Children, adults or both? Negotiating adult minors and interests in a state care facility in Malta

Otto, Laura

doi:10.1080/1369183x.2019.1584700

Cited by 14 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Research is thus concerned with trying to better understand young migrants’ relational and contingent positions in the context of forced migration (Huijsmans 2012). This has led to approaches which challenge the idea of equating (ascribed) underage with vulnerability, instead showing that young refugees can still find themselves in vulnerable situations after having reached adulthood in legal terms (Otto 2020a, 2020b; Raghallaigh and Thornton 2017). A contingent and constructivist perspective acknowledges that vulnerability is not merely embodied but also relates to legal and social circumstances (Crawley 2011; Eastmond and Ascher 2011, 1195; Orgocka 2012, 3; Raghallaigh and Thornton 2017, 389; Silverman 2016).…”

Section: Vulnerability and Young Refugees: Definitions Policies And A...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…EU policies often follow innate understandings of vulnerability and render young refugees like Elais to be among society’s most vulnerable members (European Parliamentary Research Service 2021). But “vulnerability” is not translated and practiced in uniform ways in everyday life (Belloni 2016a, 2016b; Lems et al 2020; Otto 2020a; Punch 2002; Terrio 2008). Young refugees’ arrivals reveal tensions and controversies: on one hand, they are viewed as vulnerable, wounded persons who deserve and need special protection and care services; on the other hand, it is often assumed that they are not inherently vulnerable children or youths (Lems et al 2020; Otto 2020b).…”

Section: Refugees and Vulnerability-making In Malta: Historical Conte...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Vulnerability-Making at Europe’s Edge: How Policies, Documents, and Spatiality Intra-Act in the Context of Young Refugees

McAdam-Otto

2023

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

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When young refugees who arrive in the European Union (EU) are categorized as “unaccompanied minors,” an implicit assumption and ascription coincides with their categorization, namely that they are vulnerable. Being underage and being vulnerable are inextricably linked and often equated. Thus, vulnerability is understood as a bodily fact linked to a person’s age, and discourse consequently overlooks how vulnerability is enacted in the EU’s border regime. To demonstrate how vulnerability is produced and stabilized through entangled practices of human and nonhuman agencies, I examine vulnerability-making in the context of young refugees who were classified as “unaccompanied minors” in Malta. I pay specific attention to policies, documents, and spatiality and ask: How is vulnerability of young refugees in the EU’s border regime produced and stabilized? And, how are nonhuman agencies implicated in these dynamics? The article, on one hand, makes an important empirical contribution to understanding the construction of vulnerability in respect to unaccompanied minors. The theoretical contribution of the article, on the other hand, lies in offering a new way of conceptualizing vulnerability in the border regime and within bordering practices in the EU by examining it through the epistemic lens of intra-action.

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Section: Vulnerability and Young Refugees: Definitions Policies And A...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Refugees and Vulnerability-making In Malta: Historical Conte...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Vulnerability-Making at Europe’s Edge: How Policies, Documents, and Spatiality Intra-Act in the Context of Young Refugees

McAdam-Otto

2023

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

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“…While the children's rights discourse assumes a shared understanding between young people and practitioners about what constitutes the best interest of the child, her contribution shows this principle to be riddled with ambiguity. In order to achieve what the young people themselves believe to be in their interest, they have to actively deal with the expectations of the social workers or legal guardians entrusted with their supervision (Otto 2020).…”

Section: The Unaccompanied Refugee Child As Victimmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following the routes and pathways the young people take into, across and out of Europe, the individual articles show the ways young refugees actively deal with the expectations, rules and norms that come with the figure of the unaccompanied minor. This includes important EU host countriesin particular Sweden (Wernesjö 2020), Switzerland (Lems 2020) and the UK (Meloni 2020)as well as European and non-European transit countries, such as Eritrea and Sudan (Belloni 2020), Turkey (Strasser and Tibet 2020) and Malta (Otto 2020). Including empirical case studies from countries that are commonly erased from European debates on unaccompanied minors despite shouldering the bulk of the responsibility is central to this publication project's aim to move beyond the logic of the 'crisis'.…”

Section: About This Special Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

Children of the crisis: ethnographic perspectives on unaccompanied refugee youth in and en route to Europe

Lems

Oester

Strasser

2019

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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This special issue explores the ways unaccompanied refugee youth in and en route to Europe actively deal with the intensification of exclusionary practices towards migrants and refugees. In the Introduction we aim to set the scene for the individual articles by sketching the various political, historical and discursive levels at which the unaccompanied minor has come to be constructed as a crisis figure in Europe. We show how the sense of exceptionality attached to this figure translates into ambiguous and at times extremely contradictory social practices that have far-reaching effects on the lives of refugee youth. In paying attention to the conceptual flaws and dangers inherent in linking unaccompanied minors to ideas of crisis, we aim to demonstrate the importance of taking seriously the ways young people themselves make sense of the ascriptions, ideas and practices they are subject to. We suggest that ethnographically driven research that lays the focus on the ways young people actively navigate the ambiguous social landscapes they are confronted with can form an important means to move beyond the simplistic and ahistorical models of explanation put forward by frameworks of crisis.

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“…More broadly this positioning was indicative of other racialised gender stereotypes the young people were confronted with in their daily lives. These included the widely circulated ascriptions generated in media and public discourse about the supposed uncontrolled sexual danger emanating from African, Muslim and male asylum seekers (Otto andKaufmann 2018, Allsopp 2017), or the supposed oppression, weakness and abuse of female asylum seekers.…”

Section: Positionality In the Research Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methodological innovations, reflections and dilemmas: the hidden sides of research with migrant young people classified as unaccompanied minors

Chase

Otto

Belloni

et al. 2019

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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This paper offers some behind-the-scenes insights drawn from the collective fieldwork experiences of the contributors to this Special Issue. These include reflections on: how decisions about modes of accessing research participants fundamentally shape the research process and outcomes; the pitfalls of only focusing on young people's migratory experiences while ignoring the multiple other dimensions to their lives; how we can best capture and represent young people's often paradoxical vulnerability and agency; the relative merits of methodological innovations increasingly integrated into work with marginalised and hard to reach communities; and, finally, our own positionality when conducting research with migrant young people and the importance of taking account of how our own subjective, political, philosophical and ethical standpoints influence our interactions throughout our research endeavours. These contributions seek to promote greater reflexivity and transparency among academics conducting ethnographically driven research with young people in the context of forced migration.

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Children, adults or both? Negotiating adult minors and interests in a state care facility in Malta

Cited by 14 publications

References 26 publications

Vulnerability-Making at Europe’s Edge: How Policies, Documents, and Spatiality Intra-Act in the Context of Young Refugees

Vulnerability-Making at Europe’s Edge: How Policies, Documents, and Spatiality Intra-Act in the Context of Young Refugees

Children of the crisis: ethnographic perspectives on unaccompanied refugee youth in and en route to Europe

Methodological innovations, reflections and dilemmas: the hidden sides of research with migrant young people classified as unaccompanied minors

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