 Coming of Age in the Border Regime: The End of Vulnerability?Laura Otto
Migration Letters, 2020, vol. 17, issue 3, 425-432 Abstract: International and national legal frameworks clearly define who an ‘unaccompanied minor’ or ‘separated child’ is in the context of forced migration: a young person under eighteen years of age without the presence of a legal guardian. The category of the ‘unaccompanied minor’ is inextricably linked with vulnerability, suggesting that young refugees are not vulnerable once they are legally considered to be adults. My ethnographic fieldwork in Malta reveals, however, that young refugees do not find themselves in positions in which they are either vulnerable or non-vulnerable, but that both––being considered as a minor and being considered an adult––entail different forms of vulnerability. I thus argue that vulnerability is not merely “inscribed” or “embodied”, but that it is also the outcome of processes of vulnerabilization, whereby refugees are made vulnerable. These processes of vulnerabilization need to be understood as a result of individuals’ (non-)action. Keywords: unaccompanied minors; vulnerability; categorization; refugees; coming of age (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mig:journl:v:17:y:2020:i:3:p:425-432 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Migration Letters is currently edited by Kittisak Jermsittiparsert More articles in Migration Letters from Migration Letters |
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