Conclusion

In her comprehensive study of children, global migration, and human rights, Jacqueline Bhahba writes that the processes of family separation and reunification discussed in this chapter are “the most familiar and well-understood aspect of child migration” (2014, p.

9). Indeed research on children separated and reunified with their families through economic migration is expansive and although cultures and immigration experiences vary in the specifics, much of the research comes to the same conclusion: family separation causes stress on children who do not have a robust and supportive network of extended kin, processes of reunification are often troubled, and migrant children and youths are frequently produced as the next generation of low-skilled and marginal workers. Although the critical literature rightly draws attention to the multiplicity of normative family forms beyond the western nuclear family and the risk of reproducing the middle class, heteronormative patriarchal family through critiques of family separation, it is equally important not to overemphasize the resiliency of families. Families are of necessity resourceful and resilient in the face of challenging global economic conditions and punishing state policies: migration policies that open the doors to temporary workers only; closed and militarized borders, and the policing and criminalization of migrants; and education policy and programs that limit migrant children’s access to education. The state is doubly ambivalent to children as bearers of rights and entitlements: as children and as children of migrant workers, and economic rationalities and priorities are often at odds with liberal values that dictate the protection of children. These ambivalences and contradictions, it has been shown, are unambiguous in their effects.

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Source: Harker C., Horschelmann K. (Eds.). Conflict, Violence and Peace. Springer,2017. — 456 p.. 2017

Conclusion

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