Leaving and Finding Home: Youth Migration and Family Reunification

• In Event: 3251 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 10. Migrant Youth

Abstract

Youth who migrate by themselves are designated as "unaccompanied" by the United States government. When they are detained by border enforcement, they are turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, who then makes decisions about the families or sponsors to whom the youth may be released. This system of family reunification is carried out by various social service agencies, and the family reunification workers are often individually dedicated to the best interest of youth and their families. However, family reunification is built upon the logics of crimmigration and racialized child welfare; thus, despite their best intentions, family reunification workers often further reify the very systems of inequality that they mean to work against. In this paper, I argue that the field of family reunification fails to respond adequately to the needs of youth who migrate by themselves based on four inaccurate understandings and practices. First, the field of family reunification mistakenly assumes that parents are always the initiators of migration and thus penalizes these parents for their perceived negligence. Second, family reunification decisions ignore the realities of transnational parenting, often judging families based on white, middle class values and lives. Finally, family reunification decisions fail to understand the complicated relationship between agency and vulnerability among youth, thus buckling upon displays of youth agency and failing to account for their actual vulnerabilities. Because of these faulty assumptions, the field of family reunification fails to truly respond to the needs of immigrant youth and their families.

Author

• Emily Navarro, Elmhurst College