Authors: Dr Elaine Chase and Jennifer Allsopp
Publication date: November 2013
Young people subject to immigration control in Europe face a range of possible outcomes as they make the transition to ‘adulthood’ at the age of 18. The majority of those institutionalised as unaccompanied minors are denied refugee status or humanitarian protection but are afforded time-limited welfare support and care under provisions of discretionary leave - temporarily tolerated on the cusp of, but not admitted as members of, the national community. Others seek to avoid entering into any relationship with the state and live undocumented.
Irrespective of their points of entry, for most young people, turning 18 marks a significant repositioning of their relationship with the state and a diminution of rights and entitlements; they change from rights holders as ‘children’, for whom states must consider the ‘best interests’, to young people subjected to a varied array of classifications who are hard to position in the ‘national order of things’ (Malkki 1995). Young people frequently end up in limbo, uncertain of whether or not they will be able to remain in the country of immigration/asylum and for how long.
This paper at once outlines and critically analyses the dissonance between how European policies formulate and impose a set of future options for independent migrant young people who are subject to immigration control as they transition to ‘adulthood’, and what is known about young people’s own conceptualisations of their futures and how they intend to realise them.
In so doing, it questions the normative assumptions on which such policies are founded, arguing that the evident tensions in how these different futures are constructed and executed reflect not simply a miscomprehension of the way in which independent young migrants experience belonging and conceive of their futures - and what, as such constitutes a ‘durable solution’ for them in this context - but a strategy of political expediency to shift the burden of responsibility for them elsewhere. Avenues for future research are highlighted, including the need to move beyond the ‘child’-‘adult’ dichotomy and give more attention to the interaction between these two stages of life.