Undocumented children and the right to education: illusory right or empowering lever?

Abstract

In migration control policies, social rights are often restricted in order to discourage immigration. The right to education seems to be the exception to the rule. This paper examines whether the right to education – beyond legal technical questions of the personal scope of application of human rights treaties, and the nature and the meaning of the right – is able to provide empowering leverage to undocumented children, or rather remains a lofty ideal on paper. Empirical data are drawn from the Belgian situation. Sociological research has shown that while quantitative educational democratisation has been highly successful, qualitative educational democratisation remains problematic. With regard to undocumented children, real-life limitations to school access (both individual and institutional), as well as psycho-social and institutional impediments during the schooling process seriously limit equal schooling and life opportunities. Unequal responses to organisational and pedagogical challenges that the presence of mobile students puts to schools, reinforce institutional factors of educational inequality for undocumented children. A key factor in understanding the tension between the legal recognition of the human right to education and daily realities is the outright contradiction between the approaches towards education on the one hand, and to migration more generally on the other hand. The latter is increasingly dominated by a securisation ideology.

Sacrificing parents on the altar of children's rights: Intergenerational struggles and rights in deportability

“…Wouter Vandenhole and colleagues define the shifting intergenerational positions of undocumented children interpreting for their parents as an 'intergenerational rupture' (Vandenhole et al, 2011) and a 'parentification' of the children who take on responsibilities for their families. The shifting intergenerational positions in the context of deportability is highlighted by looking at the example of Niklas, who discussed how he took on different subject positions in relation to different people.…”

Struggles over human rights in local government – the case of access to education for undocumented youth in Malmö, Sweden

“…Wouter Vandenhole et al (2011) in a study of the Belgian context, shows with regard to undocumented children that real-life limitations to school access (both individual and institutional), as well as psycho-social and institutional impediments during the schooling process seriously limit equal schooling and life opportunities. A key factor, conclude Vandenhole et al (2011), in understanding the tension between the legal recognition of the human right to education and daily realities for undocumented migrant children in school, is the outright contradiction between the approaches towards education on the one hand, and to migration more generally on the other hand. Furthermore, the right to education for children who reside unauthorised concerns also their peers, children who have residence permits.…”

The construction of “official outlaws”. Social-psychological and educational implications of a deterrent asylum policy

“…This poses the challenge for contemporary democracies of fully implementing this right when granted to children whose parents are staying in the country in an irregular manner (Laubentahl, 2011; Vandenhole et al, 2011). The extension of this right to children without legal status represents a reversal of the historical positions between parents and children in the migration in Switzerland.…”