State Responses to Unaccompanied Youth Migration: Lessons from Argentina

• In Event: Child and Youth Migration in and through the Americas

Abstract

The recent crisis of family separation in the United States has made evident the more general socio-legal deficiencies in how the US responds to the challenges posed by the international migration of children and youth. This paper looks south to examine alternatives to the detention and criminalization of migrant youth so prevalent in the United States and across other countries of the global north.

In 2008, the Argentine state developed a multi-agency and interdisciplinary program involving both the state and civil society, to respond to rising numbers of unaccompanied youth from Western Africa. The program, and a subsequent protocol for unaccompanied minors signed in 2011, have been highlighted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as a model for the region. Drawing from research with state actors and civil society leaders involved in the development and implementation of these efforts, I argue that the program reflects broader contradictions in the Argentine state’s response to migratory flows from the global south. As a result, it both signals transformative possibilities for re-imagining the reception of unaccompanied children and youth, and deep-seated limits that draw from and re-inscribe racialized and exclusionary narratives about nationhood, childhood, and innocence.

Author

• Maria Barbero, Florida International University