The limits of freedom: migration as a space of freedom and loneliness among Afghan unaccompanied migrant youth

Abstract

This article examines how unaccompanied minors from Afghanistan experience migration as a space of both freedom and loneliness situated between competing moral frameworks: family projects, neoliberal discourses of independence, and a quest for new ways of being. While migration is devised as a family strategy to financially sustain the household, it also creates new desires for young people: to study, to have fun, and to fulfil individual goals. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the UK, I analyse how youth find themselves caught in moments of moral crisis as both an ethical dilemma and an experience of selftransformation-caused by the tensions between family expectations, social policies, and a search for independence. I argue that young people often struggle to find the moral ground to exercise freedom and to make the good choice, without the guidance of their parents and within neoliberal politics of self-governance. This article considers youth's aspirations and imaginaries of 'good life' within different communities of belonging, and it highlights the importance of the role of kinship for understanding how youth conceptualise their future, and ultimately exercise choice.

Remittances and morality: family obligations, development, and the ethical demands of migration

“…Our hope is to inspire future research to deploy these analytical tools to uncover the extent and nature of the problematizations that remittances bring about in a variety of contexts of migration, and to do so in ways that are attuned to, and able to account for, the moral reasonings that inform such processes. The plurality of moral narratives and demands, their overlaps, simultaneities, and uneven influences, is a growing feature of life in the contemporary world, all the more so in the transnational contexts of mobility fostered by migration, prone as these are to engender tensions between competing desires, aspirations, values, and obligations (Pine 2014;Meloni 2020;Scalettaris et al 2019). What the anthropology of ethics and morality can help us spotlight and uncover are the paths through which such demands and narratives circulate, the institutions, public discourses, and more intimate communities of enunciation (e.g.…”

“…e.g. Pribilsky 2012;Meloni 2020;Scalettaris et al 2019). Having addressed the ethical demands of remittances as a duty and family obligation, we now turn to moral controversies on their 'proper' use, including the competing understandings of 'development' they help reveal.…”

Across the threshold: negotiations of deservingness among unaccompanied young refugees in Sweden

“…That Idris orients himself towards and away from certain relationships and places may be understood against the backdrop of his migration experience and aspirations of having a 'better life' than he would have had in Somalia, or that he describes the youngsters he refers to as having. Simon also talks about staying out of trouble by orienting away from certain settings, and describes how his parents always motivate him to stay 'on the right path' (Meloni 2020). By avoiding what they depict as negative influences, both Idris and Simon construct themselves as a diligent, law-abiding young men who take responsibility for their situations and futures.…”

Across the threshold: negotiations of deservingness among unaccompanied young refugees in Sweden

“…That Idris orients himself towards and away from certain relationships and places may be understood against the backdrop of his migration experience and aspirations of having a 'better life' than he would have had in Somalia, or that he describes the youngsters he refers to as having. Simon also talks about staying out of trouble by orienting away from certain settings, and describes how his parents always motivate him to stay 'on the right path' (Meloni 2019). By avoiding what they depict as negative influences, both Idris and Simon construct themselves as a diligent, law-abiding young men who take responsibility for their situations and futures.…”