Abstract
What normative assumptions of childhood and migration inform policies focused on the children of immigrants and ‘migrant’ children? How do young people exercise agency through organisation and ethnic activities in destination countries? How do youth activities and agency interact with family struggles to maintain ethnic traditions and transnational belonging? How does identity as a child migrant or a child of an immigrant shape children’s experiences, life chances, identities and personalities? These questions are critical to understanding contemporary childhoods in the era of globalisation and neoliberal migration regimes. Contested Childhoods: Growing Up in Migrancy, Migration, Governance, Identities examines transnational families in which children identify with more than one geographic location and therefore experience transnational social fields. The book explores not only the unique experiences of migrant children, but also those of non-migrant children situated within a social space known as ‘migrancy’ (p. 8).
Migration is typically perceived as an adult or migrant worker activity. Consequently, children are often labelled as ‘economic dependents’ or ‘passive victims’ of movement, whose own everyday life experiences are overlooked (White et al., 2011). The book argues that while children may be seen as victims of migration or trafficking, they are in fact actors who play a crucial role in migration processes, including family decision-making. Moreover, movement in the age of globalisation affects family formation and transnational practices that influence childhood and children’s identity construction.
The book uses two concepts to frame the ways in which local and national policies and actions impact childhood and migration processes: Contested Childhoods and Growing Up in Migrancy. Children growing up in the social space of ‘migrancy’ must negotiate different subjectivities of being a ‘migrant’ child or non-migrant because their parents or grandparents were or are migrants (p. 8). The book poses critical questions to clarify who are the children being discussed and how diverse children encounter migration, governance and identity processes. With multiple statuses or structural positioning – as a child, refugee, or asylum seeker – children may be granted or denied access to cross boundaries or move within social spaces amid contested childhoods. Both in their countries of origin and in their destination countries, children encounter various local and national policies and family and childhood practices that may label them variously as displaced, at-risk or autonomous individuals. Thus, childhood becomes a field conceptually, morally and politically ‘contested’ (p. 6).
The book’s ten chapters are divided into three parts: The introductory chapter critically engages seminal literature on childhood and migration in the context of globalisation and political and legal processes. Moreover, it discusses childhood and migration expectations and how children are situated in migration policy and research. Subsequent chapters offer accounts of the contested meaning of childhood, including the normative assumptions linked to migrant children. The authors outline issues surrounding representation of ‘the forcibly trafficked child’ and the marginalisation of child refugees. They also examine what it means to be a member of an ethnic minority community in a destination society, and how state policies influence civic participation and identity construction for young people from immigrant backgrounds.
The book’s final chapter draws on the twin concepts for further analysis and identifies their theoretical and policy implications. The conclusion highlights the significance of opening up the ‘space of migrancy’ to understand society’s paternalistic power and young people’s resistance to interventions (p. 180). In addition, the editors point out two theoretical implications for future research on children’s experience of migrancy (p. 180). First, rather than merely focusing on the definitions of ‘childhood’ or ‘migrancy’, we stand to gain profound insights through greater exploration of the interconnected patterns and relationships between practices of childhood, migrancy and other contextual issues that affect migrant children and the children of immigrant’s lives. Secondly, it is vital to explore the dynamics and processes that establish these patterns and interconnections, which enable both researchers and practitioners to understand how relationships, trends, ideas and practices of childhood and migrancy as well as social phenomena (e.g. identity formation) are created, connected, and evolve or change within particular contexts.
This book is timely and significant, as the empirical evidence presented provides a clear understanding of how ideas and practices of childhood are impacted by public policies. Indeed, the authors’ analyses underscore the diversity of childhood and the varied statuses children may carry in destination countries. The contributors offer multiple contextual perspectives on the experiences of migrant children and the children of immigrants in Europe and America. The accounts provide compelling empirical insights into ways in which state-ascribed labels of ‘hapless victim’, ‘second generation’, ‘child’, ‘refugee’ or ‘asylum seeker’ construct identity. Such labels serve only to further pathologize and racialize migrant children and the children of immigrants, with implications for their rights and future prospects in a destination country (p. 9). Furthermore, the book’s empirical chapters offer a vivid account of ethnographic methods applied in the research. These include in-depth interviews, participant observation and ‘deep hangout’, all of which are plausible in research with children and serve to situate childhoods in the context of place. Taken together, the authors effectively establish ‘migrancy’ as a social space where childhood remains contested based on policies, ideas and practices imposed by the state, family and social organisations. More importantly, the book moves beyond traditional child migration studies which position victimhood as a point of departure, instead emphasising children’s agency amid structural conditions, either as migrants or children of immigrants.
The book is not only useful to the field of migration studies, but also to the field of childhood studies. The application of the twin concepts and empirical evidence on the situation of children in western destination countries, mainly Europe and United States of America, is useful to scholars in both spheres. It can stimulate new thinking on both the boundaries and intersections of contemporary neoliberal globalised migration and childhood practices (Boampong, 2020). The book’s focus on public policies and how they affect childhoods and migration processes will make it invaluable for those in geography, development studies or public policy. For policymakers and development practitioners, there is existing and compelling evidence demonstrating the impacts of misrepresentation of ‘the child’ and racialised labels on children’s present and future lives both today. This data serves to remind us of how much work is still to be done to facilitate economic, social and cultural rights of diverse children and young people. Moving forward, these theoretical concepts can be applied in south-south migration corridors to understand processes and patterns influencing childhood practices in developing countries. Ultimately, Contested Childhoods: Growing Up in Migrancy, Migration, Governance, Identities shines a timely spotlight on the underexamined ways in which children shape and are shaped by migration and the identities it confers. The book’s arguments are well-supported by empirical evidence, and the conceptual framing of ‘contested childhoods’ and ‘growing up in migrancy’ make this a recommended read for both researchers and practitioners.
