Abstract
This paper begins by outlining the legal rights of unaccompanied refugee minors. The paper explores the initial settlement experience of unaccompanied refugee minors who live in Toronto. Their experiences with the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), their refugee hearings, and their experiences as they waited to be notified of their immigration status have been examined through primary research. Research questions that frame this project include: 1) How does the asylum process, which includes such elements as their legal rights, hearing date, and waiting for status, impact unaccompanied refugee minors’ sense of belonging, their establishment/settlement experience in Toronto, and their overall well-being? 2) How does arriving to a new place challenge and modify an existing identity, and what are the challenges unaccompanied minors face in their transition to Canada that have an effect on their identity? And, 3) How does this time in their life influence their perceptions of their future?
Highlights
A Major Research Paper presented to Ryerson University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Program of Immigration and Settlement Studies
Research questions that frame this project include: 1) How does the asylum process, which includes such elements as their legal rights, hearing date, and waiting for status, impact unaccompanied refugee minors’ sense of belonging, their establishment/settlement experience in Toronto, and their overall well-being? 2) How does arriving to a new place challenge and modify an existing identity, and what are the challenges unaccompanied minors face in their transition to Canada that have an effect on their identity? And, 3) How does this time in their life influence their perceptions of their future?
98,000 asylum applications were submitted by unaccompanied children to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR, 2016)
Summary
Though the refugee claims of minors have been steadily increasing in recent years, the migration of children with and without their parents or family members is not a new occurrence. Termed the ‘British Home Children’, this group of children were sent to Canada by British agencies as they had been orphaned or living in impoverished conditions back home (Molnar, 2017) While these children were not refugees in the strict sense, largely due to the fact that the term had yet to be introduced in international discourse, broadly speaking, these children were unaccompanied minors (Rosseau, Montgomery, & Shermake, 2001). The Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada ( referred to as the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) decided to detain those who were on the first of two boats, while the Provincial Ministry of Children and Families placed the second boat of minors in group homes (Ali, 2006) Aside from these specific incidents, there has been relatively little attention given to unaccompanied minors, and the unique experiences of children as refugees and asylum seekers have been largely ignored (Rosseau, Montgomery, & Shermake, 2001;Bhabha, 2001; Bryan & Denov, 2011). The Canadian Border Service Agency, though they do not provide clear data on the number of unaccompanied minors who arrive each year in Canada, observed that refugee claims filed for minors 17 years or younger have been increasing over the past few years, with the number of youth asylum seekers jumping from 2,011 in 2015 to 3,400 in 2016 (Kalaichandran, 2017)
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