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

McLaughlin, Carly

doi:10.1080/1369183x.2017.1417027

Cited by 51 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 48 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Questions of the boys' authenticity 'as children' emerged quickly, and concerns for security that are present in general discourses around immigration and asylum resurfaced. This time the focus was on the physical bodies of the new arrivals whereby 'bodily markers of gender and race [detracted] from their perceived childness', their innocence, their vulnerability and their status as 'deserving' (McLaughlin, 2018(McLaughlin, : 1758. As stories emerged of 'fake children' and 'bogus asylum claims', the ideal images of UASC were challenged across the UK and they too were conceptualised in accordance with deeply ingrained anti-asylum narratives and a culture of disbelief.…”

Section: Representations Of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking and Refugee mentioning

confidence: 99%

Problematising separated children: a policy analysis of the UK ‘Safeguarding Strategy: Unaccompanied asylum seeking and refugee children’

Rigby

Fotopoulou

Rogers

et al. 2019

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While international and national policies, strategies and legislation have been designed to address the problems of forced displacement they also form a vital role in the discursive construction, governance and regulation of those who have been displaced. This paper critically interrogates the 'UK Safeguarding Strategy: Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking and Refugee Children' to highlight the ways in which unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC) are implicitly constructed as a policy problem. Drawing on Foucault, and using Bacchi's (2009) 'What's the problem represented to be'-'WPR'-a novel analytic method for studying problematisation within policy, this paper moves beyond the policy definition of an unaccompanied asylum seeking child to unearth characterisations that the policy ascribes to this group of children, and in particular the conceptual boundaries established for the way society thinks about UASC. These conceptual boundaries are divisive in nature, including suspicion around routes of arrival to the UK; constructions of risk; and questions about the responsbility of providing care and of being in need of care. The significance of the paper lies in its aim to use the examination of the discursive practices of the UK's Safeguarding Strategy as a starting point in order to open a broader discussion around how UASC are constructed and governed, nationally and internationally.

show abstract

Section: Representations Of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking and Refugee mentioning

confidence: 99%

Problematising separated children: a policy analysis of the UK ‘Safeguarding Strategy: Unaccompanied asylum seeking and refugee children’

Rigby

Fotopoulou

Rogers

et al. 2019

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The themes of the news concerning children focuses most often on conflicts, accidents, polemics, advice for parents, and education (Ponte 2007). When examining the research concerning children represented in the media, it is worth noticing that often the focus is on specific minority groups (see Jordan & Prendella 2019), such as subjects of gender-variant minorities (Kelso 2015) and victims and perpetrators of wars and catastrophes, including asylum-seekers and child soldiers (Denov 2012;McLaughlin 2018). This is explained by the fact that children are often considered to be the future of the nation: as subjects whose future should be protected (Moeller 2002;Ponte 2007).…”

Section: The Media As a Mediator Of Children's Viewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Barn nr. 3–4, 2019 – Temanummer: FNs barnekonvensjon

Nummeret¹

2019

Barn

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The overall goal of the special issue of BARN is to learn more about and critically reflect upon the policies and practices related to the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Nordic Region today. Children’s participation may challenge, and interests may differ and conflict with each other. Sometimes the child’s opinion is in conflict with what parents, teachers, social workers, child welfare teachers, medical doctors or politicians consider as best for the child. One may ask if the child’s perspective is sought after primarily in less important decisions, or if it is taken into account first and foremost when it corresponds with adults’ views. Expressions such as ‘child’s best interest’ and ‘child’s perspective’ have a great symbolic effect, in politics, law, academia, and practice. In total 11 papers inquire into the theme of children’s rights in the Nordic context with diverse theoretical, methodological and thematic approaches.

show abstract

Section: The Media As a Mediator Of Children's Viewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Representation of Children’s Views in Finnish Newspaper Media Across Three Decades

Mustola

Sevón

Alasuutari

2019

Barn

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) celebrates its thirtieth anniversary,it is relevant to explore how understandings of children’s rights have appeared duringthese three decades. As a key public actor in society, the media provides an interesting field inwhich to study the salience of children’s rights in societal and public discussions. Thus, in this article,we examine how children’s views are represented in «Helsingin Sanomat», the main nationalnewspaper of Finland, in 1997, 2007, and 2017. This examination is based on articles 12 and 13of the UNCRC, where it is stated that children have the right to express themselves in all mattersaffecting them. The data collection for this article was based on a systematic random samplingmethod of these issues in the years mentioned above, and a systematic content analysis was alsoapplied. The results show that, somewhat surprisingly, in 2017, less than a third of news storiesconcerning childhood and children reported children’s views on the matter, while in 2007, almosthalf of news stories reported on children’s views. Based on the data, it appears that macro-levelissues remained within adults’ sphere of discussion during these years.

show abstract

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

Cited by 51 publications

References 48 publications

Problematising separated children: a policy analysis of the UK ‘Safeguarding Strategy: Unaccompanied asylum seeking and refugee children’

Problematising separated children: a policy analysis of the UK ‘Safeguarding Strategy: Unaccompanied asylum seeking and refugee children’

Barn nr. 3–4, 2019 – Temanummer: FNs barnekonvensjon

Representation of Children’s Views in Finnish Newspaper Media Across Three Decades

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About