Undocumented and unaccompanied: children of migration in the European Union and the United States

Abstract

Thousands of minors are migrating unaccompanied to high-income countries. This special issue focuses on unaccompanied migrant minors from the Global South to Europe and the United States. In this introduction we seek to complement the contributions to this special issue by shedding light on what resources and experiences unaccompanied migrants arrive with, stressing these young migrants’ challenges at each stage prior to arrival and the challenges they face navigating the receiving context. We first clarify how the international community defines “unaccompanied minors” or “unaccompanied children.” We then provide brief histories of unaccompanied minors in immigration flows to the U.S. and the EU. Next, we review the literature on the experiences of unaccompanied minors before, during, and after migration. Finally, we discuss key themes and insights from the articles provided in this special issue.

Introduction

New migration flows from the Global South today constitute increasing numbers of non-adult, unaccompanied migrants. Although unaccompanied minors have participated in migratory flows in other historical periods, the current contexts of migration include new forms of immigration enforcement that rely on expanded collaborations and technology as well as different actors who facilitate migration. These contexts create new challenges and forms of vulnerability for these minors today. Child migrants often leave conditions of extreme inequalities, constraints, and risks whose effects are exacerbated by daunting obstacles and dangerous migratory routes. Thus, African children of various nationalities, Iranian, Afghan, and Iraqi children all cross the Mediterranean to arrive in the European Union with an accumulation of formidably difficult experiences similar to those with which Central American children arrive in the United States. These children’s experiences position them differently and at greater disadvantage than past cohorts of childhood arrivals or other immigrants today. Importantly, although thousands of minors migrate unaccompanied to high-income countries, the vast majority are either internally displaced or stay in their region and go to other poorer countries. Of the 65.3 million forcibly displaced adults and children in 2015, only 3.2 million were asylum seekers (see UNHCR 2015). This special issue focuses on unaccompanied migrant minors from the Global South to Europe and the United States.

The focus on unaccompanied minors from the Global South to Europe and the United States underscores the parallels in the pre-migration, migration, and post-migration experiences of these children. It recognizes their common vulnerabilities and the strategies these children adopt to protect themselves and improve their circumstances. Additionally, our focus on this group highlights the challenges that both European and U.S. governments face as they develop health, social service, and legal systems which balance the best interests of these children with national interests of the countries in which they settle. Finally, our focus calls attention to the need for more cross-national, comparative research to develop common policies and practices which facilitate the integration of these children into their settlement communities and their transitions into adulthood.

Though definitions and techniques for counting unaccompanied minors differ between the U.S. and the EU,¹ the numbers of unaccompanied migrant minors in both regions have increased on average, with the majority being teenage boys ages 14–17 (Connor 2016; Hunter and Shklyan 2016; U.S. Customs and Border Protection 2016). There were 24,403 apprehensions of minors at the U.S. southwest border in 2012, 38,759 in 2013, and 68,541 in 2014 (Hunter and Shklyan 2016). This spike caused alarm and prompted media scrutiny (Terrio 2015) and policy responses in summer 2014, attention that has remained even as the number decreased to 39,970 in 2015 (Hunter and Shklyan 2016). As of 2016, the migration of unaccompanied minors to the U.S. was composed primarily of Central American youth from El Salvador (17,512) Guatemala (18,913) and Honduras (10,468) as well as Mexico (U.S. Costums and Border Protection 2016). Some of these unaccompanied children immediately present themselves to U.S. border security whereas others enter the U.S. unnoticed and undocumented (Beltrán 2014). When identified by border security, Central American unaccompanied children who arrive in the U.S. can immediately state their asylum cases and are screened, processed, and held in detention for up to 72 hours (Menjívar 2014).² In contrast, Mexicans are returned after a day or two as allowed by the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection and Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). Thus, Mexican unaccompanied children are, as Goździak (2015:7) notes, “out of sight and out of mind of the American public.”

The number of unaccompanied minors entering the European Union (EU) also spiked--doubling from 13,800 in 2013 to 23,300 in 2014, and then quadrupling to 96,000 by 2015 (Connor and Krogstad 2016; Eurostat 2016a).³ In contrast to the U.S., the range of countries from which unaccompanied children originate is wider and has shifted slightly over the years owing to the intensity of the conflicts in the migrants’ home countries. Overall, according to Eurostat data, 198,500 unaccompanied minors have entered Europe seeking asylum since 2008 (Eurostat 2016a). The majority of these migrants have come from Afghanistan (79,700 or 39%), Syria (19,300), Somalia (13,200), Eritrea (11,600), Iraq (9,100), Albania (3,100) and Russia (2,700) (Connor 2016; Eurostat 2016a). As in the U.S., some of these migrants present themselves to border security to begin the process of seeking asylum while others enter as “irregular” migrants and remain undetected and uncounted (EMN 2015). Depending on the receiving country, its enforcement efforts, and border controls in neighboring transit countries, these children can end up detained and at risk of deportation (Menjívar 2014). As a result, children seeking protection may be found inadmissible, denied various forms of assistance and access to legal protection, and face the possibility of removal (Deckert 2016).

These increases in unaccompanied child migrants have received scholarly attention, with most of it centered on explaining the sudden jump in these flows and their change over time (Rosemblum and Ball 2016). Some researchers have traced links between rising levels of violence in Central America to the increase in children migrating alone (UNHCR 2014; UNICEF 2016). Others have argued that child migrations from Mexico and Central America to the United States (U.S.) are the result of widespread and mature networks that facilitate their migration to reunite with their parents coupled with the continued need for their parents’ labor in the U.S. (Donato and Sisk 2015). Additionally, researchers have observed that unaccompanied migrant children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador apply for asylum in any country they can get to in the region, suggesting that “pull” factors in the U.S., such as family and networks, are not central in propelling this migration; rather it is the violence in the sending countries that propels their migration from the region (Stinchcomb and Hershberg 2014).

Similarly, in unaccompanied children migrations to the EU, contexts of violence have been identified as spurring these large flows; the top sending countries of unaccompanied children arriving in the EU have been identified by the Global Peace Index as the least peaceful countries in the world today (Institute for Economics and Peace 2016). In 2015, over 60 percent of total migrants arriving in the EU were fleeing violence in the Middle East and North Africa (Johnson 2015). Thus, violent conditions, whether arising from state actions or criminal activities in the sending countries, have been identified as a common denominator in shaping the migration of unaccompanied children arriving in the EU and the U.S.

Given conditions of political, structural and gender violence prevailing in the sending countries as well as the urgent nature of many of the journeys, these migrations overlap strongly with refugee flows. Agencies involved in responding to these flows recognize and highlight in their policy approaches the desperate living conditions and threats of violence that the minors are fleeing (UNHCR 2014). These agencies have defined the migrants as “refugees” and appealed to receiving governments to abide by international conventions for the protection of refugees in addressing these flows.⁴ But receiving countries have been ambivalent about extending this designation. In contrast to policies developed by UNHCR (1997), unaccompanied child arrivals in the U.S. and EU are not always placed with foster care providers or guardians in their settlement communities and those seeking asylum face tremendous hurdles (Roubein 2014; Eurostat 2016b).

Because unaccompanied minors have been unable to procure a visa and thus have undertaken their journeys surreptitiously, these flows also are often labeled “undocumented”, “illegal”, or “irregular.” Because of their sudden increase, these flows have also been described in the media, policy circles and scholarly work as a “surge” or a “crisis.” These terms evoke particular policy and public reactions including a “surge” in resources to increase capacity for detentions (Hernandez 2015). As such, a common element in both migration “crises” is that they have been met with harsh enforcement policies that focus on stopping the arrival of these children in the transit countries, detention and deportation for those who make it to the destination, and deterring strategies in the sending country so the minors do not initiate travel in the first place. Thus, these flows intertwine with enforcement strategies already in place in the EU and the U.S.

In some countries, governments respond with inclusionary policies, receptive communities, and the opportunity to apply for asylum, which opens the door to resources that can facilitate the children’s integration. In other countries, however, the government’s response includes enforcement and detention, particularly when the public in those countries are already apprehensive about increases in migratory flows and associate migration with negative consequences. Some countries have concurrently established rights-based standards and procedures for assessing asylum seekers’ protection claims while at the same time creating barriers that prevent certain asylum seekers from setting foot on their territories (Frelick, Kysel, and Podkul 2016). For example, six months after the increase in the number of Central American unaccompanied children, the Obama administration announced the Central American Minors (CAM) Refugee/Parolee Program to facilitate in-country processing of applicants deemed to need humanitarian protection in the United States. The success of this program has been at best modest (Hipsman and Meissner 2015). The application process is complex and lengthy and most people, including children, who need to leave their countries quickly after they receive a death threat cannot make use of this program. Moreover, spots for CAM minors count against the 4,000 Latin American and Caribbean regional allocation for refugee visas; the regional allocation in turn is part of the worldwide refugee visa program allocation (typically 60,000 – 70,000) set annually by the U.S. Congress (Hipsman and Meissner 2015).

With the exception of an article that places today’s migratory flows in historical perspective (Rodriguez and Gonzales, this issue) and another one based on research in Mexico that captures the children’s experiences during their journeys (Thompson et al., this issue), the contributions to this special issue focus on the receiving context that unaccompanied migrant minors encounter, including legal and ethical frameworks for protecting unaccompanied minors, governmental decisions about the ‘best interests’ of the children, children’s expressions of their own best interests or agency, the provision of services in detention centers, and children’s health and social service needs in receiving communities.

In this introduction we seek to complement these contributions by shedding light on what resources and experiences unaccompanied migrants arrive with, stressing these young migrants’ challenges at each stage prior to arrival, beginning at the origin and continuing with the journey, all of which affects how these migrants navigate the receiving context. In the sections below, we first define and clarify how the international community defines “unaccompanied minors” or “unaccompanied children.” We then provide brief histories of unaccompanied minors in immigration flows to the U.S. and the EU. Next, we review the literature on the experiences of unaccompanied minors before, during, and after migration. Finally, we discuss key themes and insights from the articles provided in this special issue.

Defining Unaccompanied

A focus on the migration of unaccompanied children brings attention to important definitional questions, a central theme in some of the contributions to this special issue. The international community defines an unaccompanied migrant child as a person, “who is under the age of eighteen” and who is “separated from both parents and is not being cared for by an adult who by law or custom has responsibility to do so” (UNHCR 1997). Although international conventions stipulate guidelines for children migrating with adult caregivers who are not their parents, this definition can be difficult to use when children travel without their parents but in the company of unrelated adults, smugglers, and others their own age (UNHCR 1997).⁵

The UNHRC definition also belies differences in how children find themselves unaccompanied or alone (Kohli 2007). Some of them may begin and end their migration journeys alone because their parents or caregivers have been victims of violence in their home countries. Others may begin their migration journey alone but arrive to receiving communities where family members, potentially including parents, live. Additionally, children may begin their migration journeys with parents or caregivers but find themselves alone when their caregivers die during the journey or when they are separated from their caregiver during their journey. For this reason, some experts argue that the term “separated” should be used instead of “unaccompanied” to more accurately reflect the situation of these children (Kohli 2007).

Moreover, the term ‘unaccompanied migrant children’ can convey images of very small children traveling entirely on their own, making decisions along the way and raising their own funds to cover their journey. These images leave the children devoid of agency (see Thompson et al., this issue), and can mask heterogeneity among them, so differences by social class, race, gender, national origin, and culture are not factored in (Goździak 2016) or erased. Representations of children can also evoke attitudes that focus on their protection because they are seen as vulnerable and defenseless, and may elicit what Fassin (2012: xii) calls a ‘fantasy of a global moral community.’ Although this welcoming scenario is certainly plausible and is the reality for some migrant children, many minors who end up being classified as traveling “alone” face a hostile context of reception, skepticism about their claims, and minimal standards of care (Deckert 2016). Humanitarian impulses to care for children in liberal democracies can easily be transformed into fear and hate (Neuman 2012). Additionally, sometimes policy makers and media depictions contribute to constructed images of these minors as potential criminals and carriers of infectious diseases which can threaten the well-being of residents in the countries that accept them (Heidbrink 2014; Johnson 2014). This is particularly the case when emphasis is placed on the conflict and violence in sending countries in Central America and the Middle East from which migrants to the U.S. and the EU flow.

As Goździak (2016) reminds us in her work on “trafficked” children,⁶ definitions and their operationalizations form the basis for government responses and bureaucratic interventions with long-term impacts on the lives of unaccompanied migrant children. For instance, Terrio et al. (2011) note that when migrant children are treated in the receiving country’s legal system as ‘accompanied’ they become dependents of adults, but when they are categorized as ‘unaccompanied’ they are obligated to meet evidentiary requirements and must navigate the system similar to adult refugees. Minors who are classified as unaccompanied then face overlapping systems of protection and enforcement as they go through the legal system in their introduction to the new country (Terrio et al. 2011). How an immigration flow or individuals in that flow are defined at exit, during transit, and at destination has direct implications for policy responses. Thus, as several of the contributions here make clear, definitional questions matter crucially.

U.S. and EU Histories of Unaccompanied Minors in Migration Flows

Even though increases in the migration of unaccompanied minors to the EU and the U.S. have attracted media and policy attention in recent years, this migration is not unique; minors have migrated alone throughout history and these flows have been recognized by international bodies and conventions for over two decades (Goździak 2015). In the U.S., the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980 established permanent authority and a formal process for the admission of unaccompanied children (Steinbock 1989). Internationally, the UNHCR set guidelines and definitions of who is an unaccompanied child migrant in 1997.

In the U.S., minors often arrived at Ellis Island unaccompanied by their parents. Sometimes they had parents or other family members receiving them but just as often they did not. In these cases, volunteers, mostly women, would care for them upon arrival (Menjívar, Abrego and Schmalzbauer 2016: 126). In the 1960s, Operation Peter Pan made possible the organized migration to the U.S. of Cuban children whom their parents sent to avoid the perceived dangers of communism under the Cuban revolution. Taiwanese families still send their children to acquire education in U.S. schools; these children then live under the care of relatives or hired caretakers, the so-called ‘parachute children” (Zhou 1998). This practice is also common among other Asian groups. But parents of higher social classes are not the only ones sending their children to other countries alone, albeit for very different reasons. In 2010, Haitian children orphaned by a devastating earthquake were “paroled” in and adopted by U.S. families (Goździak 2015). Thus, the contemporary influx of Central American minors has precedent in other cases of children’s migratory flows that today can be defined as being comprised of unaccompanied minors.

Furthermore, Central American children have been migrating without adult company to the U.S. for years (Chavez and Menjívar 2010; Goździak 2015), though not at the high rates of recent years. In this issue, Rodriguez and Gonzalez compare these migrations in the past and present to highlight changes. As the authors note, the increase in the migration of unaccompanied Central American minors seen in 2014 was part of an upward trend that started years in 2010—the first year that the migration of Central American unaccompanied minors exceeded the numbers of U.S.-bound Central American migrants during the civil wars in their countries. Thus, the migration of minors without an adult is not new. What is new is the size of the migration and the media attention and policies generated in response.

In the European Union too, there have been previous flows of unaccompanied minors. For instance, the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) left close to 90,000 children orphaned and many of them were sent through organized programs to various countries, such as France, Belgium, the USSR, Mexico, Switzerland, Denmark, and the UK (Bell 1996). More recently, World War II produced a large cohort of unaccompanied children, approximately 13 million according to UNESCO and Red Cross estimates (Kohli 2007). Through its Kindertransport program, Britain assisted in helping approximately 10,000 children escape Nazi occupied territories (Fast 2010).

Experiences of Unaccompanied Minors Before, During, and After migration

To complement and contextualize the contributions to this special issue in this introduction we highlight the exit and journey and underscore the cumulative effects of disadvantage at each of these earlier stages. We argue that to understand how these migrants confront the legislative system, bureaucracies, and institutions at the receiving end, we must first understand where the minors come from, which can also shed light on how and why they leave their home countries and arrive at their destination. To this end, we underscore the disadvantages that pile up before arrival, beginning with a lack of access to health care and education and exposure to violence and trauma in the context of exit as well as varied forms of violence during the journey and an introduction to organizations and institutions that manage migration in the transit countries. Each experience builds on itself, from malnutrition, lack of adequate employment, and daily exposure to life-threatening conditions in the home country to the trauma that comes from extremely dangerous conditions during the journey, all of which shapes the minors’ lives in the receiving country, with short- and long-term effects (Perreira and Ornelas 2013).

We structure this discussion using Ko and Perreira (2010)’s three phases of migration—pre-migration, migration and post-migration—a framework designed to capture stressors and challenges at each phase of the migration process and adolescents’ responses to them. This lens allows us to illuminate the multiple factors that shape each stage and accumulate during the migration process to ultimately affect the migrant children’s experiences.

Pre-Migration Experiences

The pre-migration context for the migration of unaccompanied minors arriving to the EU and the U.S. today is shaped by high levels of political and structural violence as well as common crime in a concentrated region, in a handful of countries. In addition, deteriorating living conditions, declining economic opportunities, and limited educational opportunities have defined the pre-migration contexts leading to the migration of youth and young adults from Central American and the Middle East.

With reports that Central America has some of the world’s highest homicide rates and because the conflicts in the Middle East have left several countries ranked as the least peaceful in the world, most research has focused on linking overt forms of violence to the children’s migration. Rather than calling attention only to the immediate violence and life-threatening conditions, we would also like to highlight the long-term structural and economic conditions that intertwine with these more immediate factors (Menjívar 1993). Lack of access to education, health care, and employment create a “powerful recipe for social exclusion” that promotes the migration of unaccompanied children (Stinchcomb and Hershberg 2014). Sometimes, these conditions are also the precursors for political and more visible and immediate forms of violence. Receiving countries try to capture these dynamics in their admissions decisions, attempting to determine whether these migrations are ‘economic’ or ‘forced’. As research has noted, however, this distinction is largely bureaucratic and does not always reflect reality (Castles and Loughna 2004; Menjívar 1993). Because violence in its multiple forms defines these migrations, international agencies and NGOs have advocated for refugee protection for the unaccompanied children leaving these areas.

Reports from the United Nations, Amnesty International, and human rights organizations have identified a range of human rights violations as precipitating children’s migration flows. In environments where death, torture, injury, abduction, sexual violence, rape, chemical weapons, and displacement are employed, women, girls, and boys are particularly vulnerable (Amnesty International 2016b, Human Rights Watch 2015, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 2016). Children are often pushed to participate in war, recruited as soldiers or for suicide missions, or abducted or used for intimidation (Amnesty International 2016b, Human Rights Watch 2015, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 2016). Moreover, while the civil wars have ended in the Central American region, long-standing conditions of deep inequality and lack of access to goods and services, together with new forms of crime organization, have created insecure and violent conditions. In 2015, homicide rates in El Salvador reached 108 per 100,000, in Honduras 63 per 100,000, and in Guatemala 44 per 100,000 (Guevara-Rosas 2016). These rates are significant as they constitute the highest rates of violence among countries technically not at war. However, gang violence alone cannot explain such conditions of violence in these countries. Extortion, briberies, and corrupt governments that persecute, rather than protect, their own citizens (Menjívar and Walsh 2017; Santamaria and Carey 2017) make it difficult for families to survive in these countries (Renwick 2016).

However, it is not only the visible and immediate forms of violence, such as crime and war-related actions that create conditions for the children to migrate alone. A lack of governing authority or rule of law, alongside economic downturns involving devalued currencies and rapid inflation, and significantly high unemployment and poverty rates are mutually constitutive of the more immediate forms of violence. In Afghanistan, 40% of the population lived in poverty in 2014 and 50% in 2015, despite increased international spending in military and humanitarian assistance. Over half of those living in poverty are children under age 15 (World Bank 2016). In Syria, the majority of its population (60% of the labor force) is unemployed, and the overall poverty rate is estimated at 83% in 2014, compared to 12.4% before the conflict started in 2007 (The World Bank 2016b). In Somalia 63% of its population is unemployed, and 70% of the population live in poverty (United Nations Development Programme 2016). Poverty rates are also strikingly high in the northern countries of Central America; in 2014, 63% of the population of Honduras lived in poverty, 59% in Guatemala, and 31% in El Salvador (The World Bank 2016c). However, there is significant underemployment as well. Some of these conditions are compounded by climate change (and lack of rainfall) but conditions of violence also have affected the agriculture economic growth of these countries, and agriculture is one of the main forms of employment and subsistence for many families there (The World Bank 2016a, The World Bank 2016b, World Bank 2016). And a general lack of access to health care exacerbates the problems above, and in contexts of violence, healthcare professionals and hospitals have been targeted and the transportation of medical supplies has been obstructed and health care spaces reduced (Amnesty International 2016b, Human Rights Watch 2015, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 2016). Thus, access to basic needs including food, electricity, and drinking water then becomes almost impossible under violent conditions.

Furthermore, access to education is substantially limited especially in countries at war. In 2001, girls in Afghanistan did not have access to schooling and only 1 million boys were enrolled in primary school. This has changed overtime, but even in 2015 only 21% of girls had completed primary education (World Bank 2016). The conflicts in the region (including Syria and Somalia) also disrupt access to education as schools are turned into military security spaces (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 2016).

While Central American youth have generally better access to education than those in war-torn countries of the Middle East, they still face challenges in reaching schools as internal travel and transportation have been significantly curtailed in violence-ridden areas. Young girls and boys in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are often recruited by gangs (Amnesty International 2016a). Furthermore, youth who are at risk of gang violence tend to abruptly end their studies for fear of being targeted by gangs. In 2015 in this region, 39,000 students left school due to harassment or threats of gangs (Amnesty International 2016a).

Therefore, given the above conditions, children leave their countries for a variety of reasons related with various degrees of intensity to violence, a range of structural conditions, lack of rule of law, corrupt governments, and a desire for a better education and future.

Migration Experiences

Travel to their destination often stretches over months or years for unaccompanied migrant children (Huynh 2015), since theirs are not trips organized by governments or international agencies and are not undertaken by air. These minors therefore typically leave their home countries without an entry visa to their destinations and thus must rely on a cast of actors along the way—smugglers, individuals who live in transit corridors who lend them a hand to continue the journey, charitable and religious organizations, as well as other fellow travelers. Importantly, because the children’s journeys intersect with those of adult unauthorized migrants, the minors’ experiences during the journeys become undistinguishable from those of adult unauthorized migrants (Huynh 2015). Thus, it is during the journey that these minors become part of larger unauthorized migratory flows and upon arrival at their destination the receiving government officials can more easily classify them as unauthorized migrants (and not as asylum seekers) if the immigrant does not state their intention to seek asylum.

As Ko and Perreira (2010) point out, the act of migration itself impacts the levels of stress during the journey, affecting the minors’ experiences, and later shaping the youth’s adaptation at their destination. Examining how the journey impacts the children takes into account the mode of transportation and accompaniment during travel. Central American children arriving unaccompanied to the U.S. travel by land through Mexico, a notoriously dangerous undertaking. Middle Eastern and African minors arriving in the EU sometimes travel by land but more often make perilous journeys in rickety boats crossing the Mediterranean Sea, thousands of whom never make it to their destination.

The journey has become defining in the lives of migrants in that it compounds experiences of structural, political, and everyday violence and trauma that the migrant children leave in their home countries. As border enforcement makes reaching the border of the destination countries more difficult, smugglers have transformed the transportation of migrants, especially minors, into a rather lucrative (and dangerous) business (Spener 2009; Voigt 2013). Migrants are exposed to assaults, robberies, inhumane treatment, torture, and even death. As adult migrants often do, children migrants must stay in the transit country waiting for smugglers to find the right time and conditions to continue the journey. Many Central American children find temporary jobs to support themselves (Castillo 2008). The journey through Mexico is particularly dangerous for Central American women and girls. According to Amnesty International, six out of 10 Central American women and girls are victims of sexual violence during their journey through Mexico (Pereira 2010).

To cover the cost of the journey to the EU or the U.S., families pool resources together and end up indebted for long periods of time after migrants arrive to their final destinations (McKenzie and Menjívar 2011; Stoll 2012). Journeys from Central America or Mexico to the U.S. can take weeks or months to complete by land, but they are structured with a destination point embedded in the plan. In contrast, because journeys to the EU entail crossing several countries, migrants’ final destinations are not always fixed at the beginning of their trips, but rather decided along the way. In this way, social media and the internet have played central roles in aiding migrants’ journeys and decision-making prior to migration through sharing of information about smugglers and routes of the trip (Donini et al. 2017).

In the case of migrant children arriving to the EU, most journeys to reach a destination involve crossing the Mediterranean sea at night, in tightly packed boats, or by foot through the forest and mountain areas (Donini, Monsutti, and Scalettaris 2017). This is not dissimilar from how Central Americans reach the U.S., as they hop on trains, ride in cargo trucks, walk in the desert, and regularly face life-threatening situations during the journey. However, travel trajectories vary according to country (and social position) of origin. Afghan, Iraqi, and Iranian unaccompanied youth typically travel the 3,000 mile journey entering Europe by first crossing into Turkey and then traveling through the Mediterranean Sea to enter the European Union via Greece (FRONTEX 2010). Youth originating in the Horn of Africa, (mostly Somalis) travel through Sudan and Lybia to enter the EU through Italy. However, due to stricter border controls in the past several years and the expansion of border controls into transit countries (Menjívar 2014), the routes have shifted to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Arabic Peninsula, a much more dangerous route (FRONTEX 2010). Similarly, Central Americans and Mexican migrants crossing into the U.S. have shifted to more dangerous terrain to avoid increased border control. In other countries, such as Nigeria, unaccompanied youth travel by air with false documentation with the aid of smuggling networks, and stop in transit countries, including eastern Europe, before final arrival in western Europe (FRONTEX 2010). Youth from China, Vietnam and India travel mostly by air, often using documentation (FRONTEX 2010).

The first country of arrival in the EU, usually Greece or Italy, for many is the entry point and the beginning of more challenges as the youth do not cross borders within the EU but must maneuver different country-specific policies, languages, and programs to assist them. To travel across Europe migrants often travel by land in trucks until they reach a final destination (Donini et al. 2017). According to official statistics, for unaccompanied youth the most popular destination is Sweden (Connor 2016); however, Hillmann and Dufner (this issue) note that Germany received more unaccompanied minors than Sweden, a discrepancy having to do with the methodology used to count this population.

Each of the multiple borders that migrants traveling by land and/or sea cross in order to reach the EU and the U.S. serves as a check-point, amplifies the power of smuggling networks and thus the costs of migration. For example, before reaching the Mediterranean Sea, Somalis who travel via Ethiopia, Sudan and Libya must pay a sum of money half-way through the journey in Sudan before being able to continue to the closer border state, Libya (FRONTEX 2010). Similarly Afghans oftentimes stop in Iran before continuing their trip; these stops or check-points often lead migrants to find short-term work and stay in the transit countries in order to continue paying for their journeys to Europe (FRONTEX 2010)

Experiences during the journey can have additional unintended consequences. While unaccompanied minors are exposed to trauma, dangers, and life-threatening situations, they also become acquainted with institutions and organizations, such as the Catholic Church and shelters that exist in the migrant corridor for Central Americans (Chavez 2016). Moreover, they meet other children and adults along the way from whom they acquire information to continue the journey. Through these contacts these migrant children learn how to navigate institutions, the ropes of migrant life, and various strategies to traverse the migrant corridor. These experiences increase these minors’ repertoire of strategies and knowledge about survival and resilience, which become important mechanisms to cope with other challenges further down the road, at entry.

Post-migration Experiences

Once they arrive in their destinations, unaccompanied minors in the U.S. and the EU face another set of hurdles that can magnify the stress and deleterious consequences of the pre-migration and migration experiences.⁷ These include screenings to determine if they qualify for protections under international or country-specific laws, detention, immigration court proceedings, and temporary resettlement while their cases are being processed.

In both the U.S. and EU, the treatment of unaccompanied minors is governed by the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1967 protocol, and the Convention against Torture (AIC 2015). Signatories of these treaties may not return individuals to countries where they face “persecution from a government or a group the government is unable or unwilling to control based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, or where there are substantial grounds to believe that they may be tortured” (AIC 2015: 3). In the U.S., the treatment of unaccompanied minors is also governed by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 which requires that unaccompanied children be screened as potential victims of human trafficking and, “to the greatest extent practicable” have access to a lawyer for immigration court proceedings. In the EU, the treatment of unaccompanied minors can vary by country. Nevertheless, all EU members must abide by a common set of regulations on asylum, immigration, and the trafficking of human beings that include specific provisions on the protection of the interests of unaccompanied minors (EU Agency for Fundamental Rights 2010; CONNECT n.d.). Among other things, these regulations require that unaccompanied minors be provided with legal “representation,” be reunified with family whenever possible, be detained as “a measure of last resort and for as short a period of time as possible,” and have their safety and opinions considered when determining their “best interests.”

In the U.S., unaccompanied minors may either be encountered at the border or apprehended internally (Byrne and Miller 2012; Kandel 2017). Minors encountered at the border are initially processed and detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) while those apprehended internally are initially processed and detained by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE). In both cases, minors are transferred to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detention centers where they can be detained for up to 72 hours while their age is verified and documentation evaluated (AIC 2015). If a child meets the definition of an unaccompanied child from non-contiguous countries to the U.S. (e.g. El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras), the child must be transferred to Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Children from Mexico, a contiguous country, on the other hand, can be immediately sent back through the “voluntary return” system if a CBP officer determines that the child is able to make independent decisions, is not a victim of trafficking, and is not in danger of persecution in his/her home country. Once transferred to ORR’s custody, 80% of unaccompanied children in the U.S. are placed in shelter care (Bryne and Miller 2012). According to ORR (2017), these shelters typically consist of fewer than 50 unaccompanied children and are located in “quiet and good neighborhoods.” As of 2014, children spent approximately 35 days in shelter care and were then released to an approved guardian (AIC 2015). Those not placed in shelter care may be placed in more secure care institutions or in transitional (short-term) foster care.

In the EU member states, unaccompanied minors are processed in reception centers in the country in which they were initially fingerprinted or where they lodged an asylum claim (Fratzke 2015). In the UK, for instance, while in these reception centers, asylum officers work to identify and register children, verify their ages, trace their families to provide an opportunity for reunification, and evaluate their health and other aspects of their well-being (House of Lords 2016). Based on the particulars of their case, children may be transferred from a reception center to another EU member state, released from a reception center into the care of a family member or foster care provider, or held in a detention center.⁸

In both the U.S. and the EU, numerous concerns have been raised about the conditions in which unaccompanied children are initially received and/or detained (House of Lords 2016; Women’s Refugee Committee 2009; National Immigration Justice Center 2014). Reception and detention centers have been criticized for having unsafe, unhealthy, and sometimes squalid conditions which can threaten the development of children (House of Lords 2016; Phippen 2016). They are sometimes insufficiently staffed with few resources to adequately serve the health and educational needs of children. Additionally, officials in the U.S. and EU have been criticized for the inadequate screening of children who may fear that sharing the details of their stories will further threaten their safety or the safety of family members left behind. They also have been criticized for providing inadequate legal representation, if any, to children (House of Lords 2016; Pierce 2015; Cavendish and Cortazar 2011). Inadequate screening and legal representation can result in children being inappropriately returned to their countries of origin.

In both the U.S. and EU, concerns also have been raised about the adequacy of care and resettlement resources provided to children who are released to both family and legal guardians as their immigration and asylum cases are considered by the courts (House of Lords 2016; Chisti and Hipsman 2014; Pierce 2015). These children require education, health, and social services in the communities in which they reside. However, the provision of high-quality care and resettlement services can require local investments of time, staff, and money, investments that some communities may be unable or unwilling to make (see Humphries and Sigona this issue). Thus, advocates and policy makers have argued that more effort needs to be spent in monitoring children’s needs and access to services once they are released into communities (House of Lords 2016; Pierce 2015). Additionally, children can age into adulthood while their cases are still under consideration. Thus, advocates and policymakers in both the U.S. and EU have been concerned with the development of best practices to assist children with their transitions into adulthood and, when appropriate, repatriation back to their countries of origin (House of Lords 2016; Ramirez et al. 2015).

Organization and Themes and of the special issue

Looking across the pre-migration, migration, and post-migration stages, articles in this special issue cover two broad themes regarding the treatment and care of unaccompanied minors in the U.S. and EU. The first theme interrogates the agency of children and the definition of a child’s best interest. Rodriguez and Gonzalez, Thompson and colleagues, Cardoso and colleagues, and Allsopp and Chase reflect on the historical and institutional circumstances which frame children’s decision to migrate and circumscribe their capacities to assume agency and act in their own best interests. As a result of the historical and institutional circumstances framing their migrations, the best interests of the children are easily subsumed by the national interests of the countries in which they settle. The second theme addresses policies and practices which criminalize immigration and privatize both border control and the provision of social services to immigrants and their families. Cuéllar, Humphries and Sigona, Allsopp and Chase, and Hillman and Dufner demonstrate how the criminalization of undocumented immigration and the privatization of immigration controls and services can conflict with the duty of nation states to protect migrants’ human rights.

Though there are several common themes across the articles, we have arranged the articles to focus on the United States and then the European Union. Within each group, articles move from consideration of the pre-migration to the post-migration stage. With a focus on the U.S., Rodriguez and Gonzalez provide insight into the differing circumstances leading to the current wave of childhood migrations from the northern countries of Central America. They show how weak economic, security, and family institutions at the macro-level can threaten economic well-being, security, and family at the micro-level to reinforce migration networks and perpetuate the migration on unaccompanied youth. Thompson et al. then interrogate agency among these child migrants. They show how these youth choose to express their agency throughout the migration process and as they confront authorities such as parents and immigration officers in their home countries, Mexico, and the U.S. Cuéllar adds to our understanding of agency in the migration process with an in-depth look at religious expression within U.S. detention centers. We learn how migrants turn to religion to express their agency and to buttress their quest for freedom from fear and persecution. At the same time, detention centers rely on religious teachings to pacify and control young migrants who are criminalized and commodified by the private companies building and running these detention centers. Finally, Cardoso et al. turn our attention to the post-migration contexts which shape the lives of unaccompanied minors. Cardoso et al. provide an overview of the challenges facing unaccompanied minors who are detained at the border and released into ORR custody. They discuss these youth’s legal, custodial, mental health, and educational needs. Then, they turn attention to methodological challenges and next steps for conducting research on the welfare of unaccompanied minors living in the U.S.

The articles focused on the migration of unaccompanied child migrants to the EU focus on post-migration circumstances. Allsopp and Chase discuss frameworks for defining the best interests of unaccompanied minors transitioning into adulthood. They demonstrate how the best interests of these youth contrast with the best interests of the states who ultimately hope to return them to their countries of origin. Humphries and Sigona continue this conversation by focusing our attention on post-migration foster care services for unaccompanied minors who have migrated to the United Kingdom and are seeing asylum. Whereas Cuéllar discussed the privatization of detention centers for those children and families awaiting consideration of their asylum cases in the U.S., Humphries and Sigona discuss the privatization or outsourcing of foster care services for unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC) in the United Kingdom. Again, we see how the privatization of the refugee and asylee process combines with the commodification of refugees and asylees to pit the best interest of the child against the best interest of the state. As a result, frontline, street-level bureaucrats find themselves applying discretion wherever they can to protect their professional integrity and the well-being of children whose interests would otherwise be subjugated to the interests of the state and the for-profit contractors that the state hires. Finally, Hillman and Dufner turn our attention to Germany where the largest share of Syrian refugees to the EU have been settled. In their article, they invite us to pull away from the particulars of defining the best interest of children to discussing the ethical and legal responsibilities that states, in this case Germany, have towards caring for unaccompanied children. Focusing on two aspects of caring—housing assistance (i.e. accommodation) and health care assistance—they argue that there is no legal or ethnically defensible justification for treating unaccompanied minors differently from accompanied minors and their families or from German citizen children. Germany’s constitutional law, EU law, international law, and ethical principles each warrant the conclusion that greater investments in services to shelter and care for unaccompanied migrant youth are needed.

Biography

Cecilia Menjivar is Foundation Distinguished Professor in the Department of Sociology and Co-Director of the Center for Migration Research at the University of Kansas. She has examined the effects of immigration laws and the enforcement regime on different aspects of immigrants’ lives, in particular in the context of the family. Empirically, she has focused on Central American immigrants.

Krista Perreira is Professor of Social Medicine and a fellow of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Focusing on children in immigrant families, her work combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies to study migration from Latin America and the health and educational consequences of migration. Through her research, she aims to develop programs and policies to improve the well-being of immigrant families and their children.