Experiences Of Unaccompanied Children Research Articles

The COVID-19 Pandemic: Health Impact on Unaccompanied Migrant Children.

From the point of apprehension by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the U.S.-Mexican border to their reunification with sponsors in U.S. communities, unaccompanied children (UC) face political, social, and economic conditions, heightening their risk for mental and physical health burdens that may be exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such risk underscores the importance of social work practice and advocacy for the improved treatment and experiences of UC. This article uses a structural vulnerability conceptual lens to summarize the existing literature regarding UC and argues that UC's liminal immigration status, economic precarity, and lack of healthcare access place this group at high structural vulnerability during the pandemic. Further, this article identifies and describes three contexts of structural vulnerability of UC that are important points of social work intervention: (1) at the border, where migrant children are denied their legal right to seek protection; (2) in detention and shelter facilities; and (3) during reunification with sponsors. This article concludes with important practice and policy opportunities for social workers to pursue to obtain social justice for an important and highly vulnerable migrant child population.

A Profile of Unaccompanied Children in Maryland and Virginia

Between 2014 and 2016, 18,858 unaccompanied children resettled in Maryland and Virginia from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. This report examines a subset of these youth who receive post-release services through Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. By building a profile of these youth, the report seeks to better understand the characteristics and experiences of unaccompanied children in the region in an aim to ensure the alignment of needs to services provided.

Assessing Parental Fitness and Care for Unaccompanied Children

Despite an increasing visibility of unaccompanied children in the media and among policymakers, little is known about the experiences of unaccompanied children within and beyond immigration detention. Based on a three-year, multi-sited ethnography with migrant children and their families, this paper traces the impact of U.S. institutional sponsorship policies and practices on unaccompanied children and their families. The article delineates several intersecting institutional logics—the universalization of childhood, the pathologization of mobility, and the criminalization of transnational parents—that underpin federal policies and practices for the care and custody of unaccompanied children. The article argues that these policies overflow from the spaces of detention and shape young people’s help-seeking behaviors and sentiments of belonging following release from detention.