Transnational Migration and Childhood

Naomi Tyrrell, Allen White, Caitriona Ni Laoire, Fina Carpena Mendez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135716714
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

This book challenges the adult-centric tendencies of migration research and policy which often overlooks children and young people's own experiences of migration. A wide range of international contributors provide careful analysis of the situations of children in contemporary transnational migratory contexts in the Global North and South.

Drawing on studies with migrant children and young people in a variety of situations, Transnational Migration and Childhood makes a unique contribution to furthering our understandings of transnational childhoods. It explores the laws and policies that govern children and young people's experiences of transnational migration whilst foregrounding their own accounts of migration and transnationalism. The book shifts our attention away from dominant discourses of migrant children as 'victims', towards the development of broader conceptualisations of transnational migration and childhood. It incorporates different migratory flows, a variety of sending and receiving contexts, and child-centred perspectives. Transnational Migration and Childhood will be of interest to researchers and policy makers working in the fields of migration, asylum, and childhood at local, national, and transnational scales.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Children’s Roles in Transnational Migration

Allen White, Caitríona Ní Laoire, Naomi Tyrrell and Fina Carpena-Méndez

There are important gaps in our knowledge about children who migrate. Even in societies which employ technologically sophisticated systems for monitoring and measuring migration, data on child migrants are incomplete and focused on specific groups of vulnerable children and young people. The lack of data and research on processes underpinning child migration and on the experiences of children who migrate are rooted in hegemonic Westernised assumptions about, and constructions of, childhood, family migration, and migration in general. Migrant children are represented as passive, needy and different; their accounts of themselves and their lives are silenced through adultist discourses about migration decision-making and experiences. The papers in this special edition of JEMS challenge these constructions of migrant children by focusing on the children’s experiences in a multiplicity of migratory contexts. Presented first at the international conference ‘Children and Migration: Identities, Mobilities, Belonging’ organised by the Marie Curie Migrant Children Project at University College Cork, Ireland, in April 2008, the papers showcase emerging research which challenges the adult-centric nature of migration research and policy.

Introduction

It is traditional to introduce a study or series of papers about transnational migration with some kind of statistical statement about the scale or changing nature of global migration flows. We do not propose to begin in this vein in part because, as Watters (2008) points out, the problems and inconsistencies encountered in any enumeration of migration require the careful contextualisation of these data, which space precludes. Moreover, and more importantly in light of the subject of this special issue of JEMS, migration research and policy tend to be adult-centric and often overlook the presence of children and young people in migratory flows. Despite advanced systems for recording and measuring migration, modern industrialised nations can provide, at best, only broad estimates of the numbers of child migrants. These estimates have to take into account differences in how data are collected in the various national contexts and the difficulties inherent in assessing levels of undocumented (and therefore unrecorded) migrations, all within a context in which little attempt is made to distinguish between adults and children. For example, published IOM international migration statistics do not include a breakdown by age (except in the case of trafficked persons). The OECD’s published statistics on immigrants in OECD countries do provide a breakdown by age but, for some reason, include only immigrants aged 15 +. The impetus for collecting data on child migration tends to come from organisations with an interest in children’s welfare and rights rather than those with an interest in population and migration. A further complicating factor for migrant children and youth is that the principal international agencies and organisations that do collect and monitor data on international child migration do this in order to reflect specific policy concerns and legal frameworks (Whitehead and Hashim 2005). Thus certain child migrants—such as trafficked children or unaccompanied minors seeking asylum—currently receive more attention than others.

Given these issues, how do we know when children migrate across international borders and what their experiences are? Some information is available about certain groups of migrant children and young people, such as those mentioned above, and we know that many children move to host societies in the global North as part of family units. However, research on family migration tends to overlook children’s perspectives and to construct them as passive dependents (for example, Cooke 2008; Reese 2001; Rodríguez García 2006). Their invisibility in the context of family migration research is reflected in a broader denial of the important roles that children play in transnational migration more generally. While it is certainly not accurate to claim that child migration has been completely overlooked in research and policy, we argue that the ways in which it is approached tend to be characterised by a number of selectivities and invisibilities. Firstly, there is a tendency to emphasise migrant children’s neediness and difference. This means that migrant children’s agency and subjectivities are denied. This is reflected in the predominance of research and policy on particularly vulnerable groups such as refugee, asylum-seeker, trafficked or separated children (see Spicer 2008), much of which is focused on the needs of these children in global-North host-society contexts (for example, Entorf and Lauk 2008; Marques et al. 2007; Szilassy and Árendás 2007). Children who move as members of labour-migrant families or who disrupt accepted concepts of child vulnerability are much less frequently the subject of concern. Secondly, there is a focus on their ‘integration’ (or lack of) in the host-society context (for example, Crul and Vermeulen 2003; Penn and Lambert 2009), rather than on their experiences as transnational migrants—reflected in a paucity of research which focuses on first-generation migrant children (as opposed to second- or third-generation)—and in a tendency to focus on children’s futures as adults rather than on their experiences as children who migrate in the here and now.

The articles in this special issue of JEMS move current discussions on children and migration forward by focusing on the direct experiences of first-generation migrant children and young people in a plethora of migratory contexts. In doing this, they challenge the adult-centrism of current debates concerning migration. This adult-centrism is problematic because it means that the active roles and experiences of migrant children and youth are overlooked, resulting in only partial understandings of migration processes and decision-making, and migrants’ experiences (see also Dobson 2009). In addition, when migrant children and youth are the subjects of research it is often in a fragmented fashion, related to the lack of child-centredness in migration research and in migration discourses. This is important because the ways in which nation-states, societies and international organisations understand and shape policies towards migrant children and youth reflect particular assumptions about youth, childhood, family and migration itself.

Inherent assumptions about the nature of childhood contribute to the ways in which migrant children are constructed in much existing research. It has been argued that, in Western society, childhood is conceptualised as a time of innocence, vulnerability and dependence, contributing to essentialised notions of ideal innocent childhoods and of the child as a being in need of protection (Holloway and Valentine 2000; James et al. 1998; Jenks 1996). Indeed, according to Horton (2008), such Western notions are being increasingly globalised. Underlying this is the belief that childhood is a biologically determined stage on the path to adulthood, and that children are constantly ‘adults-in-the-making’ rather than social beings in their own right (James and Prout 1990). This means that children have often been perceived as incompetent research participants, resulting in a predominance of research on, and not with, children. Allowing adults to speak for children reproduces uni-dimensional representations of children as passive, vulnerable and lacking in social agency. Fass (2005) argues that ideal Western childhoods have been constructed as stable and associated with residential fixity, with the assumption that migration is not something that children do or, if they do, that it has negative consequences. This is reflected in the predominance of accounts of migrant children as victims within migratory systems, subject to socio-economic inequalities, and struggling to cope with conflicting identities and values (Knörr 2005). Media portrayals reproduce such accounts by constructing children of immigrant families as ‘innocent victims of globalization’ (Horton 2008: 929). Therefore children who move have tended to be constructed in Western society in ways which deny both their own agency and subjectivity and the highly differentiated nature of child migration.

These inadequate Westernised concepts intersect with hegemonic concepts of migration to construct migrant children in particular ways. Family migration research has shifted from a reliance on the traditional model of the ‘tied migrant’ to analysis of the gendered nature of family migration (Bailey and Boyle 2004; Cooke 2008; Smith 2004), thus recognising the complexity of family migration processes and the internal power dynamics within families. However, while the role of gender dynamics in family migration is now recognised, the role of children still tends to be overlooked in much research. Recent developments in family migration research (for example, Bailey and Boyle 2004; Cooke 2008) have emphasised the need to explore the dynamics of household or family relations, but are surprisingly silent on the involvement of children in them. Their role is seen to be significant mainly in terms of their presence within families who migrate, the timing of childbirth events (Cooke 2008) and as motivations for female migration (as argued by Horton 2008). In short, having children (or not) is recognised as influential in adult migration decisions, but children’s migration within families is not often a topic of interest in its own right. As a result, there is a tendency to construct children who migrate within families as passive dependents. As Orellana et al. (2001: 578) argue, children have been portrayed as ‘burdens weighing down on otherwise mobile adults’, as a form of ‘luggage’ in family migration. This denies children’s agency and overlooks the diverse roles played by children in family migration processes. Research shows that children can also be active in family migration decision-making processes (Ackers 2000; Bushin 2009) and can be cultural mediators between adult family members and host societies (de Block and Buckingham 2007; Orellana 2001). In addition, an emerging literature on transnational families highlights the role of intergenerational relations and separations in migration, although it tends to focus on ‘adult children’ (for example, Olwig 1999; Potter and Phillips 2006), children ‘left behind’ (Parreñas 2005) or second-generation children (Crul and Vermeulen 2003; Worbs 2003). Therefore research has begun to deconstruct notions of migrant families as homogeneous units, and reveal the ways in which family ties and power dynamics can operate across national borders.

Our theoretical understandings of international migration are frequently dominated by state-centred discourses and knowledge. Migrants’ lives are constituted through biographies of mobility and movement which state agencies and bureaucracies in the global North struggle to manage and control through specific immigration and citizenship policies and regimes. Migrant children are particularly disadvantaged through these processes, not because they live more mobile lives than other migrants, but because their mobilities are frequently invisible in state-centred migration discourses. This is partly related to the dominance of economic-rational approaches to migration which tend to construct the migrant as an adult paid worker (Ackers and Stalford 2004). Contemporary capitalist states in the global North facilitate certain forms of labour immigration (such as internal EU migration, professional migration, or specific forms of low-skilled labour migration), whilst simultaneously working to limit and control other kinds of labour and non-labour immigration (such as general low-skilled and undocumented migration, asylum-seeking and family reunification). In both facilitating and limiting the migration of these groups of people, migrant-receiving states utilise adult-centric understandings of migration flows. Thus labour migration is understood in terms of adult labour migrants filling specific gaps in the labour market. Within these flows, independent child-migrant workers are rendered statistically invisible (Whitehead and Hashim 2005), and children are assumed to be homogenous, passive and dependent family members of adult labour migrants. Migrant children are also inadequately conceptualised within the migratory flows which Western states seek to limit. State policies towards child asylum-seekers are based upon limited conceptualisations of childhood and on particular adultist concepts of children’s rights (Crawley 2006, 2009). For example, children often are understood to be passive dependents in family reunification schemes or victims of adult traffickers in undocumented migration, although the circumstances in which children participate in these flows are much more diverse than this suggests.

Through their participation in migratory flows, migrant children and youth disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions about both childhood and migration and, as a result, are rendered problematic and out of place. This is, to a degree, the result of the intersection of dominant understandings concerning migration, families and childhood, leading to inadequate, partial and fragmented conceptualisations of children who migrate. In short, migration is either assumed to be something that adults do or, if it does involve children, is regarded to be important first and foremost within the context of adulthood. It is apparent that children’s mobilities give rise to anxieties on the part of Western societies and governments, reflected in attention being directed primarily to particular and exceptional groups of vulnerable and needy migrant children who are usually understood as being ‘alone’. While it is important to do this, the danger is that other groups of migrant children are overlooked.

Towards Child-Inclusive Migration Research

A growing number of researchers are beginning to challenge adultism in migration studies by highlighting children’s roles and experiences in numerous migratory processes and circumstances. Fass (2005) sets the debate in historical context by arguing that child migration is not a new phenomenon and refers to the role of child labour in mass migrations during the colonial era. An emerging body of contemporary research highlights the active involvement of children and young people in their own and their families’ migration processes (for example, Bhabha 2008; Bushin 2009; de Block and Buckingham 2007; Hess and Shandy 2008; Hopkins and Hill 2008; Orellana et al. 2001; van Blerk and Ansell 2006). Furthermore, it is increasingly recognised that the socio-cultural negotiations and migration experiences of children and young people are worthy of research in their own right, as reflected in burgeoning research in a plethora of contexts (for example, Christopoulou and De Leeuw 2005; Harinen et al. 2005; Knörr 2005; Ní Laoire et al. 2010, 2011; Sporton et al. 2006; Suárez-Orozco et al. 2008; Valentine et al. 2009; Watters 2008). In addition, there is evidence of a growing demand among policy-makers and practitioners for improved knowledge on international child migration and its governance (see Crawley 2006; UNICEF 2009; Whitehead and Hashim 2005).

Momentum is building within this growing body of research, as reflected in several recent interdisciplinary conferences and workshops, including the conference from which this collection emerged, ‘Children and Migration: Identities, Mobilities, Belongings,’ organised by the Marie Curie Migrant Children Project in Cork (April 2008). The Cork conference brought together 140 researchers and practitioners from 23 countries, with more than 80 papers presented on the connections between childhood and migration. This special issue represents a small selection of these papers, showcasing emerging research which challenges the adult-centric nature of migration research and policy. The articles approach this topic from different disciplinary perspectives, reflecting a general convergence of thought around the need to foreground the positions and experiences of children in migration. The focus is primarily on child migration to host societies in the global North, given the ways in which discourses and policies around migration and childhood there often render migrant children invisible, although a useful comparative Southern perspective is provided in the paper by Doná and Veale. Elsewhere, research on child migration which focuses on the global South contributes alternative perspectives which unsettle Western assumptions (for example, Beazley 2000; Carpena-Méndez 2006; Whitehead et al. 2007). However, our concern here is to deconstruct dominant assumptions about migrant children’s lives in the global North and the impl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Editors’ Note
• 1. Children’s Roles in Transnational Migration
• 2. ‘Asexual, Apolitical Beings’: The Interpretation of Children’s Identities and Experiences in the UK Asylum System
• 3. In the Best Interest of the Child? The Politics of Vulnerability and Negotiations for Asylum in Sweden
• 4. Making Connections: Second-Generation Children and the Transnational Field of Relations
• 5. ‘They Told Us in a Curry Shop’: Child-Adult Relations in the Context of Family Migration Decision-Making
• 6. Tampering with the Sex of ‘Angels’: Migrant Male Minors and Young Adults Selling Sex in the EU
• 7. Narratives of ‘Innocent Irish Childhoods’: Return Migration and Intergenerational Family Dynamics
• 8. Divergent Discourses, Children and Forced Migration
• 9. Conclusion: Future Directions in Research on Transnational Migration and Childhood Naomi Tyrrell, Allen White, Caitríona Ní Laoire and Fina Carpena-Méndez
• Index