Vulnerability and agency: Beyond an irreconcilable dichotomy for social service providers working with young refugees in the UK

O’Higgins, Aoife

doi:10.1002/cad.20012

Cited by 29 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Overall, we can conclude that young refugees are on the intersections of child and adult, refugee and citizen of the host country, powerful and powerless, culturally specific and universal. Being aware of these binary notions, we can create a more nuanced picture of young refugees' lived experiences (O'Higgins 2012). In order to be up to date, we refreshed our search in all databases to include studies between June 2013 and February 2015.…”

Section: [Table 5]mentioning

confidence: 99%

Between power and powerlessness: a meta-ethnography of sources of resilience in young refugees

et al. 2015

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The results, from an ecological developmental perspective, stressed the interplay between protective and risk processes in the mental health of young refugees who had resettled in Western countries, and they emphasized the variability as well as the universality of resilience-promoting processes. Further research is needed to explore the cultural shape of resilience and the long-term consequences of war and migration on young refugees.

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Section: [Table 5]mentioning

confidence: 99%

Between power and powerlessness: a meta-ethnography of sources of resilience in young refugees

et al. 2015

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“…Modern states do not have the prerogative of distancing and dismissing refugee children from their legal and administrative provisions. While refugee children may not be well situated to make public claims of their rights in national immigration and legal systems, states are bound by their agreements as well as procedural justice to provide the legal and social support needed to assist children's progress through their systems (Crock 2013;Hanna 2019;O'Higgins 2012). Fresh moves to understand and employ children's natural agentic powers would sharpen and refocus attention on children's participation in social institutions (Tisdall 2017).…”

Section: The Crc's Provisionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dignity and respect are at stake, with social recognition of one's worth impacting on one's self-respect (Dillon 1992 Recognition of children's agency and potentialities has been implemented in several programs in Italy and other European countries that expressly address children's autonomy, choice, and genuine involvement in decisions about their lives and housing arrangements (Rania et al 2018). Young people are often critical of the interactive styles of the professionals involved in their care (Buccitelli and Denov 2019;O'Higgins 2012;Valibhoy et al 2017), so it is important for intervention programs to preserve and promote children's agency and dignity. Rania et al (2018), for instance, reported how one program arranging accommodation for unaccompanied minors was careful to include information and routines that would support their autonomy and strengthen relationships in the community.…”

Section: Participation In Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, their sociocultural embeddedness does not mean that children are passive objects at the whim of environmental forces. They are reflective agents primed to make choices and act on personal meanings (James 2009;O'Higgins 2012). In their being, they 'coact' reciprocally with other parts of the sociocultural environment (Gottlieb and Halpern 2002;Overton 2015), initiating and responding to present events and relationships.…”

Section: Introduction and Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Rights of Refugee Children and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Lawrence

Dodds

Kaplan

et al. 2019

Laws

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Refugee children are identified as rights-bearers by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), but their rights are not uniformly honored in the policies and practices of contemporary states. How the CRC's safeguards for refugee children's rights are honored depends partly on what it means to be 'a refugee child' and partly on how the claims of refugee children's rights are recognized, respected, and implemented in international and national legal and bureaucratic systems. We examine the CRC's affirmation of the rights of the child and analyze the CRC's articles in relation to the rights related to the life circumstances of refugee children and state responsibilities. Following an analysis of resistance to the CRC's mandates by contemporary states, we relate refugee children's rights to their refugee and developmental experiences and argue for repositioning refugee children into the center of protection dialogue and practice, internationally and nationally.interpret as a current refugee crisis and populist politics, contemporary states favor national well-being and border security over the well-being of refugee children. We examine evidence that states have worked to relegate refugee children to the margins of protection discourse and to the margins of society. There are persistent tendencies to either overlook refugee children as invisible or to deny that they are children or refugees. We argue for a radical repositioning of refugee children into the center of the protection dialogue and into the center of state policy and practice. Only such a central position will give refugee children the due respect that is responsive to the intermingling of their refugee and developmental experiences and support their rights to develop fully in the present and future as envisaged in the CRC Preamble. 2 Identifying a Refugee ChildThe concepts of 'child' and 'refugee' are not consistently defined across disciplines, although both concepts are critical structural markers for positioning this doubly vulnerable group as children distinct from adults and refugees distinct from citizens. How refugee children's rights are recognized and enacted in legal and immigration systems is largely dependent on how refugee children are defined as being children and refugees. A ChildThere is no generic or typical child. Children differ from each other in many ways, including the defining characteristic of being a child distinct from an adult. The adult/child distinction may seem simple-children and adults are distinguished by age, where age is a rough marker of different periods of the life cycle. The simplicity of this distinction, however, is deceptive. Age-lines and the boundaries of life periods are moveable and vary within and across individuals in relation to personal experience and the sociocultural context. Each child is bodily embedded in a specific historical and cultural time and place that give her age meaning. Consider, for instance, a girl who is 12 years of age in the early 19th, 20th, or 21st century. Not ...

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“…O, en el peor de los casos, lo hagan "mal acompañados" por adultos que no los asisten o los explotan (Quiroga y Soria, 2010, p.26;Senovilla, 2014, p.30). Estos escenarios y redes, tan heterogéneos, tienen difícil abordaje desde un marco legislativo rígido y sujeto a las fronteras estatales (O'Higgins, 2012;Bailleul y Senovilla, 2015, p.50).…”

Section: Un Movimiento Migratorio Globalunclassified

Retos de la acogida residencial a menores que migran solos: hacia un Trabajo Social transnacional

Monterde

2018

Cuad. Trab. Soc.

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Resumen. Desde inicios del siglo, los menores de edad que migran autónoma e irregularmente hacia Europa han sido acogidos por los recursos residenciales de los servicios de protección de la infancia, desbordando en algunos momentos, las plazas de acogida existentes, por lo que la regulación de esta migración se ha podido transformar, implícitamente, en una nueva función del Trabajo Social. La investigación sobre las prácticas de acogida en varios estados europeos y en una Comunidad Autónoma española aporta un análisis de las tensiones entre el control migratorio y la protección de los menores migrantes; así como sobre las posibilidades de intervención social en el nuevo marco transnacional. A través de las entrevistas a técnicos y menores, el tratamiento estadístico de expedientes de tutela y la observación en centros formativos y de acogida, se señalan las prácticas de filtrado en la asignación de recursos residenciales a los menores que migran solos, como una estrategia ajena a las soluciones duraderas y al interés superior de los menores. Desde la perspectiva de esta experiencia investigadora internacional, concluimos que las fases del ciclo migratorio de menores no acompañados a Europa han devenido un fenómeno estable, en el que las administraciones locales responsables de la protección y las redes transnacionales de los menores y sus familias se han adaptado mutuamente. Por lo que las experiencias sureuropeas de Trabajo Social con los países de origen y de diversificación de modelos de acogida en destino pueden ser transferidas a otros estados europeos que comienzan a recibir este flujo migratorio actualmente. Palabras clave: Protección de la infancia; migración; menores no acompañados; acogimiento residencial; interés superior del menor.[en] Challenges of residential care for unaccompanied migrant minors: toward transnational social work Abstract. From the turn of the century, minors who have autonomously and irregularly migrated to Europe have been cared for with residential resources from child protection services, their numbers at times exceeding the limited number of available care places. Regulating this migration has hence implicitly become a new function of social work. Research into residential care practices in various European States and in a Spanish Autonomous Community has contributed an analysis of the tensions between migratory control and the protection of minor migrants, and of the opportunities for social intervention within the new transnational framework. This study uses interviews with experts and minors, statistical analysis of care records and observation in education and residential care centres to identify filtering practices in the allocation of residential resources to unaccompanied migrant minors as a strategy that fails to offer long-term solutions or to protect the best interest of the minors. From the perspective of this international research experience, we conclude that the phases of the migratory cycle for unaccompanied minors coming to Europe have become a stable phenomeno...

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Vulnerability and agency: Beyond an irreconcilable dichotomy for social service providers working with young refugees in the UK

Cited by 29 publications

References 12 publications

Between power and powerlessness: a meta-ethnography of sources of resilience in young refugees

Between power and powerlessness: a meta-ethnography of sources of resilience in young refugees

The Rights of Refugee Children and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Retos de la acogida residencial a menores que migran solos: hacia un Trabajo Social transnacional

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