and the Construction of Vulnerability - Child Trafficking

cerned. A woman subject to immigration control described being taken to Heathrow
with her two year old daughter (who is a British citizen):
This officer shouted and grabbed me and pulled me up and down.They pointed to
this group of men in suits and said,“if you’re not going they will handle you physically
and you will see who is the winner”.Then they grabbed my daughter off me
and held her. I said, let me hold her. She started crying. He was holding her so I had
to follow them to the aeroplane. 155
There is wider concern about the fact that children may witness violence perpetrated
against their parents/carers, and may indeed be subject to it themselves, in the
process of deportation proceedings. In the UK, deportation procedures are reported
to treat children and their families inhumanely, often terrorising children. Women
Against Rape report a case in which a Ugandan woman seeking asylum in the UK
having been detained and raped by police for her political activities in Uganda was
refused asylum. She and her five children were taken from their home in a dawn
raid, held briefly in detention, then deported. During the “removal”, the mother was
forced onto the plane in handcuffs while her children were carried on with their
hands and feet bound. 156
Deportation is only one of the possible consequences of such dependency. The
state takes no responsibility for the consequences of leaving children in the care of
adults too traumatised and stressed by immigration processes to be able to provide
proper care. Children may be separated from the parents or carers for many months
while the adults are in detention, or they may be subject to detention themselves.
While there is an attempt to avoid detaining unaccompanied children, those who
are with their families are more at risk of being detained. Children other than unaccompanied
asylum seekers are almost never given separate legal representation in
immigration appeals. The practise of the law has therefore done little to challenge
the dependency of children on adults for their rights to stay. 157
Children may also be forced by immigration controls into dependency on adults
who are abusive or who exploit them. A recent report into forced labour and migration
in the UK found that personalised relations of dependence, where migrants were
dependent on one particular person or group for access to accommodation, food
and documentation, were an important factor in predicting instances of forced
labour. 158 Other research has found that the retention by employers of passports and
identity documents is a significant factor in forcing migrants to remain in abusive
situations. While the conditions for exploiting children and their labour are certainly
present, what is known is extremely limited.
Although in Europe children are usually only deported if they are accompanied
by adults, there are nonetheless reports of children being deported on their own if
they have not been recognised as refugees. In Spain, groups of North African children
have been deported and abandoned at the Moroccan border. 159 A Human
155. Walter, 2004
156. Women Against Rape, 2006
157. Anderson and O’Connell Davidson, 2005; Thronson, 2002
158. Anderson and Rogaly, 2005
159. Feteke, 2001
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