and the Construction of Vulnerability - Child Trafficking

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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 Child Migration and the Construction of Vulnerability 27
Very often, adults and children fleeing war and persecution to seek asylum are also dependent on such clandestine migration services in order to make their escape. However, moving through irregular channels generates two sets of risks for child as well as adult migrants. First, it can jeopardize their physical safety and expose them to dangers during the process of movement. Second, it can lock them into forms of dependency on unscrupulous third parties after they have reached the country of destination (see Section 6.1.3). Though it would be wrong to assume that all forms of clandestine migration are physically dangerous, death during transit is nonetheless the starkest risk to many irregular migrants. The organisation UNITED for Intercultural Action has been collating known cases of deaths at the borders of the European Union since 1993, and by 2006, had documented more than 6,700 deaths of refugees and migrants. These deaths were attributable “to border militarisation, asylum laws, detention policies, deportations and carrier sanctions”. 60 UNITED’s figures are undoubtedly underestimates when triangulated with other data sources, and are not fully disaggregated by age. However, the data show that at least 166 of those who have died have been under 18. They include Todor Bogdanovic aged 8, a Roma from former Yugoslavia, who was shot dead by police when attempting to enter France; Tarik Vucitema, an 18 month old baby from Kosovo who drowned near Brindisi after a boat collision; Marun and Basil Adeba aged 2 and 4, from Iraq who froze to death in a refrigerated lorry attempting to reach Greece from Turkey; and Kalender and Zelida Kalendergil aged 16 and 10, Kurds from Turkey who suffocated in a cargo container travelling from Belgium to Ireland. 61 Sea passages are particularly perilous, often involving several days spent without adequate food or water, in blazing heat, on dangerous seas in flimsy vessels. Most of the refugee and migrant deaths documented by UNITED occurred between Africa and Spain in the Strait of Gibraltar, around Malta and on the way to Italy. In the first ten months of 2006, between 500 and 3,000 West Africans are also estimated to have drowned whilst attempting journeys from the coast of West Africa to the Canaries. Around 25,000 – including 700 children – reached the Canaries alive. Again, no reliable information on the age of those who died is available, but in November 2006, 13 children drowned when the ship they boarded from the coastal area of Boujdour in Western Sahara, sank on its voyage to the Canary Islands. 62 Irregular migrants, both adult and child, also face other risks during transit. In particular, women and girls are known to be vulnerable to sexual harassment and abuse. Research on migrant women travelling alone through Central America en route to Mexico found that male migrants sometimes forced female migrants to have sex with border authorities in order to guarantee safe passage for the entire group. There are also reports of security officers and fellow migrants sexually abusing sub-Saharan African women and minors in transit through Morocco to Spain. 63 As noted above, asylum seekers as well as other migrants are often exposed to risks and dangers. One study found that 53 per cent of refugee children in Sweden had experienced a difficult or dangerous escape. 64 60. UNITED, 2007 61. Ibid 62. Reuters, 2006 63. UNFPA, 2006 64. Angel, Hjern and Ingleby, 2001 28 Child Migration and the Construction of Vulnerability
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Page 57 and 58: References Aggleton, P. (ed) (1999)
Page 59 and 60: Chant, S., and McIlwaine, C. (1995)
Page 61 and 62: Hashim, I. (2005) “Exploring the
Page 63 and 64: Miller, A. (2004) ‘Sexuality, vio
Page 65 and 66: Race, Gender and Migration. New Yor
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