300653 Migration strategies of children and youth: trauma, resilience & affective economies (S) (WiSe 2021/2022)

Children and youth cross international borders together with their families or on their own. The reasons for leaving their home countries are often similar to those of adult migrants. Yet, the challenges that children and youth encounter along the way can be very different from adult migrants, depending of course on the constellation of their fellow travellers, the routes and the financial opportunities they can afford. Over the last decade, the autonomous migration of children and youth has become particularly visible, e.g. the number of asylum applications by unaccompanied children in the EU increased from 11,690 in 2011 to 63,250 in 2016.
Conflict-induced migration is understood as traumatic and deemed to have long-term impacts on children’s developments. While independently migrating children and youth are not an entirely new phenomenon, their increased presence has challenged accepted ideas about child-hood and ‘best interests’ held by policymakers and academics. Within the contemporary dis-course on refugees and deservingness, their presence has spurred the politicization of childhood as well as conflicting perceptions of minors as either “criminal alien” or “deserving minors”.
This course directs attention to the cross-border movements of children and youth to under-stand their motivations, facilitations and adjustments in various places. In addition, this course will discuss how states of origin and destination states respond to the growing numbers of underage migrants, not least as states have special obligations towards children and particularly unaccompanied minors. While the first part of the course will concentrate on readings and in-class discussions, in the second part of the course students will conduct their own research projects in small group and present their findings in the final session.

Bibliography

Suggested readings
Allsopp, J. & Chase, E. 2017. Best Interests, Durable Solutions and Belonging: Policy Dis-courses Shaping the Futures of Unaccompanied Migrant and Refugee Minors Coming of Age in Europe. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45, 293-311.
Bhabha, J. 2014. Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age, Princeton, Nj, Prince-ton University Press.
Ensor, M. And E. Gozdziak. 2010. Children and Migration: At the Crossroads of Resiliency and Vulnerability. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hedlund, D. & Cederborg, A.-C. 2015. Legislators’ Perceptions of Unaccompanied Children Seeking Asylum. International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care, 11, 239-252.
Heidbrink, L. 2014. Migrant Youth, Transnational Families, and the State: Care and Con-tested Interests, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press.
Herz, M. 2019. ‘Becoming’ A Possible Threat: Masculinity, Culture and Questioning Among Unaccompanied Young Men in Sweden. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 26, 431-449.
Lidén, H. & Vitus, K. 2010. The Status of The Asylum-Seeking Child in Norway And Den-mark: Comparing Discourses, Politics and Practices. Journal of Refugee Studies, 23, 62-81.
Lems, A., Oester, K. & Strasser, S. 2020. Children of the crisis: ethnographic perspectives on unaccompanied refugee youth in and en route to Europe. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46, 315-335.
Pruitt, L., Berents, H. & Munro, G. 2018. Gender And Age In The Construction Of Male Youth In The European ‘Migration Crisis’. Signs: Journal Of Women And Culture In Society.
Wernesjö, U. 2020. Across the Threshold: Negotiations of Deservingness Among Unaccom-panied Young Refugees in Sweden. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46, 389-404.