Children And Migration

Providing a comprehensive analysis of the increasingly common phenomenon of child migration, this volume examines the experiences of children in a wide variety of migratory circumstances including economic child migrants, transnational students, trafficked, stateless, fostered, unaccompanied and undocumented children.

The first comprehensive look at the global dilemma of child migration Why, despite massive public concern, is child trafficking on the rise? Why are unaccompanied migrant children living on the streets and routinely threatened with deportation to their countries of origin? Why do so many young refugees of war-ravaged and failed states end up warehoused in camps, victimized by the sex trade, or enlisted as child soldiers? This book provides the first comprehensive account of the widespread but neglected global phenomenon of child migration, exploring the complex challenges facing children and adolescents who move to join their families, those who are moved to be exploited, and those who move simply to survive. Spanning several continents and drawing on the stories of young migrants, Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age provides a comprehensive account of the widespread and growing but neglected global phenomenon of child migration and child trafficking. It looks at the often-insurmountable obstacles we place in the paths of adolescents fleeing war, exploitation, or destitution; the contradictory elements in our approach to international adoption; and the limited support we give to young people brutalized as child soldiers. Part history, part in-depth legal and political analysis, this powerful book challenges the prevailing wisdom that widespread protection failures are caused by our lack of awareness of the problems these children face, arguing instead that our societies have a deep-seated ambivalence to migrant children—one we need to address head-on. Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age offers a road map for doing just that, and makes a compelling and courageous case for an international ethics of children's human rights.

A timely interdisciplinary, comparative and historical perspective on African childhood migration that draws on the experience of children themselves to look at where, why and how they move - within and beyond the continent - andthe impact of African child migration globally.

Millions of children are on the move, both within and between countries, with or without their parents. The conditions under which movement takes place are often treacherous, putting migrant children, especially unaccompanied and separated children, at an increased risk of economic or sexual exploitation, abuse, neglect and violence. Policy responses to protect and support these migrant children are often fragmented and inconsistent and while children on the move have become a recognised part of today's global and mixed migration flows they are still largely invisible in debates on both child protection and migration.

The scope and complexity of child migration have only recently emerged as a critical factors in global migration. This volume assembles for the first time a richly interdisciplinary body of work, drawing on contributions from renowned scholars, eminent practitioners and prominent civil society advocates from across the globe and from a wide range of different mobility contexts. Their invaluable pedagogical tools and research documents demonstrate the urgency and breadth of this important new aspect of international human mobility in our global age.

This book focuses on the neglected yet critical issue of how the global migration of millions of parents as low-waged migrant workers impacts the rights of their children under international human rights law. The work provides a systematic analysis and critique of how the restrictive features of policies governing temporary labour migration interfere with provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child that protect the child-parent relationship and parental role in children’s lives. Combining social and legal research, it identifies both potential harms to children’s well-being caused by prolonged child-parent separation and State duties to protect this relationship, which is deliberately disrupted by temporary labour migration policies. The book boldly argues that States benefitting from the labour of migrant workers share responsibility under international human rights law to mitigate harms to the children of these workers, including by supporting effective measures to maintain transnational child-parent relationships. It identifies measures to incorporate children’s best interests into temporary labour migration policies, offering ways to reduce interferences with children’s family rights. This book fills a gap that emerges at the intersection of child rights studies, migration research and existing literature on the purported nexus between labour migration and international development. It will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policymakers working in these areas. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003028000, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Unaccompanied minor migrants are underage migrants, who for various reasons leave their country and are separated from their parents or legal/customary guardians. Some of them live entirely by themselves, while others join their relatives or other adults in a foreign country. The concept of the best interests of a child is widely applied in international, national legal documents and several guidelines and often pertains to unaccompanied minor migrants given that they are separated from parents, who are not able to exercise their basic parental responsibilities. This book takes an in-depth look at the issues surrounding the best interests of the child in relation to unaccompanied minor migrants drawing on social, legal and political sciences in order to understand children’s rights not only as a matter of positive law but mainly as a social practice depending on personal biographies, community histories and social relations of power. The book tackles the interpretation of the rights of the child and the best interests principle in the case of unaccompanied minor migrants in Europe at political, legal and practical levels. In its first part the book considers theoretical aspects of children’s rights and the best interests of the child in relation to unaccompanied minor migrants. Adopting a critical approach to the implementation of the Convention of Rights of a Child authors nevertheless confirm its relevance for protecting minor migrants’ rights in practice. Authors deconstruct power relations residing within the discourses of children’s rights and best interests, demonstrating that these rights are constructed and decided upon by those in power who make decisions on behalf of those who do not possess authority. Authors further on explore normative and methodological aspects of Article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of a Child and its relevance for asylum and migration legislation. The second part of the book goes on to examine the actual legal framework related to unaccompanied minor migrants and implementation of children’s’ rights and their best interests in the reception, protection, asylum and return procedures. The case studies are based on from the empirical research, on interviews with key experts and unaccompanied minor migrants in Austria, France, Slovenia and United Kingdom. Examining age assessment procedures, unaccompanied minors’ survivals strategies and their everyday life in reception centres the contributors point to the discrepancy between the states’ obligations to take the best interest of the child into account when dealing with unaccompanied minor migrants, and the lack of formal procedures of best interest determination in practice. The chapters expose weaknesses and failures of institutionalized systems in selected European countries in dealing with unaccompanied children and young people on the move.

"With an ethnographer's ear and a social critic's lens, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas illuminates the care deficit of the immigrant second generation, the children of transnational Filipino families left behind by mothers and fathers who labor in the global economy."--Eileen Boris, University of California, Santa Barbara