Youth and Migration. Criticism of Political Narratives

• In Event: Invited Session - Gazes on children, youth and generations in international migrations

Abstract

The singularities and projects of youth presently influence emigration, immigration and transmigration. Violence and migration are considered two common emergent practices of young persons who face precariousness and exclusion. However, youth are also immersed in a global migration of ideas (cases of political manifestations in different parts of the world), and there is a particular expansion of young women in migration that suggest that it is necessary to consider differences among young migrants and their practices. As gender, generation is a complex issue that requires more debate concerning its cultural, subjective and global dimensions. While a gender perspective is part of international and national political discourses on migration, a generational point of view is missing, so their ambiguous relation between vulnerability, protection and desire for autonomy is ignored.
The objective of the paper is to discuss how the contemporary young migrants are represented in United Nations’ and States’ political texts on international migration. Young persons might be considered as subjects of rights but not necessarily with their own language, their different types of inscriptions (such as gender, sexuality orientation, race and class) or, as subjects of their own desires and generational goals. I will analyze the report of the Global Commission on International Migration (2005), documents of the UN on 2013 (the year of the young migrant), as well as the recent debate to review the law on international migrants of the Brazilian Government. These political narratives will be discussed using a methodology of textual analysis for social research.

Author

• Mary Garcia Castro, Catholic University of Salvador