Unaccompanied Migrant Children and Youth: Navigating Relational Borderlands

Aitken, Stuart; Swanson, Kate; Kennedy, Elizabeth G.

doi:10.1057/9781137326317_13

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Recognising the dearth of scholarship on this group of children, increasing attention has been paid to their bordering experiences (see Spyrou & Christou, for review and Huijsmans, ). So far, the major focus of these nascent studies has been on the legal vulnerability, such as human trafficking and forced migration, and the victimisation of these bordering youth (Hopkins & Hill, ), as seen in the recent work on undocumented labour (Huijsmans & Baker, ), refugees (Aitken, Swanson, & Kennedy, ; Ensor, ), criminals (Basu, ), and youths as targets of institutional violence during border inspection (Bejarano, ). A salient theme that emerges from these studies is the ramifications of (il)legality of status on the lives of bordering and border‐crossing youth.…”

Section: Children In Migration and Border Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequent border‐crossing children and cultural membership

Chiu

Choi

2018

Population Space and Place

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Migration studies typically conceptualise children as either “stayers” or “movers.” However, such binary conceptualisation is at odds with the experiences of children who cross borders frequently. Using the case of children with Hong Kong right of abode who live in southern China but commute daily to Hong Kong to pursue education, this paper examines the structural and family factors leading to this form of frequent border crossing and identifies 4 major strategies that mothers of these children use to help them overcome the barriers to acculturation. These strategies underscore the salience of the rhetoric of cultural membership as symbolic boundaries that delegitimise claims to citizenship of the perceived outsiders and the situated agency of parents in maximising the life chances of their children by helping them permeate the rigid symbolic boundary, and overcome identity ambivalence associated with their simultaneous existence in 2 politically and socially divided territories.

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Section: Children In Migration and Border Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequent border‐crossing children and cultural membership

Chiu

Choi

2018

Population Space and Place

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“…When Far from home, far from safe 5 violence, be it from non-state armed actors, their own families or government authorities, becomes so commonplace as to permeate all of a child's activities, many will flee their countries of origin to escape the violence that permeates their lives (Kennedy 2014; UNHCR 2014a). However, even as they travel to safe haven, children experience violence along the way, from human smugglers, militarized borders and discriminatory immigration policies (Aiken et al 2014; Human Rights Watch 2015).…”

Section: Vulnerability Of Minor Refugeesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Far from Home, Far from Safe: State Violence against Unaccompanied Refugee Children Seeking Asylum in Kenya

Raddatz

Kerby

2020

Journal of Refugee Studies

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“…He was a 10-year-old fourth grader living with his grandparents in Michoacán, Mexico, before being sent alone to the United States, joining tens of thousands of Latino minors who controversially crossed, unaccompanied and undocumented, into the United States during 2014 (Olson, 2014). This passage has been demonstrated to be both extremely distressing and risky (Aitken, Swanson, & Kennedy, 2014). Like most unaccompanied minors below age 12 (López Castro, 2007), Juan Daniel came to reunite with his parents and U.S.-born younger siblings.…”

Section: Research Questions Participants Data and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Migrant Students’ Emergent Conscientization Through Critical, Socioculturally Responsive Literacy Pedagogy

Stevenson

Beck

2016

Journal of Literacy Research

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This article analyzes data from a summer literacy program for intermediate and middlelevel children of migrant farmworkers. The program was grounded in a sociocultural perspective on literacy, stressing the importance of interaction and collaboration within socioculturally responsive pedagogy, using enabling literature to empower students. Adaptations of readers' and writers' workshop methods, emphasizing the significance of valuing students' individual responses, were used throughout. The students were presented with a documentary, young adult novels, and more than two dozen children's picture storybooks representing the lives of migrant farmworkers. Then, using their own responses to these enabling mentor texts as scaffolding, the students collaborated to create illustrated narratives about growing up as migrants. The program provided a safe space that encouraged migrant students to express their experiences and concerns-normally silenced in classrooms-during literacy tasks and empowered them to ask for support. The program demonstrated the benefits of combining socioculturally responsive critical literacy pedagogy with enabling instructional materials in the development of emergent conscientization among the students. Finally, this article shows how the migrant students' perspectives and experiences can inform and challenge teachers, citizens, and policy makers to address the systemic injustices in the lives of migrant children.

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Unaccompanied Migrant Children and Youth: Navigating Relational Borderlands

Cited by 6 publications

References 25 publications

Frequent border‐crossing children and cultural membership

Frequent border‐crossing children and cultural membership

Far from Home, Far from Safe: State Violence against Unaccompanied Refugee Children Seeking Asylum in Kenya

Migrant Students’ Emergent Conscientization Through Critical, Socioculturally Responsive Literacy Pedagogy

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