“I worked in a trailer that ICE had set aside for conversations between the women and the attorneys. While we talked, their children, most of whom seemed to be between three and eight years old, played with a few toys on the floor. It was hard for me to get my head around the idea of a jail full of toddlers, but there they were.” For decades, advocates for refugee children and families have fought to end the U.S. government’s practice of jailing children and families for months, or even years, until overburdened immigration courts could rule on their claims for asylum. Baby Jails is the history of that legal and political struggle. Philip G. Schrag, the director of Georgetown University’s asylum law clinic, takes readers through thirty years of conflict over which refugee advocates resisted the detention of migrant children. The saga began during the Reagan administration when 15-year-old Jenny Lisette Flores languished in a Los Angeles motel that the government had turned into a makeshift jail by draining the swimming pool, barring the windows, and surrounding the building with barbed wire. What became known as the Flores Settlement Agreement was still at issue years later, when the Trump administration resorted to the forced separation of families after the courts would not allow long-term jailing of the children. Schrag provides recommendations for the reform of a system that has brought anguish and trauma to thousands of parents and children. Provocative and timely, Baby Jails exposes the ongoing struggle between the U.S. government and immigrant advocates over the duration and conditions of confinement of children who seek safety in America.

This book focuses on the migration of undocumented minors arriving recently to the United States and the European Union, flows that are often labeled ‘undocumented’, ‘illegal’, or ‘irregular’ and due to their sudden increase, they have been described in the media, policy circles, and scholarly work as a ‘surge’ or a ‘crisis’. Leading scholars examine the intricacies of the contexts that these minors encounter in the localities where they arrive, including the legal and ethical frameworks for protecting unaccompanied minors, governmental decisions about the ‘best interests’ of the children, these minors’ expressions of their own best interests or agency as they navigate immigration and social service systems, conditions in detention centers, and the health and social service needs in receiving communities. Though definitions and techniques for counting unaccompanied migrant minors differ between the U.S. and the EU, this book underscores the immigrant minors’ common vulnerabilities and strategies they adopt to protect themselves and improve their circumstances. At the same time, contributors to the volume highlight common challenges that both European and U.S. governments face as they develop policy strategies and legal mechanisms to attempt to balance the best interests of these children with national interests of the countries in which they settle. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Children are the victims of some of the most devastating examples of state-sanctioned and private human rights abuse. In increasing numbers, they are attempting to find international protection, and are forced to navigate complex administrative and legal processes that fail to take into account their distinct needs and vulnerabilities. The key challenges they face in establishing entitlement to refugee protection are their invisibility and the risk of incorrect assessment. Drawing on an extensive and original analysis of jurisprudence of leading common law jurisdictions, this book undertakes an assessment of the extent to which these challenges may be overcome by greater engagement between international refugee law and international law on the rights of the child. The result is the first comprehensive study on the manner in which these two mutually reinforcing legal regimes can interact to strengthen the protection of refugee children.

Unaccompanied minor migrants are underage migrants, who for various reasons leave their country and are separated from their parents or legal/customary guardians. Some of them live entirely by themselves, while others join their relatives or other adults in a foreign country. The concept of the best interests of a child is widely applied in international, national legal documents and several guidelines and often pertains to unaccompanied minor migrants given that they are separated from parents, who are not able to exercise their basic parental responsibilities. This book takes an in-depth look at the issues surrounding the best interests of the child in relation to unaccompanied minor migrants drawing on social, legal and political sciences in order to understand children’s rights not only as a matter of positive law but mainly as a social practice depending on personal biographies, community histories and social relations of power. The book tackles the interpretation of the rights of the child and the best interests principle in the case of unaccompanied minor migrants in Europe at political, legal and practical levels. In its first part the book considers theoretical aspects of children’s rights and the best interests of the child in relation to unaccompanied minor migrants. Adopting a critical approach to the implementation of the Convention of Rights of a Child authors nevertheless confirm its relevance for protecting minor migrants’ rights in practice. Authors deconstruct power relations residing within the discourses of children’s rights and best interests, demonstrating that these rights are constructed and decided upon by those in power who make decisions on behalf of those who do not possess authority. Authors further on explore normative and methodological aspects of Article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of a Child and its relevance for asylum and migration legislation. The second part of the book goes on to examine the actual legal framework related to unaccompanied minor migrants and implementation of children’s’ rights and their best interests in the reception, protection, asylum and return procedures. The case studies are based on from the empirical research, on interviews with key experts and unaccompanied minor migrants in Austria, France, Slovenia and United Kingdom. Examining age assessment procedures, unaccompanied minors’ survivals strategies and their everyday life in reception centres the contributors point to the discrepancy between the states’ obligations to take the best interest of the child into account when dealing with unaccompanied minor migrants, and the lack of formal procedures of best interest determination in practice. The chapters expose weaknesses and failures of institutionalized systems in selected European countries in dealing with unaccompanied children and young people on the move.

The essays that make up this book examine the question of child migration from legal, sociological and anthropological angles, examining the situation in both countries of origin and receiving countries.--Publisher's description.

A practical guide to assist legislators and legal practitioners in facilitating the reunification of refugee and migrant children with their families As a result of the sharp increase in the refugee and migrant population in recent years, many children and their families have experienced family separation. Member states are bound by various obligations related to family reunification, and the practical reunification of refugee and migrant children with their family members has proved complex. This handbook is a practical guide both to key legal standards and to promising practices in the field of family reunification and restoring family links. This publication is conceived as a point of reference for capacity-building material, technical assistance, co-operation projects and new practices for and with relevant authorities and institutions. It focuses on the reunification of families with children in the context of international migration, and in particular on reunification possibilities for unaccompanied and separated refugee and migrant children. It presents an overview of legal principles of human rights, children’s rights, refugee law and EU law relevant to family reunification and then discusses key features of family reunification procedures, with promising examples of law and practice and relevant applicable standards. The handbook contributes to achieving the objectives of the Action Plan on Protecting Refugee and Migrant Children in Europe (2017-2019).

In 2014, the arrest and detention of thousands of desperate young migrants at the southwest border of the United States exposed the U.S. government's shadowy juvenile detention system, which had escaped public scrutiny for years. This book tells the story of six Central American and Mexican children who are driven from their homes by violence and deprivation, and who embark alone, risking their lives, on the perilous journey north. They suffer coercive arrests at the U.S. border, then land in detention, only to be caught up in the battle to obtain legal status. Whose Child Am I? looks inside a vast, labyrinthine system by documenting in detail the experiences of these youths, beginning with their arrest by immigration authorities, their subsequent placement in federal detention, followed by their appearance in deportation proceedings and release from custody, and, finally, ending with their struggle to build new lives in the United States. This book shows how the U.S. government got into the business of detaining children and what we can learn from this troubled history.