Adolescent Girls' Migration in The Global South

Transitions into Adulthood

Katarzyna Grabska, Marina de Regt, Nicoletta Del Franco

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783030000929
• eBook ISBN: 9783030000936
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Relaciones internacionales

This book provides a nuanced, complex, comparative analysis of adolescent girls' migration and mobility in the Global South. The stories and the narratives of migrant girls collected in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Sudan guide the readers in drawing the contours of their lives on the move, a complex, fluid scenario of choices, constraints, setbacks, risks, aspirations and experiences in which internal or international migration plays a pivotal role. The main argument of the book is that migration of adolescent girls intersects with other important transitions in their lives, such as those related to education, work, marriage and childbearing, and that this affects their transition into adulthood in various ways. While migration is sometimes negative, it can also offer girls new and better opportunities with positive implications for their future lives. The book explores also how concepts of adolescence and adulthood for girls are being transformed in the context of migration.

© The Author(s) 2019

Katarzyna Grabska, Marina de Regt and Nicoletta Del FrancoAdolescent Girls' Migration in The Global SouthPalgrave Studies on Children and Developmenthttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00093-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Girls, Transitions and Migration

Katarzyna Grabska¹ , Marina de Regt² and Nicoletta Del Franco³

(1)

Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Hague, The Netherlands

(2)

VU University Amsterdam, VX Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands

(3)

University of Parma, Parma, Italy

Katarzyna Grabska

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Time to Listen to Girls

Adolescent girls are increasingly understood in development policies to be a crucial segment of the population, whose successful transition into adulthood is of major importance for their own lives and of those around them. Adolescence is important for key transitions such as to work , marriage and parenthood and in defining one’s self and social identity (Bucholtz 2002; Del Franco 2012; Johnson and Hanks 2002; Punch 2002; Temin et al. 2013). In 1990, the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, made “the girl child” one of its priorities, and numerous development projects and campaigns were launched to improve the lives of girls worldwide (Croll 2006). In 2012, the United Nations established 11 October as the International Day of the Girl Child. An increasing number of national and international development organizations have started investing in girls, mainly in education in order to reduce early marriage , teenage pregnancy, maternal mortality rates and gender -based violence (GBV). The overall aim is to break the cycles of poverty and, in so doing, work towards the social and economic development of the population as a whole (see, for example, Temin et al. 2013; UNICEF 2011)¹. Policy -makers and development agencies see girls as change -makers in whom it is worth investing as this will benefit society overall. Global campaigns such as Girl Effect, Girls Empowerment and Girls Are Powerful are therefore receiving large-scale public and private funding (see Koffman and Gill 2013) (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1

Girl Effect slogan in Ethiopia

Migrating girls have also emerged more recently as a focus on development and humanitarian interventions (see TDH children on the move; IOM campaigns; and UNHCR ’s attention to the displacement of girls). Despite the growing awareness of the participation of adolescent girls in internal and international migration , few academic studies deal with this important phenomenon and its wider consequences (see, for example, Derks 2008; Hertrich and Lesclingand 2012; Jacquemin 2009, 2011). In 2013, the Population Council published Girls on the Move: Adolescent Girls & Migration in the Developing World (Temin et al. 2013), and international and non-government organizations (NGOs) have published a growing number of reports in recent years. Very often, however, the focus of policy debates is on the negative aspects of adolescent girls’ migration , emphasizing the risks and dangers such as trafficking and exploitation .

The migration projects of adolescent girls are part of a wider flow of children and young people worldwide who move in search of earning a better living and protection as well as to meet family obligations and individual aspirations . Since the turn of the century, the number of children who are leaving their place of origin has been increasing rapidly. The large majority of these children are adolescents, many of them girls (see Temin et al. 2013). In the literature on migration and development, independent migrants who are under 18 years of age are mainly described also as victims of trafficking and exploitation (O’Connell Davidson 2011) or as being forced to migrate by situations of dire vulnerability , poverty and war (see Hopkins and Hill 2008). The focus on exploited and abused child migrants has made it difficult to recognize and address the needs of other children and adolescents who migrate in diverse circumstances. The problem with such framing is not only that it denies adolescent girls’ their own agency , but the type of interventions and policies that are designed to ‘rescue’ and ‘rehabilitate’ the victims . Moreover, younger children and adolescents are all framed as minors; policies aiming to protect people under 18 years of age do not always consider important differences among them due to age, socio-economic conditions, actual experiences and the different ways in which adulthood is constructed in different cultural settings. The ‘social age ’ of girls and boys does not necessarily correspond to their chronological age . Social age can be described as “the socially constructed meanings applied to physical development and roles attributed to infants, children, young people, adults and elders, as well as their intra- and inter-generational relationships” (Clark-Kazak 2009, p. 1310). This consideration is also important in approaching the phenomenon of the so-called unaccompanied migrants and refugee children, who are the focus of controversial policies and interventions in the countries of destination. Once they reach the age of majority, girls and boys are no longer formally entitled to the kind of protection granted to children under the provision of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

From different perspectives, a number of studies have criticized approaches based strictly on chronological age , which frames legal minors as always vulnerable and subject to other people’s decisions and choices . Whitehead et al. (2007), Jacquemin (2009) and Hashim and Thorsen (2011), for example, have shown that children and adolescents often make their own decision to migrate, and that their reasons are in many cases very similar to those of young adults of between 20 and 25 years of age. A growing body of literature addresses children’s agency in the process of migration (Coe et al. 2011; Ensor and Gozdziak 2010; Huijsmans 2011, 2017; Veale and Donà 2014) and attempts to conceptualize it by emphasizing children’s resilience and capacities to negotiate their own position, and the importance of relational and collective agency , without losing sight of the potential risks and vulnerabilities (Razy and Rodet 2016; Veale and Donà 2014). The need to listen to children’s and adolescents’ words and experiences has also been highlighted (Dobson 2009), as well as the methodological and ethical dilemmas arising from giving them voice (see Razy and Rodet 2016, pp. 7–8).

The vast majority of studies on young people’s migration have focused on boys and young men (Gardner 2012; Hashim and Thorsen 2011; Punch 2007; Thorsen 2006; White et al. 2011). Adolescent migrant girls are almost invisible in both quantitative and qualitative studies despite their generally increasing numbers, in most regions of the world both ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Girls, Transitions and Migration
• 2. Doing Research Among Migrant and Refugee Girls
• 3. Situating Girls’ Migration in Three Contexts
• 4. Becoming a Migrant, Becoming a Refugee
• 5. Life in the Cities
• 6. Risks, Threats and Setbacks
• 7. Being Protected and Protecting Yourself
• 8. Surviving, Resisting and Moving Forward
• 9. Beyond Survival: The Wider Implications of Girls’ Migration
• 10. Transitions and Transformations
• Back Matter