Publications

This book explores specific migration, governance, and identity processes currently involving children and ideas of childhood. Migrancy as a social space allows majority populations to question the capabilities of migrants, and is a space in which an increasing number of children are growing up. In this space, families, nation-states, civil society, as well as children themselves are central actors engaged in contesting the meaning of childhood. Childhood is a field of conceptual, moral and political contestation, where the ‘battles’ may range from minor tensions and everyday negotiations of symbolic or practical importance involving a limited number of people, to open conflicts involving violence and law enforcement. The chapters demonstrate the importance of how we understand phenomena involving children: when children are trafficked, seeking refuge, taken into custody, active in gangs or in youth organisations, and struggling with identity work. This book examines countries representing very different engagements and policies regarding migrancy and children. As a result, readers are presented with a comprehensive volume ideal for both the classroom and for policy-makers and practitioners. The chapters are written by experts in social anthropology, human geography, political science, sociology, and psychology.

Contents

1 Contested Childhoods: Growing up in Migrancy
Marie Louise Seeberg and Elżbieta M. Goździak

2 Forced Victims or Willing Migrants? Contesting Assumptions About Child Trafficking
Elżbieta M. Goździak

3 Child Refugees and National Boundaries
Marie Louise Seeberg

4 South Sudanese Diaspora Children: Contested Notions of Childhood, Uprootedness, and Belonging Among Young Refugees in the U.S.
Marisa O. Ensor

5 Lost Between Protective Regimes: Roma in the Norwegian State
Ada I. Engebrigtsen

6 When Policy Meets Practice: A Study of Ethnic Community-Based Organizations for Children and Youth
Marianne Takle and Guro Ødegård

7 Identity Development Among Youth of Vietnamese Descent in the Czech Republic
Andrea Svobodová and Eva Janská

8 Mixed Parentage: Negotiating Identity in Denmark
Helene Bang Appel and Rashmi Singla

9 “I Think of Myself as Norwegian, Although I Feel that I Am from Another Country.” Children Constructing Ethnic Identity in Diverse Cultural Contexts in Oslo, Norway
Mari Rysst

10 Looking Ahead: Contested Childhoods and Migrancy
Elżbieta M. Goździak and Marie Louise Seeberg