Unaccompanied young refugees in the European Union: a perennial limbo situation studied in a longitudinal perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT The notion of waiting has always been part of the migration procedure, also for unaccompanied refugee minors. During their journeys throughout the EU, some unaccompanied minors obtain a definitive residence status, while others become undocumented after their temporary protection ends at age 18 or they are still waiting for the outcome of their asylum application. In this article, we focus on the meaning of ‘waiting’ for 14 unaccompanied refugee minors and how this chronic state of waiting impacts their well-being and access to services. This ‘existential’ form of waiting shows how these young people are de facto caught in between EU – and national legislations, in a ‘politics of exhaustion’, where they find themselves somehow stuck in a perennial limbo where movement is nothing but an illusion.