and the Construction of Vulnerability - Child Trafficking

5. Children in Transit
5.1 Legal Channels of Migration for Children
Opportunities for persons under the age of 18 to migrate both legally and independently
are extremely restricted. They may be able to secure visas to enter as students or
as au pairs ((from the age of 17 in EU countries). However, on the whole the legal channels
of migration open to children entail dependence on an adult. Immigration law
very often treats children as objects rather than actors, and implicitly reproduces a conception
of children as parental property. 56 Thus, children may be entitled to enter a
country as the dependants of adults, or in order to become the dependants of adult
kin, foster carers or adoptive parents.
Opportunities to cross borders legally are highly unequal. In general, those who
hold passports from OECD countries will find themselves subject to far fewer restrictions
for travelling abroad than those who hold passports from non-OECD countries.
“The passport holders from the 25 countries facing the smallest number of visa restrictions
are all Western high-income OECD countries, with the exceptions of Malaysia
and Singapore, which are also relatively high-income countries”. 57 Those who find it
most difficult to legally enter foreign countries hold passports from countries “with
a history of violent political conflict (e.g., Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia), countries with
a strictly autocratic regime (e.g., Northern Korea and Myanmar), very poor countries
(e.g. Ethiopia and Haiti) or countries with some combination of these aspects”. 58 In
other words, those who are most likely to have good reason to wish to migrate across
borders are those who are least likely to be able to do so legally.
There is no easy correlation between the legality of the mode of entering another
country, and the safety of the child at the point of destination. As will be seen in Section
6, children who enter a country legally can end up in extremely abusive and/or
exploitative conditions. Very often, their vulnerability to abuse and exploitation is
linked to the hyper-dependency on adults that is constructed by immigration regimes.
However, the absence of opportunities for children to migrate legally does have some
specific implications for children’s rights. It increases the likelihood that children will
be left behind when their parents or carers migrate (see Section 7). It also increases the
likelihood that those who do migrate will move through irregular channels.
5.2 Moving Through Irregular Channels
It is widely recognised that the introduction of ever more restrictive immigration policies
and tighter border controls by affluent, migrant-receiving countries has led to the
emergence of a growing market for clandestine migration services. These services
include smuggling across borders, faking travel documents, and arranging marriages. 59
56. Thronson, 2002
57. Neumayer, 2006
58. Ibid
59. Sanghera, 2002; Kempadoo, 2005; Kofman et al, 2000; ILO, 2002a
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