Contested childhood in the context of migration

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Explain key norms and tensions in international law regulating child migration
• Analyze and communicate how gender and other categories of difference shape perceptions of migrant children in different contexts
• Critically examine the contributions of different theoretical and disciplinary perspectives and conceptualizations of childhood and migration, particularly anthropological and human rights approaches
• Think reflexively on epistemological, methodological, and ethical issues in academic research involving migrant children and youth

Abebe, T., Dar, A., & Lyså, I. M. (2022). Southern theories and decolonial childhood studies. Childhood, 29(3), 255-275.

Adam, B. (1989). Feminist social theory needs time. Reflections on the relation between feminist thought, social theory and time as an important parameter in social analysis. The Sociological Review, 37(3), 458-473.

Bhabha, J. (2019). Governing adolescent mobility: The elusive role of children’s rights principles in contemporary migration practice. Childhood, 26(3), 369 – 385.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568219852661

Chase, E., Otto, L., Belloni, M., Lems, A. & Wernesjö, U.(2020) Methodological innovations, reflections and dilemmas: the hidden sides of research with migrant young people classified as unaccompanied minors, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46:2, 457-473, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2019.1584705

Ensor, M.O. (2010). Understanding Migrant Children: Conceptualizations, Approaches, and Issues. In: Ensor, M.O., Goździak, E.M. (eds) Children and Migration. Palgrave Macmillan, London. pp 15–35 https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297098_2 

Holzscheiter, A., Josefsson, J., & Sandin, B. (2019). Child rights governance: An introduction. Childhood, 26(3), 271–288. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568219854518

Lind, J. (2019). Governing vulnerabilised migrant childhoods through children’s rights. Childhood, 26(3), 337–351. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568219847269

Knight, H. (2019). Centering the problem child: Temporality, colonialism, and theories of the child. Global Studies of Childhood, 9(1), 72–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043610618825005

Pobjoy, J. M. (2021). Refugee Children, in C. Costello, M. Foster and J. McAdam (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law (746-760), Oxford University Press.

Sandberg, K. (2015) The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Vulnerability of Children, Nordic Journal of International Law 84 221-247, DOI:10.1163/15718107-08402004

Seeberg ML and Goździak EM (2016) Contested Childhoods: Growing up in Migrancy, in Seeberg ML and Goździak EM (eds) Contested Childhoods: Growing up in Migrancy. Migration, Governance, Identities. Cham: Springer, pp 1-19

Participation at the BSRS is credited under the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). Participants submitting an essay, in a form of a publishable manuscript of 10-20 pages, after the end of the summer school will receive 10 ECTS. Deadline for submission will be decided by your course leader.

It is also possible to participate without producing an essay. This will give you 5 ECTS. In order to receive credits, we expect full participation in the course-specific modules, plenary events and roundtables.

Marry-Anne Karlsen is a researcher at Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK). She has a background in human geography and social anthropology. Her research interests cover migration, the welfare state, and border politics. Her most recent book Migration Control and Access to Welfare: The Precarious Inclusion of Irregular Migrants in Norway was published as an open access monograph on Routledge (2021). She also co-edited the volume Waiting and the Temporalities of irregular migration (open access Routledge 2021), which provides theoretical and empirical nuance to the concept of waiting in migration research.

Jessica Schultz is a legal researcher based at the Chr. Michelsen Institute and the University of Bergen. Her recent work focuses on the concept of vulnerability, cessation of refugee status, and temporary protection. She is lead researcher for the Norwegian Research Council-funded project: Temporary Protection as a Durable Solution? The ‘return turn’ in asylum policies in Europe (TemPro), which is a collaboration between anthropologists and legal scholars exploring how temporariness is produced in law and how it is experienced by refugees in Denmark, Norway, the UK and Germany. Jessica is also co-host of the podcast Refugee Law and Refugee Lives.