State of Control: Unknown Migrant Children

Recently, crises seem to predominate migration policymaking. They are commonly seen as critical junctures which precipitate major policy change. However, rather than creation of something new, crises can instead be vehicles for restoring the order of the past. This article examines the case of asylum-seeking unaccompanied minors in Sweden, where drastic changes have been made in the aftermath of the perceived “migration crisis” of 2015. Employing historical institutionalist theory, it examines decades of Swedish migration policymaking through analysis of state inquiries, law proposals and court rulings. It argues that the changes introduced 2015 were not qualitatively new, but rather a result of long-simmering tensions. These tensions lie between state attempts to control migration, particularly of “unidentifiable” individuals, and the rights accorded to migrants. The article shows that Sweden's migration framework of bounded universalism has gradually been altered by tools that categorize migrants, with implications for migration policy as a whole.     

Neighborhood context and racial/ethnic disparities in judicial processing

This article examines the importance of neighborhoods in shaping judicial processing and racial/ethnic disparities in court outcomes. Scholarship instructs that court actors—prosecutors, defense counsel, and judges—make legal decisions with local communities in mind. With the rise of geographic information in arrest records and mapping techniques, greater opportunities exist to evaluate the role of neighborhood context in the juvenile and criminal courts. This article synthesizes research on how the characteristics of neighborhoods where defendants live and/or offend influence judicial processing. Attention is given to how scholars define neighborhoods, identify key neighborhood conditions, and analyze the relationships among places and judicial decisions. Emphasis is also placed on unpacking debates on whether neighborhood conditions diminish or aggravate racial/ethnic disparities in court outcomes, such as incarceration decisions. Its analysis reveals findings of neighborhood effects as well as evidence of neighborhood characteristics widening racial/ethnic differences in judicial processing. This article thus encourages the consideration of community context in disparity studies and policy efforts to improve citizens' access to justice.     

论我国未成年人社区矫正体系的缺陷

未成年人本应是社区矫正的重点对象之一,但我国未成年人社区矫正体系未受到应有重视,存在着诸多问题。在立法上,未成年人社区矫正制度的独立性不足,适用的对象过于狭窄,未形成完整的法律体系。在司法实务中,未成年犯适用社区矫正的比例偏低,尤其是外地户籍未成年犯适用社区矫正的比例更低。在执法中,未成年人社区矫正机构尚未专门化,社区矫正工作人员未能实现专业化,也没有针对未成年人的个性化社区矫正项目。     

Denial of the child's right to counsel, voice, and participation in juvenile delinquency proceedings

Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child clearly recognizes the importance of the child's voice in judicial proceedings that affect him or her. Nowhere is the child's voice more important than in delinquency proceedings where decisions will be made about the child's liberty, rehabilitative prospects, and other important constitutional rights. This article examines the role of the child's voice in improving fairness and accuracy in adjudicatory and dispositional decisions and enhancing therapeutic outcomes for youth in juvenile court.     

Juvenile court judicial expertise and children's permanency outcomes

Using a combination of survey and administrative data, the current study examines the relationship between juvenile dependency court judicial expertise and children's permanency outcomes. Specifically, based on several behaviorally-anchored questions about judicial expertise and decision-making from a survey of attorneys representing foster children, we examine the respective relationships between jurisdiction-level judicial expertise and the rates of (a) exit to different types of permanency and (b) transition between various dependency court milestones. Results suggest that judicial expertise is positively related to the rates of some dependency court transitions (e.g., entry to dispositional order approval, termination of parental rights to adoption finalization). However, because of a lack of significant associations with the rates of other transitions (e.g., dispositional order approval to reunification), judicial expertise is not found to be statistically significantly associated with the rate of exit to permanency. The findings are consistent with a growing body of evidence that suggests that the influence of juvenile-court-related factors may be limited to specific court milestones that, by themselves, do not account for a substantial proportion of the overall variability in the population-level rates of permanency exit.     

Juvenile delinquency in Romania: a comparison between minors in prisons and re-education services

This article assesses the relationships between the individual and family characteristics of minors and juvenile delinquency in Romania. This cross-sectional study involved Romanian delinquent minors, 285 of whom were incarcerated in prisons in Romania and 280 subject to educational measures in re-education services in Romania. The multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that delinquency in incarcerated minors is associated with age, the offence committed, drug use, school dropout rates, recidivism, family alcoholism, the relationship with the biological parents, and the number of biological siblings. The study provides baseline data to identify at-risk minors in order to develop prevention programmes. We have adopted a public health approach to analysing delinquency and targets risk factors.     

Being alone or becoming lonely? The complexity of portraying ‘unaccompanied children’ as being alone in Sweden

Research has largely focused on ‘unaccompanied minors’ as a vulnerable group at risk of developing psychological problems that affect their health. Separation from primary caregivers is considered one of the foremost reasons for these young people’s proposed loneliness. Thus, the official and ascribed identity is that they are lonely and that loneliness is their major problem. But research has seldom given the young people themselves an opportunity to express their views in an attempt to trace the often situational, dynamic and complex nature of social and emotional life. The present article analyses how ‘unaccompanied minors’ talk about everyday life and themes related to loneliness. The authors followed 23 ‘unaccompanied minors’ during a period of a year through ethnographic observations and qualitative interviews. Results: Loneliness may occur when these young people experience lack of control in managing life and when they feel no one grieves for them; loneliness may be dealt with by creating new social contacts and friends; loneliness may be reinforced or reduced in encounters with representatives from ‘the system’; the young people may experience frustration about being repeatedly labeled ‘unaccompanied’ and they may create a resistance to and critical reflexivity towards this labeling.     

Communicative Openness in Adoption,Knowledge of Culture of Origin,and Adoption Identity in Adolescents Adopted From Romania

Eighty adolescents (39 male, mean age = 15.74 years) adopted from Romanian institutions in early childhood rated their own and their adoptive parents’ communicative openness, their knowledge of Romanian culture, and positive and negative feelings concerning birth parents, being placed for adoption, and being adopted. Adolescents were moderately comfortable talking about their adoptions but perceived their parents to be very comfortable. Nearly 40% reported no familiarity with Romanian culture. Youth with more familiarity with Romanian culture were more communicatively open and had more positive adoption identities. Greater communicative openness was also associated with more positive adoption identities. Gender and age at adoption differences are reported.     

An Equity Against the Law: Slave Rights and Creole Jurisprudence in Spanish America

There exists a long-standing historiographical mystery concerning the legal origins of the practice of Spanish American slaves suing their masters for freedom in royal courts. This essay highlights the importance of working judges' judicial philosophy in the formulation of this customary ‘right’. A close reading of two rare eighteenth-century judicial opinions from Lima, Peru, exposes the rationale of the judges, particularly the Creole judges, who admitted slave cases. High court minister Pedro José Bravo de Lagunas y Castilla considered two legal issues that made slavery distinctive in the region: the right to self-purchase and grants of conditional liberty. In a 1746 letter, the judge rendered a relatively liberal opinion on slaves' legal rights by reading Creoles' own political ‘liberty’ into freedom suits. But as Lima's slaves increasingly entered the secular court system, his judicial philosophy would contract.     

Juvenile court pathways to legal permanence for children in substitute care

Using administrative data describing the contemporaneous substitute care and juvenile court histories of 8116 children entering substitute care in Cook county Illinois, this study examines children's pathways to legal permanence. Specifically, by parsing children's exit to permanence by its constituent legal milestones, and examining the extent to which variability in the rates of these milestones are attributable to the court calendar (i.e., judge) and child levels, respectively, this study attempts to pinpoint the primary sources of variability in children's pathways to legal permanence. Results suggest that the transitions between certain legal milestones (e.g., disposition to reunification, disposition to TPR) account for a majority of the variability in children's exit to permanence. Results also suggest that a moderate amount of variability in permanency rates is attributable to court calendars, but that the magnitude of calendar-level influence varies considerably across legal milestone transitions; for some transitions (e.g., TPR to adoption finalization), calendar-level influence is effectively zero, whereas for other transitions (e.g., entry to dispositional order), calendar-level influence seems to eclipse the influence of observed child-level characteristics. Implications for child welfare and juvenile court scholarship, policy, and practice are discussed.     

Everyday negotiations of belonging - making Mexican masks together with unaccompanied minors in Finland

In this paper we discuss how art workshops can be used to examine dimensions of belonging. We draw on our findings of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork with unaccompanied refugee minors in Finland. The practical aim of the art project was to offer a platform for transcultural communication and interaction, and to support mutual understanding and solidarity among the refugee minors and Finnish pupils. The collaborative ethnographic approach gave us an opportunity to meet the young people through working together and be equally active members of the group sharing the same classroom. Theoretically we aim to enlarge the understanding of the sense of belonging and the role of the subjective agency of the unaccompanied minors, including everyday participation. We highlight the practices through which the minors can be supported in an embracing manner in their everyday lives in new host societies.     

Juvenile Courts and Competency to Stand Trial

This article reviews the recent development of juvenile competency to stand trial (CST) policies across the United States in light of the inherent contradiction of this due process procedure in a separate juvenile court that is premised on the incompetence of youth. The article draws on existing CST legal doctrine and psycho‐legal research to demonstrate the need for sociolegal research to better understand who gains access to the CST process, CST decisions, and how CST may influence subsequent case processing decisions. Utilizing CST as an adopted formal policy from criminal court and an exploratory case study, I demonstrate the difficulties facing how court actors manage the role of youthfulness and culpability for CST decision‐making in contemporary juvenile courts. Overall, both quantitative and qualitative research is needed to examine whether court actors’ practice of CST serves to further deconstruct or reinforce the juvenile court’s rehabilitative ideal.     

Refugee Children in Wales: Coping and Adaptation in the Face of Adversity

This article aims to makes a contribution to redressing a methodological and theoretical imbalance in existing research on refugee and asylum‐seeking children. It draws on two qualitative studies from Wales with children and young people. The samples include unaccompanied minors and children living with families as well as both children who are supported in the asylum system and those who have been granted refugee status. The focus on ecological post‐migratory stressors and coping processes that young people identify as being integral to their well‐being and, once granted status, to how they adapt to settlement includes a selective study of some of the sources of resilience referred to in the children's talk. Recognising the interplay between individual and environment leads to a discussion of both personal attributes and collective cultural identities.     

Falling through the cracks: The paradox of post-release services for unaccompanied child migrants

Immigrant children who enter the United States unaccompanied by a parent or guardian and without legal status are defined by the US legal system as unaccompanied alien children (UAC). Limited data from advocacy organizations has found that UAC are leaving their countries of origin because of threats of violence and privation, but virtually no research examines how they integrate into their communities and families once they settle in the US. Drawing on interview data with UAC and case studies of four programs contracted to provide services for them, this exploratory study explores UAC's unique barriers to integration and the effectiveness of these programs to help them adapt. Findings emphasize the impact of geography and the uneven safety net in immigrant new destinations, such as suburbs and the American southeast. Implications for social work practitioners and policymakers are discussed.     

DACA and the Surge in Unaccompanied Minors at the US‐Mexico Border

Apprehensions of unaccompanied minors from Central American countries have been on the rise since 2008, but news reports particularly caught up with the increase after 2012. Some politicians posited that the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) contributed to the surge by creating the expectation that children would be allowed to stay in the country. Immigration advocates, however, believe that the two are not related. Using data on apprehensions of unaccompanied minors by border patrol sector, nationality and year, we find that DACA did not significantly impact those apprehensions. Rather, the 2008 Williams Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, along with violence in the originating countries and economic conditions in both the countries of origin and the United States, emerge as some of the key determinants of the recent surge in unaccompanied minors apprehended along the southwest US‐Mexico border.     

Voices rarely heard: Personal construct assessments of Sub-Saharan unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee youth in England

Unaccompanied refugee minors are particularly vulnerable to stress and risk during the journey to asylum-countries and in the post-migration environment. This study aimed to determine ways in which positive post-migration development and integration could be achieved for this group. Thematic analysis of interviews based on Personal Construct assessments reflected young asylum-seeking and refugee individuals' experiences of their social situation in England. Participants emphasised the importance of social support as a means for hope, as an escape from distress and as an opportunity to form relationships that resembled family bonds. They expressed their desire to move forward and to achieve their goals, as well as their fear of rejections and issues related to trust. The participants' voices illustrate areas where gaps remain to be filled in terms of providing sufficient support to unaccompanied minors and youth in England, with implications for future research, policy and practice. The importance of providing unaccompanied children and youth with an opportunity to engage in meaningful activities with peers and adults is demonstrated and the need to provide initiatives that seek to prevent discrimination is highlighted.     

Legal indigeneity: knowledge,legal discourse and the construction of indigenous identity in Colombia

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the creation of the indigenous legal subject in Colombia from the perspective of legal-knowledge regimens. It analyses the turn from medical psychiatric assessments to indigenous identity to anthropological discourses on cultural differences. This article describes the legal construction of the indigenous subject in two historical moments. On the one hand, in the context of formation of the nation-state in Colombia and, on the other hand, in the transition towards contemporary multicultural constitutionalism within which legal discourse creates taxonomies for the definition of identities and the recognition of special rights to people who claim to be indigenous.     

Leaving Care with “Cultural Baggage”: The Development of an Identity within a Transnational Space

Abstract

The transition from care is a critical phase for care leavers in general, and even more complex for those who have arrived in Sweden as unaccompanied minors and belong to an ethnic minority group. The aim of this article is to examine unaccompanied minors' experiences of leaving care, and to explore the experience in relation to perceptions about ethnicity and culture within a transnational space. Interviews were completed with 11 care leavers who had been received in Sweden as unaccompanied minors. The results show that these young people have to deal with multiple adjustments. Conquering obstacles as care leavers involves not only resolving general issues such as reintegration into society, but also adjustment to perceived and created views of how to become Swedish. From the young people's point of view, this seems to be necessary to make a successful transition from care into adulthood.