This thesis is a qualitative case study that explores the experiences of unaccompanied Afghan asylum seeking minors in Greece – a largely neglected area empirically, in migration-related social science research – despite the fact that migration has been an issue of mounting concern recently. The study sets out to bridge this gap hence, to provide insights of the paths of young people as individuals in their own right, and of the dynamics and processes of their forced migrations. The research contributes to contemporary debates about migration and childhood. The thesis takes a broader approach that highlights the connections across borders and covers the multiple facets of unaccompanied minors’ experiences and feelings; pre-exile, during journeys, and on arrival in Greece. The future plans and motivations of the young respondents are also discussed. Information in relation to young respondent’s experiences, emotions and thoughts was collected in a series of in-depth interviews, focus groups and participatory activities. Data was also gathered by professionals and public figures with the aim to identify how these young people are treated and perceived inside and outside of the reception centres in Greece. The data indicates that these young respondents are deeply and negatively affected by experiences of loss, separation, discrimination, abuse, and long-lasting hardships to be found throughout their histories of movement. Their accounts are renegotiated tales where notions of belonging and identity are shaped along the way, and the boundaries drawn around childhood and adulthood are often fragile and fluid. The events of young people’s movements are reported as having been poignant, rendering them in a continuous, transitional state of existence. This stage ‘in between’, it is argued to be intricately entangled with the prolonged political insecurity which in some instances, extents to the condition of statelessness. The analysis of young respondents’ experiences revealed an overt gap between entitlements which are theoretically attributed to unaccompanied minors, regarding their social, political and legal rights – irrespective of their legal status – and pragmatic barriers to be found on the ground; on the streets, at borders, in detention, in police stations, and in reception centres, these young people are imperilled to the process of dehumanization. This process is understood to be a product of social and political violence implicated in local and transnational contexts. A combination of structural factors and practices has been found to be compounded by inhuman actions such as; the commodification process, the classification process, poverty, stigmatization, institutional racism and the ambiguity of political status. The findings further indicated that young respondents had mixed and distinct feelings of their experiences and responded to the process of dehumanization in very different ways; some developed robust resilient mechanisms along the way and formed important social networks for their survival and others felt powerless, and incapable mentally to lead their lives. The data indicated that the type of care and support varied significantly among the reception centres. There was a spectrum of attitudes towards the presence of the young respondents, showing sympathy and welcoming responses but also prejudice, stereotypes and xenophobia. These appeared at professional, government and public levels. Implications are discussed in relation to the punitive policies and practices that demoralise the rights and needs of the young people, hence potential strategies are suggested for reforming aspects of the child welfare/asylum system. The thesis concludes that these young respondents have a uniquely strong claim to social and political rights that will give them back their lost ‘ordinariness’.

7049 unaccompanied children seeked asylum in Sweden during 2014 and 15% of them were girls. The aim of the study was to highlight unaccompanied girls arriving in Sweden and examine their views on integration and belonging. Interviews were undertaken with five former unaccompanied girls in the age of 18-24 through a qualitative approach. The result was analyzed abductively through Rainer Bauböcks’ (1996) Model of Civil Society, David Morgans’ (2011) concept of Family Practices and through Steven Vertovecs’ (2001) concept of Transnational Social Room. Four out of five respondents described that they felt included in the Swedish society. However, according to Bauböcks’ model, the respondents were rather in the process of becoming integrated, since they did not yet fulfill all criteria for integration. Furthermore, the respondents expressed that education was of high value in order to get a job, get integrated and to become independent. Relationships with significant people was also a strong contributing factor to their sense of belonging. The position in transnational social rooms varied among the respondents.

The language used in newspaper articles affects the way readers internalize issues presented; thus, when negative language is used, readers' perceptions of issues may be influenced negatively. One issue for which language and word choice are particularly important is immigration, and historically, reporters have employed a variety of metaphors while writing about immigration in the United States. During the summer of 2014, there was a noticeable outpouring of newspaper coverage relating to thousands of unaccompanied Central American minors crossing undocumented to the United States. Although undocumented migration from Central American has been a common occurrence for decades, the number of children crossing during this time period was unusual. Through the conceptual frameworks of "othering" and moral geographies, this study uses content analysis to identify terminology and metaphors used in local newspapers close to the U.S.-Mexico border, state-wide coverage along the U.S.-Mexico border, and two national newspapers. Water-related metaphors were the most frequently used type of metaphor. There was no correlation between the perspective of the article toward the migrants and the use of metaphors. Thus, newspaper articles present metaphors as neutral terms, although the connotation of these metaphors may be very negative, implying danger or harm. This demonstrates an underlying contradiction between neutral newspaper coverage of an issue, such as immigration, and charged language, which can lead readers to visualize immigrants as dangers to communities and lifestyles, perpetuating the idea of immigrants as "others" who threaten societal norms, even while reading an article that is not overtly negative.

The aim of the study is to explore the factor that impact the social integration of unaccompaniedminors into Swedish society with a focus on the roles play by a voluntary organization Vän I Umeåin assisting these children who seek refuge in Swedish society. These minors have often beenthrough a lot in attempting to get into the country and those who managed to get in in are facedwith the problems of integrating into a new environment. They face challenges such as languagebarriers, weather conditions that they are not used to, and migration policies that sometimes makeit difficult for them to be accepted into the countries. A qualitative study was made with an in-depth interview conducted with four participants, who have been actively involved in assistingunaccompanied minors for the past 10 years. The results showed that factors such as security,family support, friendship, language acquisition, sporting activities, migration policy, andassimilation are important factors for the social integration of unaccompanied minors into Swedishsociety. Social work intervention is also very important in leading these struggles of assistingunaccompanied minors to get socially integrated into a new society.

In the last decade the Italian authorities have tried to adapt themselves to a united European asylum system, in the European Union, through the adoption of legal reforms, intended to improve the conditions of asylum seekers in Italy. Despite these reforms, asylum seekers and refugee’s living conditions are far from covered. The aim of this study is to explore the different functions of social work in the Italian reception process regarding unaccompanied minors and their implications on the wellbeing of the unaccompanied minors. This study was conducted through several interviews with both social workers, which in some way worked with unaccompanied minors, and the unaccompanied minors themselves. This study shows that social workers emphasize the lack of resources, knowledge and the incompleteness of the asylum laws in Italy. This causes great problems that jeopardize the quality and possibilities of social work. The unaccompanied minors on the other hand emphasized the importance of school and the existence of sports in their life as primary means of integration to the new society. From the social workers accounts it becomes clear that large parts of the Italian migration system needs improvement and that the current laws and regulations are not applied all over Italy due to the lack of economic resources and overall knowledge in the matter, all over the country. Even if there is lot to desire, both workers and minors we have interviewed have expressed that there are many aspects that do work.

abstract: Immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers. Three words describing the same group of people. Individuals seeking a better, safer life. Western media is focused right now, in 2016, on the humanitarian crisis from the Middle East to the European Union; just like two years ago it was centered on the huge numbers of unaccompanied minors immigrating into the United States from Central America. Media changes its focus but problems do not end with a change of headlines. Unaccompanied minors are the most vulnerable population looking for asylum. This study looks at two different immigration flows of unaccompanied minors: one from the Middle East going to the European Union; and the other one from Central America to the United States. This research finds similarities and differences between these two flows of migrant children related to the reasons why they leave their countries of origin, their experiences during the trip to the destination countries, the asylum process, the legal status of these children and how these minors are perceived by societies in the destination countries. Using a human rights law framework, this thesis will explore the continuum of violations of human rights that these children endure on their journey from their origin countries to their destination states. Through interviews with former and current direct providers of unaccompanied minors seeking asylum, previous scholarly work, documentaries and news articles on the subject, it will make clear that these two flows of children fleeing to different destinations have much more in common than what may be initially perceived. This emergent, exploratory and inductive qualitative research will bring light to asylum law and question why the social responsibility to protect children seems to skip the most vulnerable ones: unaccompanied minors seeking asylum. / Dissertation/Thesis / Documents to be included in addendum / Masters Thesis Social Justice and Human Rights 2016

The topic of migration has become one that is gaining notice in society. With the number of migrants, asylum seekers, unaccompanied minors and child refugees rising rapidly in the past few years it has become a theme of great importance with global reach. These migratory fluxes blur the boundaries between voluntary and forced migration which were previously regarded as separate notions. The media plays a powerful role when it comes to define such concepts as well as creating representations of these populations and shaping the public perception of these individuals. Through this thesis, the representations of unaccompanied asylum seeking minors and refugees constructed by the Portuguese media will be analysed using discourse analysis. The aim is to create knowledge about the representations of unaccompanied asylum seeking minors and refugees in the Portuguese media as this means of communication is an important voice in the public and political debate concerning these populations. The results show that there are several dichotomies regarding the representations of unaccompanied asylum seeking minors and refugees in the Portuguese media. Young migrants are represented both as security seekers and causes of insecurity, victims and survivors, passive agents which lack agency and active agents who use their agency to leave their home countries, as well as people worth supporting and people who had enough support. Discourse analysis provides information regarding the discourses used in the Portuguese media to represent unaccompanied asylum seeking minors and refugees as well as the context in which the articles were written. Finally, there are several representations of unaccompanied asylum seeking minors and refugees in the Portuguese media, yet the ones whose discourse is stronger, in the five chosen articles, are the of young migrants as security seekers, victims that are worth being supported and that are mostly active agents in their journeys.

The purpose of our study is to investigate young unaccompanied childrens’ experiencesof integration and their coping strategies used to deal with integration challenges in thenew country. The study also draws attention to professionals' experiences of difficulties and opportunities of integration work with unaccompanied children and young people.  We applied a knowledge overview, that comprised a phenomenological analysis, based  on thirteen articles that were examined on the basis of a criteria template. The results  were analyzed with Folkman and Lazarus coping theory and Bronfenbrenners developmental ecology theory.Comprehensively, our results show that unaccompanied children and young people dodesire to establish contacts with the majority population but experience difficulties due to segregation, cultural barriers, prejudice and racism in school. Furthermore,  supportive relationships with housing staff and professionals, and mainly peers from the  same ethnic group, seem to play a significant role in their well-being and integration process. They also show high motivation and determination to learn the new languageand to educate themselves, which they emphasize is the key to successful integration inthe new country. The results indicate however, that mental illness, few opportunities for language training and organizational barriers in school are barriers to achieveintegration. Comparing the past with one's current life situation and seeking distractions,particularly by spending time with friends and engaging in meaningful activities, are  key coping strategies that unaccompanied minors use to deal with difficulties in life.  Further, religion as a coping strategy played a significant role in their well-being andability to cope with problems.

Cette thèse propose d'étudier une catégorie d'intervention des politiques migratoires : les mineurs non accompagnés. À rebours d'une vaste littérature qui traite les mineurs non accompagnés en tant que groupe – posant des questions concernant leurs trajectoires migratoires, leur résilience plutôt que leur vulnérabilité, ou l'efficacité des politiques censées les protéger –, cette thèse s'inscrit dans une approche constructiviste et interroge les processus par lesquels la catégorie « mineurs non accompagnés » est donnée à voir. Nous analysons la conception de la catégorie juridico-administrative dans les politiques européennes ; les processus de transnationalisation dont elle fait l'objet, et les pratiques d'identification et de surveillance par lesquelles elles est mise en œuvre. La thèse couvre une période de vingt ans et investit trois terrains d'enquête. Tout d'abord, les forums et les arènes européens à Bruxelles, où se dégagent les représentations compassionnelles, et les logiques sur lesquels reposent les concurrences entre acteurs de la protection de l'enfance, des migrations et de la sécurité pour la définition légitime de la catégorie mineurs non accompagnés. Au delà des frontières européennes, l'Égypte est signalée par les acteurs transnationaux comme un « pays d'origine » de mineurs non accompagnés. Le troisième terrain a été mené à une frontière de l'Union européenne. Il prend en compte le cas de Catane (dans l'est de la Sicile) où sont données à voir les opérations d'individuation des mineurs non accompagnés arrivant par mer par les agents sécuritaires et humanitaires des migrations / In this dissertation, we study the career of a target category within migration policies, i.e. unaccompanied minors. Scholars have mostly dealt with unaccompanied minors as an existing group, asking, among others, what their migration trajectories are, whether they are resilient or vulnerable, and the efficiency of protection policies targeting them. Adopting a constructivist approach, this dissertation asks instead: what are the processes through which the category “unaccompanied minors” is actually incorporated into public policy and made visible? Here, its conception as a legal category within European policies is analyzed, along with its transnationalisation, and implementation. This study covers a period of twenty years. It rests on a three-fold fieldwork. Firstly, European forums and political arenas in Brussels are considered, where competition among child protection, migration and security actors can be observed. Secondly, beyond European borders, we consider Egypt as a country that is pointed at by transnational actors as a sending country for unaccompanied underaged migrants. Thirdly, the European Union border is taken into account by studying the operations of individualisation – by securitarian and humanitarian agents – of unaccompanied minors arriving by boat, along with disciplining practices implemented by migrant social care officers in Catania (Eastern Sicily). Finally, resistance practices to/through the category unaccompanied minors are studied here

Denna studie undersöker vardagslitteracitet hos ensamkommande unga asylsökandesom studerar på allmänkurs vid en folkhögskola. Deras studier bedrivs på grundskoleochgymnasienivå. Samtliga av de unga är asylsökande med tillfälligt uppehållstillståndvillkorat av deltagande i studier på gymnasienivå.Studiens teoretiska ram tar sin utgångspunkt i en sociokulturell förståelse avlitteracitet utifrån New Literacy Studies samt hur litteracitet formas av diskurser.Dessa teorier sätts i relation till Gees och Wedins forskning kring flerspråkighet ochidentitetsförhandling. Analysen bygger på narrativ som beskriver de sju deltagarnasvardagslitteracitet utifrån insamlade foton och semistrukturerade fotoretrospektivaintervjuer.I studien delges hur deltagarnas vardagslitteracitet formas av omständigheter somkontext, språk, artefakter och arenor. De erfarenheter som framträder i narrativenskildras som fem teman: vardagsrutinernas praktiker, praktiker kringmyndighetskontakter och samhällsengagemang, mediepraktiker, praktiker kringrelationer och personlig kommunikation och lärande praktiker. Olika diskurservillkorar och möjliggör deltagarnas litteracitet. Dessa diskurser kan knytas tilldeltagarnas egen bakgrund, till kamrater, till skolans sammanhang och till detomgivande samhället.Studiens bidrag till forskningsområdet består bland annat i uppmärksammandet av deungas kompetenta förhållningssätt till sin vardagslitteracitet. Folkhögskolan som enmöjlig framgångsrik kontext för språk och litteracitetsutveckling lyfts fram iundersökningens resultat liksom att övergripande samhälleliga normer påverkar synenpå andraspråksinlärares kompetenser och erfarenheter. Av resultaten framträder enbild av den undervisning som deltagarna tar del av som normativt enspråkig, vilketosynliggör deltagarnas språkkompetens och begränsar deras möjligheter att bidra medegna och tidigare erfarenheter. I motsats till detta framstår vardagen utanför skolansom sammanhang där deras litteracitetsförvärvande möter vidare språkligautmaningar. Det är även främst utanför undervisningen, på skolan och i detomgivande samhället, som deltag arnas identitetsförhandling ar ochlitteracitetsutveckling äger rum i mötet med andra och nya diskurser. Dessa resultatuppmärksammar betydelsen av att erfarenheter utanför undervisningen värdesätts ochges utrymme i klassrummet. Resultaten bidrar med ny kunskap till forskningsfältetoch yrkesverksamma inom skolan beträffande den avgörande betydelse ettflerspråkigt perspektiv och flerspråkiga normer kan ha för deltagarnas utveckling. / This study examines everyday experiences of literacy described by unaccompaniedminors who are now following a general program of studies at a college of furthereducation (folkhögskola). Their studies are conducted at a secondary and uppersecondary school level. All of the participants are subject to the Swedish legislationapplying to residence permission and participation in upper secondary education.The underlying theories of this studie comes from literacy as embedded in socialcontexts from New Literacy Studies and as formed by discourses. These theoriesrelates to Gee’s and Wedin’s research about multilinguality and negotiation of identity.From a narrative approach the analysis presents the seven participants everydayexperiences of literacy from collected photographs and semistructured photoretrospective interviews.The studies contribution to the research area consists, among other things, in drawingattention to the young peoples competent approach to their everyday literacy.Folkhögskola as a possible successful context for language and literacy developmentis highlighted as well as how overall societal norms affect the view of secondlanguage learners skills and experiences. The results show a learning environmentnormed by the national Swedish language. These norms limits the participantsopportunities to contribute with experiences from their past. This is in sharp contrastto literacy in their everyday life outside of the classroom. Which circumstances appearmore open and demanding for language learning and acquisition of literacy andenables negotiating of identities. Literacy evolve outside the classroom in relation tovarious new discourses. This stress the importance of including experience fromoutside of the learning environment. The results also contribute with knowledge forprofessionals and to the research area concerning the crucial importance of amultilingual perspective and what significance multilingual norms can have forparticipants development.