Abstract
ABSTRACT This article traces how aspirations management interventions – specifically those that accompanied the United States-Mexico Southern Border Program of 2014 and the Italy-Libya Memorandum of Understanding of 2017 – influence young people’s aspirations and decisions to migrate. The article details three typologies of aspiration management specific to migrant children and youth: child protection interventions, awareness and education campaigns, and development initiatives. Drawing from ethnographic research with unaccompanied migrant youth in Guatemala and Italy, this paper examines how young people understand and consider these programmes when deciding whether and under what conditions to migrate transnationally. Analysing aspiration management programmes alongside young people reveals that these interventions do not deter young people’s migratory decisions, yet do shape who, how and under what conditions they move. A cross-regional case study analysis extends the scholarship on border externalisation as a physical and administrative deterrent to examine how aspiration management has become a critical mode of migration governance of young people.
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