Governing Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children: Border Violence, De-Subjectification and Humanitarianism in Southern European Borderlands

Abstract

The paper advances child-centred understandings of the governmentality of migration, drawing upon a British Academy funded study that ethnographically documented the lived experiences of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) in Southern European borderlands. The findings shed light on the ensemble of discourses, of actors-state (border police force) and non-state (professionals Non-Governmental and Intergovernmental Organisations)- and technologies of power of age misidentification, detention and pushbacks implicated in the governmentality of unaccompanied child migration. The unaccompanied minors' narratives powerfully illuminate their (de)subjectification, as they navigate conditions characterised by liminality and hopelessness. It is argued that unaccompanied child migration is governed through border violence and de-subjectification, mediated and often disrupted by humanitarian actors, thereby restoring UASC's sense of humanness and hope.