Childhood and Migration: Gendered and Generational Perspectives

International Conference, 4rd – 6th of December 2013, University of Vechta, Germany

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Childhood and migration: Gendered and generational perspectives

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The topic of the proposed conference is childhood and migration with a particular focus on gender and generational perspectives. The conference aims to examine children and their opportunities for development in different countries and regions, to situate this examination within a migration perspective, and to interrogate in particular the impact of gender and generations on the realisation of children’s rights to participation and self-determination. On one hand, this will contribute to the development of the fields of childhood and migration research the intersection of which has received little systematic inquiry (see also Tyrell/White/Ní Laoire/Carpena-Méndez 2013: 133). On the other, the theoretical focus on gender, generation and children’s rights aims to illuminate both children’s migration processes and the impact of these processes on notions of childhood and generational orders. In these dynamics gender is particularly important because migration processes have different consequences for girls and boys. Indeed, empirical evidence suggests that in the context of transnational migration gender can become a volatile element in parents’ child-rearing strategies (Faulstich Oranella 2001; Kasymova 2013; Stephan 2013). In addition, other impacts of migration, including poverty, affect girls and boys differently (Semerci et al. 2012). Further empirical studies have shown that girls do not have the same rights as boys to participate in migration in particular when migration is for education (Hunner-Kreisel 2013).

Children, childhoods, and childhood research in the context of migration: Issues of gender and generation

In debates about the nature of childhood and what it means to be a child universalist perspectives have argued that the notion of children’s rights implies, on one hand, a “subjectivity imbued with rights” (Andresen 2013: 29) and, on the other, the need of protection for the growing person. This notion of what may be, or should be, common to all children contains a paradoxical element, which becomes especially clear when viewed in a generational perspective on childhood and children’s everyday behaviour[1]: A children’s subjectivity imbued with rights and children’s agency need to be negotiated in light of the agency of adults (Bühler-Niederberger/Schwittek 2013). This process of negotiating children’s own agency is also linked to the issue of protection: Children’s bodily welfare depends at least in part on the care and protection of adults with whom children may have positive or negative relationships. The extent to which growing children will be able to obtain life skills and enjoy the freedom to develop their own notion of what might be a “good life” (Sen 2009; Nussbaum 2011), respectively the well-being of children (Ben Arieh 2000) depends on the nature of their relationships with adults. Paternalistic relationships may become problematic when adults try to impose on children the adults’ view of a good life. Balancing children’s self-determination with adequate protection throughout childhood is a societal challenge that concerns all children but which in many parts of the world affects girls in particular. In everyday life children’s rights often differ for girls and boys, a gender bias that may be inflected further by social, ethnic, or religious backgrounds, and which needs to be analysed accordingly.

Leena Alanen (2001) needs to be credited with offering an analysis of generation as a critical conceptual category for gender research. In this analysis a key conceptual tool is the notion of generational order, which is used to theorize societal ideas and norms about children and childhood. More specifically, Alanen argued that „in the industrial society the concept of generation has acquired a broader meaning than in earlier societal formation as ‘children’ and ‘adults’ have now assumed structural attributes that are relative to each other“ (Alanen 2009: 159). Based on this understanding of generation, research has focused on social practices that distinguish between children and adults within specific generational orders. The family is one, and possibly the central, institution in which parents and children meet and where being a child and being an adult is constructed and reproduced. An analysis of families also shows that the different social locations of children and adults, which influence their interrelationships, are associated with wider cultural, political and social arrangements. These include relations of authority and power as they may be legitimated within different societal orders such as patriarchy, but also political and economic circumstances. Within such power relations the location of children vis-à-vis adults is often one of asymmetrical power, which has led to calls for conceptualising generation as a potential dimension of social injustice (Bühler-Niederberger/Sünker 2006: 39) and to view generation “in analogy to the concept of ‘gender’ as a socially constructed category of societal inequality” (Qvortrup 2009: 21ff.; Bühler-Niederberger/Sünker 2006: 36; Alanen 2001: 17f.).

Within migration studies, and with few exceptions, children as a group have been „invisible“ for a long time and have remained outside the main analytical focus (Semerci et al. 2013; Bailey 2009: 408). Recent research findings show that children, just like their parents and other elders, are involved - more or less - in the process of migration (White et al. 2013; Camacho 2010: 127). Even more so, beyond being passively involved - according to Hutchins (2013: 61) also in dependence on the parents concepts’ of childhood children take actively part in migration; for instance in the process of decision making , but also in migrating independently (Punch 2007). Yet, this form of children’s participation in migration processes has received little attention in migration studies. Children have remained invisible in particular as actors with agency (Punch 2007; Huijsmans 2006). An early exception has been the work by Faulstich, Orellana et al. 2001 on children’s participation in family migration. In addition to revealing children’s agency the study has documented the significance in migration of children’s social networks, of which families, and children’s integration into family relationships, are particularly important (see also Whitehead/Hashim 2007). Another aspect rarely acknowledged in migration studies concerns the effects of migration on children’s lives and worlds (Nukaga 2012). Children may be part of migration because they are migrating together with one or both of their parents or with other family members. Yet, children are also affected by migration when they are left behind because one or both parents migrate for work and leave their children in the care of relatives or acquaintances (Heintz 2013). Although the latter case does not involve children’s actual travel during migration, it does show the need for a broader perspective on migration and childhood: such “secondary” impacts of migration processes are significant for children as actors and as a social group. The impacts of migration processes have both local and global dimensions, which migration research has discussed in terms of transnationality and transculturality. Migration processes rarely are unidimensional; beyond societies of origin and societies of destination research needs to pay attention to spatiality—the emergence of new spaces that are constituted in the process of migration. This includes the crossing of national and political borders and of cultural boundaries, and the merging of collective and individual identities into new hybrid forms (Brettell 2008). For example, with regard to childhood research Adrian Bailey (2009) has shown how mobility discourses challenge societal notions and discourses of childhood and call for their renegotiation (Bailey 2009).

The goal and scientific purpose of the conference is to bring together scholars whose work concerns children and children’s rights in the context of migration and migration research. The conference promotes discussion of these topics within a theoretical framework in which gender and generation are central analytical categories.

Literatur:

Alanen, Leena (2001): Explorations in Generational Analysis. In: Alanen, Lena/Mayall, Berry (Hg.): Con¬ceptualizing Child-Adult Relations. London/New York: Routledge Farmer: 11-22.

Alanen, Leena (2009): Generational Order. In: Jens Qvortrup/William A. Corsaro/Michael Sebastian Honig (Hg.): The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies. London: Palgrave Macmillan: 159-174.

Andresen, Sabine (2013): Konstruktionen von Kindheit in Zeiten gesellschaftlichen Wandels. In: Hunner-Kreisel, Christine/Stephan, Manja (Hrsg.): Neue Zeiten, neue Räume. Kindheit und Familie im Kontext von (Trans-)Migration und sozialem Wandel. Wiesbaden: VS: 21-35.

Asher, Ben Arieh (2000): Beyond Welfare: Measuring and Monitoring the State of Children – New Trends and Domains. Social Indicators Research: An international and interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life-Measurement. Vol. 52. Dorderecht/Boston/London: Klewer Academics: 235-257.

Bailey, Adrian (2009): Transnational Moblilities and Childhoods. In: Jens Qvortrup/William A. Corsaro/Michael Sebastian Honig (Hg.): The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies. London: Palgrave Macmillan: 408-422.

Brettell, Caroline B./Hollifield, James F. (Hg.) (2000): Migration Theory. Talking across Disciplines. New York and London: Routledge.

Bühler-Niederberger, Doris/Schwittek, Jessica (2013):Kleine Kinder in Kirgistan – lokale Ansprüche und globale Einflüsse. In: Hunner-Kreisel, Christine/Stephan, Manja (Hrsg.): Neue Zeiten, neue Räume. Kindheit und Familie im Kontext von (Trans-)Migration und sozialem Wandel. Wiesbaden: VS: 69-91.

Bühler-Niederberger, Doris/Sünker, Heinz (2006): Der Blick auf das Kind: Sozialisationsforschung, Kindheitssoziologie und die Frage nach der gesellschaftlich-generationalen Ordnung. In: Andresen, Sabine/Diehm, Isabell (Hg.): Kinder, Kindheiten, Konstruktionen: Erziehungswissenschaftliche Perspektiven und sozialpädagogische Verortungen. Wiesbaden: VS: 25-53.

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Hunner-Kreisel, Christine (2013): „They say, girls are migrants …“: Vorstellungen vom guten Leben bei einer jungen Aserbaidschanerin und familiale Begrenzungen. In: Hunner-Kreisel, Christine/Stephan, Manja (Hrsg.): Neue Zeiten, neue Räume. Kindheit und Familie im Kontext von (Trans-)Migration und sozialem Wandel. Wiesbaden: VS: 167-183.

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[1] Following the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child the term children includes all persons up to 18 years of age without distinguishing between children and youth.