Resumen de Unaccompanied Migrant Minors: Vulnerable and Voiceless
Thousands of minors are migrating unaccompanied to high-income countries. This paper focuses on unaccompanied migrant minors from the Global South to Europe. The principle of "the best interest of the child", enshrined in international and national law, provides the basis for protecting minors, but is reconfigured through practices of outsourcing services that are often not translated into positive results for the well-being of children. In fact, state institutions and non-governmental actors often find themselves enveloped in a complex, contradictory and costly bureaucratic procedure that fails to give due consideration to the best interest and leaves the children surrendered, defeated by the lack of access to the system of protection due.
This document seeks to address precisely this situation. In particular, children’s rights are a cross-sectorial field of law, but the duality of the legal status of unaccompanied minor and asylum seekers is often forgotten by European States. The research question is “To what extent and by whom is the right of the child to be heard?" The analysis is carried out for the preparation of this paper concentrated on three methodological resources: (a) I provide an overview of international, European, and national law mapping the existing domestic law framework in light of benchmarks set out by the human rights instruments. (b) I review reports and documents issued by international governmental and non-governmental organisations and the consultation of secondary literature on the subject. (c) I give the experience provided by participant observation research carried out by the paper-giver in a Caritas Refugees Centre.
The present paper aims to prove that the application of article 12 of the UNCRC in the reception process provides the agency with the minor, fundamental in the integration process.
In the vision of children’s ‘living rights, the transition to adulthood is conditioned and the "best interests" are reshaped according, to the local actors involved.
Understanding childhood as a changeable part of society also implies recognition that how the society rises children, and the choice children make, do not shape only their future, but also the entire society.
