric of adults posing as children is also a feature of government documents on the issue of age assessment (Crawley 2007, 24-25), and it is government policy to judge the age of children based on their appearance and demeanour and to detain anyone who appears to be significantly over 18 (Refugee Council 2017).…”

“…Indeed, the rhetoric of adults posing as children is also a feature of government documents on the issue of age assessment (Crawley 2007, 24-25), and it is government policy to judge the age of children based on their appearance and demeanour and to detain anyone who appears to be significantly over 18 (Refugee Council 2017). As legal scholars such as Crawley (2007) and Jacqueline Bhaba (2006) have demonstrated, this culture of disbelief exposes the precarity of childhood as a category in its encounter with the politics of border control and its failure to offer genuine protection to children in the framework of Britain's punitive asylum system. 15 In the context of asylum, psychological assessments and bio-metric technologies serve to determine who passes for a child and who does not.…”

Refugees and Asylum Seekers

“…As in other industrialised countries, a central distinction is drawn between the 'genuine' refugees the country has a long and proud history of supporting, and those who are not genuine and variously described as illegals, illegal immigrants, undocumented migrants, irregular migrants or bogus asylum seekers. The popular conflation of asylum seeking with associations of evasiveness and criminality and the consequent 'culture of mistrust' has done much to undermine the legitimate efforts of those who are genuinely seeking escape from persecution (Bhabha and Finch, 2006).…”

“…The implications of juxtaposed controls have been examined by Bhabha and Finch (2006) in the context of their report on separated children in the UK. They make the following general comment on the controls followed by an expression of specific concerns in relation to separated children:…”

Le rôle du réseau social et familial dans l’expérience migratoire des jeunes migrants isolés

“…Parallèlement à une approche du phénomène appréhendée sous l'angle des politiques publiques et des institutions (Bhabha, 2004 †;Bhabha et Finch, 2006 †;Senovilla Hernandez, 2007), différentes recher ches s'attachent depuis quelques années à analyser les parcours de ces jeunes qualifiés de « †mineurs étrangers isolés †» (Étiem -ble, 2002 †;Jovelin, 2003 †;Mai, 2007 †;Giovanetti, 2008 †;Duvivier, 2008). Croisant le plus souvent le discours des mineurs avec celui des professionnels de l'enfance et des associations, ces travaux mettent en évidence la complexité des trajectoires migratoires et contribuent à déconstruire les catégo-ries lisses et homogénéisantes usitées par les pouvoirs publics pour caractériser cette population.…”