Accepted Manuscript

A critical analysis of the creation of separated care structures for

unaccompanied refugee minors

Ilse Derluyn

PII: S0190-7409(17)31061-7
DOI: doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.03.047
Reference: CYSR 3763
To appear in: Children and Youth Services Review
Received date: 10 December 2017
Revised date: 27 March 2018
Accepted date: 27 March 2018

Please cite this article as: Ilse Derluyn , A critical analysis of the creation of separated
care structures for unaccompanied refugee minors. The address for the corresponding
author was captured as affiliation for all authors. Please check if appropriate. Cysr(2018),
doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.03.047

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A critical analysis of the creation of separated care structures for unaccompanied

refugee minors

Ilse Derluyn, PhD

Corresponding author

Prof. dr. Ilse Derluyn

Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR) & Department

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of Social Work and Social Pedagogy

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Ghent University

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H. Dunantlaan 2

9000 Gent
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Belgium

Phone: +32 9 264 64 02

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E-mail: ilse.derluyn@ugent.be
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Abstract

Unaccompanied refugee minors have been widely recognized as a group of ‘vulnerable’

children and adolescents, in need of special care and reception structures. Equally, in the UN

Convention on the Rights of the Child, their specific needs and related rights are stipulated,

urging receiving states to ensure unaccompanied children’s needs on adequate care services.

Yet, the ‘specific care and reception structures’ that many Western states have created for this

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growing group of unaccompanied minors are often largely separated from mainstream

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services within children and youth care, and characterized by other – less – quality norms, in

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terms of staff ratio, infrastructure, support team, etc. Moreover, more intensive support

systems are more and more restricted to ‘vulnerable’ unaccompanied minors, whereby
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‘vulnerability’ is related to certain body-related characteristics such as age and gender. Based

on an analysis of the evolutions in the way the care structures for unaccompanied minors
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were set up in Belgium, we critically reflect on the underlying rationales that justify the

particularities of these structures, hereby also reflecting about the implications of these
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rationales for professionals and researchers.

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1. Introduction

Unaccompanied refugee minors, children and adolescents who are migrating without their

parents, legal guardian or previous caregiver(s), are a relatively ‘new’ group in migration

history and policy in Western European countries (Halvorsen, 2002). While young people

have always migrated, also when being separated from their family, this group of

unaccompanied refugee minors has only been ‘discovered’ or ‘labeled’ as a separate group by

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policy makers in European countries since the late 1980s (Enenajor, 2008). Their recognition

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as a group and the related right to receive a special protection because of their specific status

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as unaccompanied children in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) has clearly

contributed to the proliferation of specific reception and care structures for this group of
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unaccompanied youth. In this article, we reflect on how the creation of and evolutions in the

specific care structures for unaccompanied children and youths relate to their particular
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labeling, herein oscillating between on the one hand their label as ‘vulnerable minors’ and on

the other hand the focus onto their ‘maturity’ and ‘agency’. We here use the evolutions in the
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way the care and reception structures for unaccompanied minors have been organized in one

particular country of settlement, Belgium, and critically reflect on the (political) arguments
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that have been put forward to justifying the choices made. Our analysis is based upon earlier
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descriptions of the care and reception structures in Belgium for unaccompanied minors (see

Derluyn & Broekaert, 2008; De Graeve, Vervliet & Derluyn, 2017), on an analysis of
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Belgian (federal) and Flemish (regional) policy documents and laws and regulations, on field

work and participating observations in care and reception structures for unaccompanied

youth, including interviews with social workers, and on interviews with unaccompanied

adolescents residing in Belgium as part of a longitudinal follow-up study (see Vervliet, 2013;

Vervliet et al., 2014) and a study on unaccompanied adolescent mothers (see Vervliet, 2013).
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In a first paragraph, starting from the Convention on the Rights of the Child, we outline how

(biological) age has become the starting point to allocate certain specific services and care to

(unaccompanied refugee) children. In a next step, being a minor/child in combination with a

status as refugee/foreigner has led to the creation of specific, separated care structures for

unaccompanied refugee children. In a third paragraph, the introduction of the criterion

‘vulnerability’ is discussed in relation to the evolution in the allocation of support structures

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for unaccompanied minors in Belgium, leading up to some concluding remarks on the overall

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approach of unaccompanied minors in migration policy. We finalize with some reflections

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regarding the impact of this particular (political) approach of unaccompanied children and the

support structures for this group for policy makers, practitioners and researchers.
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2. Age (minor)

The 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (UN Doc A/Res/44/25, 1989), in
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its article 22, recognised unaccompanied refugee children – as part of the larger group of

refugee children – as a specific group of children, with specific needs, and therefore in need
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of and entitled to specific and adapted protection and care. Additionally, Article 2 of the CRC

is highly important for refugee children, because it protects them from discrimination in
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exercising their rights as described by the CRC on grounds of their legal status. This means
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that migrant/refugee children who do not (yet) dispose of a residence permit also are entitled

to equal rights compared to national children (Kalverboer et al., 2017). Yet, the entire CRC is
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built around the specific group of ‘children’ – defined as those under eighteen years of age,

hereby consolidating the creation of a specific ‘childhood period’, separated from

‘adulthood’, an evolution which started in several Western European countries at the

beginning of the 20th century (Dekker et al., 2012). As a social category, children started to

obtain more and more a special position within society, “charged with strong symbolic value,

often portrayed as society’s most vulnerable but also most valuable member” (Eastmond &
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Ascher, 2011, p. 1186), and resulting in the creation of specific care structures for

‘vulnerable’ children or those in need of special support.

The CRC is thus strongly built around the age-limit of eighteen years, an age-limit which –

through this convention – became strongly institutionalized and as such created a strong and

sometimes very strict division between ‘children’ (minors) (and children’s rights) and

‘adults’. This strong division is clearly reflected onto the group of unaccompanied refugee

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children, particularly with regards to their rights on protection and care, protection and care

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that are significantly higher and stronger than the protection and care that are given to (very

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similar) young refugees older than 18 years of age (Silverman, 2016).

As a result, governments of countries that receive (relatively) large groups of unaccompanied

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children and adolescents have put increasing efforts to distinguish ‘minors’ (under-eighteens)

from ‘adults’ (over-eighteens) within this group of unaccompanied youngsters in order to

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avoid that the specific care and reception measures meant for underage unaccompanied

refugees are provided to young refugee adults who present themselves as minors (Clark-
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Kazak, 2016; Crawley, 2007; Silverman, 2016). Yet, many of these procedures that are

currently used to determining the biological age of unaccompanied refugee children have
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been widely contested in literature (Crawley, 2007), in particular those procedures that are
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relying on medical age assessment testing, such as signs of puberty or X-ray scans of teeth,

wrist, collarbone and/or knees (see e.g., Crawley, 2007; Hjern, Brendler-Lindqvist,
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Norredam, 2012). Still, several countries, including Belgium, keep on using these medical

age assessment methods (Crawley, 2007; EMN 2015) being used, whereby the ‘body’

(biological age) of the unaccompanied young people is used as the main (and sole) criterion

to allocate care and protection rights, and as such to distinguish between those who deserve

‘extra’ (special) care and support and those who don’t (Mountz et al., 2013; Silverman,

2016). Also for unaccompanied youths themselves, this is difficult to understand, as became
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apparent in interviews with unaccompanied young people living in Belgium who were age-

assessed over eighteen (Hjern, Derluyn, Vervliet & Ascher, forthcoming):

“I don’t understand the big difference between minors and adults. Sometimes I

think that if I would have been acknowledged as a minor, that I would have

learned to speak Dutch more easily.” (Afghan young man)

“It has been astonishing for me that they make a distinction between minors and

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adults. One person is not the same as another person. One person can receive two

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kinds of treatments.” (Afghan young man)

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Decisions regarding age and thus the particular category to which a young refugee belongs

are thus taken on basis of ‘what their bodies tell’, instead of what they have to say: “their
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bodies were made to speak to doctors and other professionals, for the bodies could give a

more reliable and relevant accounting than the refugees’ stories” (Malkki, 1996, p. 384).
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“I(nterviewer): You are now living in a centre for adults. The fact that they have

transferred you from a centre for minors to a centre for adults, is that due to an
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age assessment test you had?

R(espondent): Yes, that’s right. According to the test, I’m 21 years old. That’s the
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reason why I have been transferred here.

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I: How do you feel about this?

R: I don’t think about that. The machine has shown it like this, and I say: ‘If the
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machine says so, it will be like this’ (laughs).

I: So, you are saying: The machine shows it like this, so it is like this.

R: Yes, they have examined my teeth, my hand, my chest. Three different tests I

had to undergo, and a few days later, they told me that I’m 21 years old. I didn’t

say anything. They say, I have the possibility to show them my taskara Afghan

birth certificate. But my mother is ill and I cannot burden her to also send me
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this. I thus kept quiet and did nothing, I’ve just accepted it.” (Afghan young man)

By using age as the main (sole) defining criterion to allocating certain rights, as a kind of

‘strategic categorization’ (Watters, 2012) to separate those ‘deserving’ ‘extra’ care and

protection from the ‘undeserving’ (Silverman, 2016), a ‘politics of exception’ is created

whereby the immigration regime cares as a form of ‘discretionary humanitarianism’ and out

of compassion for the ‘most vulnerable’ (children), but simultaneously frames the majority of

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refugees (adults) as less or undeserving and unwelcome (Fassin, 2012; Mallki, 1996;

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Silverman, 2016; Ticktin, 2011). This of course has huge consequences for the people

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involved, as indicated in following interview quote (see also Crawley, 2007):

“If like you are underage, you get your assistant, she maybe prepares, she makes
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something for you in a package or whatever, something like that… But when you

are over 18, nobody seems to care.” (Ghanaian young man)

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“R: I now need to take all decisions myself.

I: Can you give an example?

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R: Everything. For example, when I get the decision from the migration

authorities, I need to look for help myself, and I need to decide myself where I will
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go to live: here in (…), Brussels, Gent, Antwerp,… Nobody tell me where or ‘this
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is better for you’.” (Afghan young man) (Hjern et al., forthcoming).

3. Age (minor) + refugee / foreigner

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3.1 Refugee / foreigner

Being recognized as a minor thus entitles a child to receiving special protection and care, yet

for unaccompanied minors this right is strongly intertwined with their status as asylum-

seeker, refugee or foreigner1 . In most European countries, all unaccompanied minors firstly

apply for asylum, and then can receive a refugee status (as defined under the 1951 Geneva
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With ‘foreigner’, we refer to so-called ‘Third Country Nationals’: nationals not belonging to a state that is part
of the Schengen area (mainly European Union without the United Kingdom) as defined in the Schengen Borders
Code (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32006R0562&fro m=EN ).
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Refugee convention), a ‘subsidiary protection status’ (temporary status) or another temporary

protection specifically designed for unaccompanied minors (EMN, 2015). In some contexts

(e.g., Belgium), unaccompanied minors can immediately opt to apply for this specific

procedure for unaccompanied minors, that is providing them with temporary and eventually

also definitive residence documents (De Graeve et al., 2017). In most European countries,

unaccompanied minors also can apply for protection procedures for victims of trafficking,

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and recently, the larger numbers of transiting unaccompanied minors on the European

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continent have led to the creation of particular temporary statuses for these transiting groups.

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In the way these minors are approached and seen, their residence status and documents (as

asylum-applicant, refugee, foreigner, undocumented migrant,…) is thus largely prevailing

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(Vervliet et al., 2013). Yet, this is also reflected in the care and reception structures for this

group of unaccompanied minors, since most European countries have created specific
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reception structures for this group of young people (EMN, 2015) that are mainly clearly

separated from mainstream youth care services – thus based on their status as unaccompanied
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refugee2 minor.

The dominance of the residence status (i.e., the separation between those applying for asylum
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and those who don’t) in the care systems set up for young unaccompanied refugees was
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highly visible in the way the reception structures for this group were created in Belgium at

the end of the 1990s: unaccompanied minors applying for asylum were cared for in specific
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reception structures under the authority of the federal (Belgian) agency (Fedasil) which is

also responsible for the reception structures for adult asylum-applicants. On the other hand,

those minors not applying for asylum but opting in for the specific procedure for

unaccompanied minors were considered as not falling under the responsibility of the federal

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We prefer to use the overall term ‘refugee’, hereby referring to the entire group of unaccompanied children
and youths, so not only to those who applied for refugee status under the Geneva Conventio n or were
recognized as such. The perceived forced character of their migration decision for most of them, and the fact
that often others were involved in this decision-making process are the main reasons for this particular choice
(for a more elaborated explanation: see Derluyn & Broekaert, 2008).
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authority, so were referred to specific, categorical care structures for unaccompanied minors

within the (regionalized) mainstream youth care system (ICEM, 2000; Vlaamse Overheid,

2006; Vlaams Parlement 2006). In the way the care structures for unaccompanied minors in

Belgium were created at that time, it thus becomes clear that not the needs of the individual

child were the determining factor to decide which type of care (s)he received (care in an

asylum centre or in youth care structures), yet, in contrast, the child’s residence documents

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were the decisive factor.

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This way of allocating care and support based on residence documents contrasts largely with

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the needs-based approaches that are always argued for when allocating services to people

with particular care and support needs (e.g., youth care, people with disabilities,…), and also
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clearly contrasts with what the Convention on the Rights of the Child has put forward in its

article 22:
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“1. States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure that a child who is

seeking refugee status or who is considered a refugee in accordance with

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applicable international or domestic law and procedures shall, whether

unaccompanied or accompanied by his or her parents or by any other person,

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receive appropriate protection and humanitarian assistance in the enjoyment of

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applicable rights set forth in the present Convention and in other international

human rights or humanitarian instruments to which the said States are Parties.
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2. (…) In cases where no parents or other members of the family can be found, the

child shall be accorded the same protection as any other child permanently or

temporarily deprived of his or her family environment for any reason, as set forth

in the present Convention”.

This of course evokes the question why this choice has been made to create specific reception

systems for unaccompanied (asylum-seeking) minors, separated from other care structures
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such as mainstream youth care services, and how this choice is justified. The policy

arguments put forward here generally point at two ‘characteristics’ of this group of young

people, on the one hand their presupposed ‘maturity’ and on the other their ‘specific (special)

needs’. We will further elaborate on both aspects in the next paragraphs.

3.2 Maturity

As a first argument to create specific reception and care structures for unaccompanied

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minors, separated and different from mainstream care structures for native-born young

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people, policy makers have pointed to the ‘maturity’ of unaccompanied children (see e.g.,

Green, 2000), as such seemingly indicating that they are ‘more mature’ than ‘native’ peers

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from a similar age. At first, it is sometimes argued that young unaccompanied refugees are
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more mature because they have already lived for a long time on their own, during the flight

and migration trajectory, and even before they left their home country. The latter element is
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clearly deconstructed in research findings, where it has been shown that most unaccompanied

minors lived together with their closest family members up until the moment they left home
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(or even afterwards) (see e.g., Derluyn, Mels & Broekaert, 2009). Secondly, they are also

considered as being more mature because it is then argued, although often only in ‘informal’
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conversations, that in the countries of origin these minors originate from, they would be
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generally considered ‘older’ (in terms of responsibilities, tasks, expectations) compared to

peers from the same age in ‘western’ countries. While child development is undoubtedly
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context- and culture-dependent (see e.g. De Haene & Derluyn, 2015), there is little ‘overall’

evidence to support this argument for all unaccompanied children and youths, in particular

not given these minors’ heterogeneous backgrounds, in terms of both countries of origin and

past educational and socio-economic living contexts.

Given this ‘independent living’ they are ‘used to’ and their ‘maturity’ compared to their host

country peers, it is then argued by policy makers that these youngsters cannot adjust any
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more to a close follow-up and/or intensive care structures, thus need to stay in services with

less intensive support, such as independent housing or in centres for adult asylum applicants

(European Union, 2013). In the Belgian reception system for unaccompanied minors (as also

in many other European countries (see e.g., Bhabha, 2004; Kohli, 2007)), this view is, at first,

reflected in the differences in ‘quality of care’ between the specific care structures for

(asylum-seeking) unaccompanied minors and mainstream youth care services (including the

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categorical centres for unaccompanied minors): in terms of, amongst other aspects, the

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number of staff in relation to the number of minors in a certain shelter, the educational level

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of the staff members, the number of children living together in one group and the overall

infrastructure of the reception centre, standards are generally much lower in the specific
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reception systems for asylum-seeking unaccompanied minors compared to the ones in

mainstream youth care (Vlaamse Overheid, 2011; Vlaams Parlement, 2006).

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Insert figure 1

Secondly, under the overall responsibility of the federal system for asylum-applicants in
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Belgium (Fedasil), in 2005, (semi-)independent living systems for unaccompanied minors

older than 16 were introduced, whereby these adolescents live together in small groups (3-6)
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in one house and a social worker passes by a couple of hours a week, a type of care and
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support structure that also clearly illustrates this perspective of ‘maturity’3 (see figure 1).

Interestingly, already at the beginning of the 1990s, when no specific reception structures for
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Additionally, the installation of a guardianship system for unaccompanied minors in Belgium in 2004 has led
to the implementation of a ‘crisis’ reception phase for all unaccompanied minors (asylum-applicants and non-
asylum-applicants) under the authorities of the Belgian federal government (see figure 1). These so -called
‘observation and orientation centres’ aim to care for all unaccompanied minors, irrespective of their residence
documents, during the very first weeks after arrival (or interception) in Belgium (length of stay in this centre is
maximum four weeks), in order to collect more information about the minor’s identity (in collaboration with the
Guardianship Office, the responsible authority for the gu ardianship system) and to clarify the minor’s future
perspectives, especially in terms of documents and further care arrangements. During this period, the
Guardianship Office thus tries to determine if the minor indeed is an ‘unaccompanied minor’ according to the
Belgian law (separated from parents/legal guardian and under 18), including the possible execution of the age
assessment procedure when migration authorities or the Guardianship Office have expressed that they doubt
about the minor’s declared age (De Graeve et al., 2017).
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unaccompanied minors existed in Belgium, this argument of ‘maturity’ was already used by

migration authorities: unaccompanied children sometimes received a rejection of their

asylum application and a related ‘order to leave the territory’ stating that “they were mature

enough to come to Belgium on their own, so they are mature enough to go back on their own”

(free translation out of a Dutch statement).

3.3 Specific needs

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A second argument that is often raised when defending specific systems for unaccompanied

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youth separated from mainstream (youth) care services is that this group has specific needs

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that cannot be met appropriately in these mainstream (youth) care structures, such as their

lack of knowledge of the host country’s language, systems and habits (e.g., education, health
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care, food), their specific legal situations in terms of residence documents and related

procedures, or specific problems that might emerge related to their migration process, such as
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involvement in human smuggling or trafficking networks.

While, undoubtedly, this group of children and young people does have specific care needs
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that are often very different from those in other groups of young people in need of support,

the interesting element here is that these separated care and reception structures seem to
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consider unaccompanied children as one, very homogenous group, with all of them
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establishing more or less the same needs. Indeed, seen from the legal definition of

‘unaccompanied minor’, they are indeed quite easily to identify as a homogenous group
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(Derluyn & Broekaert, 2008), and all of them have left their home country and went through

a migration process, yet when looking more closely, we can easily see that these children and

adolescents are very different, in terms of, amongst several other aspects, countries of origin,

age, gender, migration motives, projects and expectations, educational and socio-economic

backgrounds, experiences before and during the flight, coping strategies and ways of

expressing emotional distress (Clark-Kazak, 2012; Derluyn & Broekaert, 2008). As such, this
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way of creating a rather homogenous care and support systems for this group does not start

from a needs-based perspective, but entirely departs from their legal/juridical situation as

refugee/foreigner/unaccompanied minor to organize a one-size-fits-all-system.

4. Age (minor) + refugee / foreigner + ‘vulnerable’

4.1 Vulnerability

Despite this focus on their ‘maturity’ in policy and related reception structures, we have

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overall strong empirical evidence that unaccompanied young refugees do run much higher

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risk to developing mental health problems (e.g., severe symptoms of anxiety, depression,

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posttraumatic stress) compared to those fleeing together with one or both parents (see e.g.,

Bean et al., 2007; Derluyn et al., 2009; Fazel et al., 2012) and also compared to their peers
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born in the host country where they are living (see e.g., Derluyn, Broekaert & Schuyten,

2008). The separation from their parents and related lack of parental support, combined with
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their increased risk to experiencing difficult events before and during the migration trajectory

are two main determining factors here. Yet, interestingly, more and more studies have
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documented how the daily stressors the minors are confronted with in their living situation in

the host country largely impact unaccompanied minors’ emotional wellbeing (see e.g.,
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Montgomery, 2010; Vervliet et al., 2014). These studies clearly illustrate how the current
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reception and care structures evoke important stressors: large-scale reception centres create,

for example, lack of privacy, experiences of violence and abuse, limited possibilities for
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interaction with the staff and deep feelings of being bored; evaluations of semi-independent

living arrangements indicate that minors experience insufficient housing and income, a

limited social network and related loneliness, and huge responsibilities to organize their

current lives (see e.g., Keygnaert, Vettenburg & De Temmerman, 2012; Vervliet et al., 2014).

I am dying here [in the asylum center]. Here you cannot be really happy. You

cannot for heart smile. I am so tired. I want to leave, live alone in our house. I
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need bigger room. I have little room, no good. Water is coming from the wall, it's

too cold. They give me nothing. It's not good for the baby here (Yugoslavian

mother, 17 years old) (Vervliet et al., 2013: 8).

Moreover, the organization of the care and reception in different ‘phases’, whereby a minor is

transferred from one reception centre to another centre or living place (sometime quite

remote), decreases the already constrained possibilities to building up a new social network

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and creating the necessary continuity and connection in contexts of long-term disruptions and

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fractures (De Haene & Derluyn, 2016). While care structures would be expected to positively

impact their clients’ wellbeing, we have documented a rather negative impact in this group of

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unaccompanied minors (Vervliet et al., 2014) or as one of the medical doctors working in a
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large-scale refugee reception centre in Belgium told me: “I treat the problems created by the

system.”
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4.2 Structures for “vulnerable unaccompanied minors”

Confronted with these huge emotional needs, with the perceived inappropriateness of current
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reception structures for certain (groups of) unaccompanied children and an increasing number

of unaccompanied minors in 2015, the Belgian government – in line with many other
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European governments – has created specific care and reception facilities and trajectories for
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so-called ‘vulnerable unaccompanied minors’. More specifically, unaccompanied minors

under the age of fourteen, girls and youngsters showing important psychological or medical
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problems are now, after a short stay of a couple of days in the first phase of the observation

and orientation centre, directly referred4 to specific, categorical centres for unaccompanied

minors within the mainstream youth care structures or to foster care families specifically

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While this type of intensive care methods within mainstream youth care structures (such as
residential/inpatient centres or foster care) can only be allocated to children after an intensive assessment and
approval by an independent governmental institution (the so-called ‘Inter-sectoral Gateway’), these specific
residential centres and foster care places for ‘vulnerable’ unaccompanied minors are now made ‘directly
accessible’, without the need to have the permission of this governmental institution. The other youth care
services are (as has been always the case) still accessible for unaccompanied minors, yet still only after this
assessment procedure and approval by the ‘Inter-sectoral Gateway’.
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selected to care for unaccompanied children (see figure 2)5 . Both these centres and the foster

care families follow the structures and rules of the regional (Flemish) youth care, including

the norms on staffing, infrastructure, support, number of children living in a group, etc., again

institutionalising an important difference in the ‘quality of care’ for the unaccompanied

children hosted here compared to those cared for in the specific structures for unaccompanied

minors under the Belgian asylum authorities (Fedasil).

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Two important reflections need to be put forward here: First, the ‘identification’ of those in

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need of these ‘extra’ services with ‘higher’ quality and more intensive support is mainly

based on certain ‘objective’ characteristics, in particular age, gender and disability. This

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means that, in principle, a 17-years old Afghan boy is considered as having less care needs
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than a 13-years old Afghan boy (without considering the validity discussions on age

assessment tests here) or a 16-years old Syrian boy needs less intensive follow-up than a
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Syrian girl of the same age. Again, a needs-based approach – de facto a ‘subjective’

approach, based on an assessment of the needs, possibilities and strengths of the individual
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client and his/her context – to allocate services is not used as the main reference frame,

contrasting the approach that is mostly put forward with regards to other groups in need of
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care and support, such as children born and/or raised in Belgium (Ní Raghallaigh & Thorton,
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2017). Yet, while residence documents were previously the main decisive factor in the kind

of support an unaccompanied minor could receive (care structures for asylum-applicants

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versus care systems within the mainstream youth care system; cf. supra), so-called ‘objective’

characteristics of the ‘body’ (i.e., gender, age, disability) are now the most important decisive

factors (Green, 2000). Again, we see here a ‘medicalization’ of the minors’ body, but now

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These are the criteria most often used nowadays, yet we see that sometimes these criteria seem to change
(especially the age criterion), although we did not find any written evidence about the definition of this criterion
of vulnerability or possibly changes herein. Most often reference is made to the Royal Decree of April 9th 2017,
the installation of the ‘observation and orientation centres for unaccompanied minors’ (see figures 1 & 2: the
‘crisis reception centres’) where ‘vulnerability’ is related to ‘those under 13 years of age, minors with
psychological problems, minors with mental health problems or minors who are victims of trafficking ’.
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related to being classified as a ‘vulnerable’ unaccompanied minor. And, again, this kind of

‘objective characteristics’ are used to organize the access to certain services and rights (cf.

the distinction between minors and adults), and not the minor’s story and needs.

Additionally, when an unaccompanied minor does not fall into these gender- or age-related

categories of ‘vulnerable’ minors, yet is considered as being in need of extra support, social

workers and guardians need to put high effort to ‘translate’ the youngster’s narrative into a

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story in which they ‘become’ vulnerable in order to realize the access to (certain) services

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and rights (O’Higgins, 2012). So-called ‘humanitarian reasons’ then may become, in Charles

Watters’ framing (2001), ‘avenues of access’ in conditions of limited options (Eastmond &

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Asher, 2011). However, this evolution seems to change the focus from having the basic
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human right on protection and care to a question of charity and generosity, which it is up to

the state to give or withhold, but against which a minor (or his representative) can never raise
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legitimate claims (ibid.). Thus, ‘the suffering body’ of unaccompanied minors, especially if

suffering can be certified by experts, seems to have become more legitimate than the child’s
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own voice and story (Fassin, 2001), with an increasing deployment of moral sentiments in

contemporary politics (Fassin, 2012). As a social worker in Greece told me how she had tried
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for months to obtain a place in a shelter for a 16-years old unaccompanied minor which she
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considered to be very ‘vulnerable’, but only succeeded in this after a bottle had been smashed

in his face during a fight, resulting into serious physical injuries (see also O’Higgins, 2012).
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Secondly, the introduction of ‘vulnerable’ unaccompanied minors within this overall group of

unaccompanied minors seems to suggest that those not classified as ‘vulnerable’ are indeed

not vulnerable, and thus not ‘deserving’ particular types of intensive care and support. While

previously, the group of unaccompanied minors as a whole was approached as a ‘vulnerable’

group in need of extra support and care (in contrast to adult asylum-applicants) (EMN, 2015;

European Union, 2013; Mouzourakis, Pollet & Fierens, 2017), based upon their age as
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decisive criterion (Clark-Kazak, 2012), we now observe a new ‘strategic categorization’

(Watters, 2012), introducing new categories within this overall group of unaccompanied

children, new categories of ‘deserving’ and less or ‘undeserving’ unaccompanied minors,

whereby the needs and rights of the latter category (i.e., adolescent boys, not surprisingly the

biggest group within the group of unaccompanied minors) become increasingly questioned.

The ‘deployment of moral sentiments in contemporary politics’, as Fassin (2012) has nicely

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illustrated for different groups, suggests a moral economy of care (Watters, 2007), whereby

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again the question is raised whether we consider unaccompanied minors foremost as

‘children’ or as ‘refugees’ (asylum-seekers/foreigners) (Derluyn & Broekaert, 2008).

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5. A pedagogical paradox: children (age) or refugees (foreigner)?

While being a ‘child’ (your age) makes you ‘vulnerable’ (or a ‘victim’) and entitles you to
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particular rights of extra care and support, as agreed upon with the (almost) worldwide

ratification of the CRC, being a ‘refugee’ (partially) makes you ‘strong’ or ‘mature’, certainly
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when you are able to ‘make it’ from your country of origin up to a far-away located ‘western’

country6 , and when, as such, you demonstrate considerable ‘agency’ (Silverman, 2016;
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Watters, 2012). This focus on ‘maturity’ (instead of ‘vulnerability’) and on the related
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‘strengths’ of the children involved is more and more put forward as an official legitimation

to allocate ‘different’ (read: less) support and care to these young refugees compared to
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native-born peers in similar difficult living situations. As such, a political choice to allocate

less services on the basis of a combination of nationality (so-called ‘third country nationals’)

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This changing way of labeling ‘refugees’, as a result of the increasing number of refugees in European
countries in 2015, became also apparent in the remarkable introduction of a new category of the ‘economic
refugee’ by several policy makers, hereby mainly referring to Syrian refugees who after their initial refuge to
Turkey decide to travel further (i.e., to Europe) and apply for asylum in another (Western European) country.
Their decision to continue their migration trajectory out of Turkey to Europe is then framed as if finding ‘safety’
(in terms of no war-related violence any more) is not their (only) migration motive, but they (also) migrate out
of ‘economic reasons’ (to create a better living). This then raises questions, according to these policy makers,
about their right to receive asylum under the Geneva Convention in the European country of settlement and the
hereto related support measures and social welfare benefits.
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and migration trajectory (recent arrived youngsters) is ‘psychologised’, through its framing in

terms of maturity.

Exceptions to this generalized approach of all unaccompanied minors as being (more) mature

(then ‘our’ youngsters) (hereby also ignoring their heterogeneous backgrounds and diverse

needs) are framed in terms of ‘vulnerability’. Yet, also the category of ‘vulnerable

unaccompanied minors’ is more and more restricted: while initially all unaccompanied

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minors, on basis of their age and if assessed underage, were considered vulnerable, nowadays

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almost only younger and female unaccompanied minors (the smallest groups in the total

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population of unaccompanied minors!) are still considered as (extra) vulnerable

unaccompanied minors.
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Yet, as a red thread throughout all these evolutions, we clearly see how – in contrast to

approaches for other target groups – the care and support services for unaccompanied minors
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are not allocated on basis of their (often very complex) needs (Brownlees & Finch, 2010;

Kohli, 2007), but on basis of other ‘objective’ characteristics such as residence documents,
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age and gender. This could be called ‘a pedagogical paradox’ (Vervliet & Derluyn, 2014):

seen from a human rights and pedagogical perspective and considering unaccompanied
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minors’ challenging living contexts and huge needs (including large emotional needs), the
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host societies’ governments have the pedagogical and moral responsibility to provide care

and support that can meet unaccompanied minors’ needs and rights. Yet, the creation of
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separated structures of lower quality for unaccompanied minors and this solely based on their

nationality and migration trajectory, and the restrictive ways to allocate ‘extra’ services based

on particular generalizing, ‘objective’ categories (age, gender, ‘vulnerability’) and not on

basis of an individual minor’s needs show how governments do not at all meet these

pedagogical responsibilities and keep on considering these minors foremost as ‘refugees’

(foreigners) and not as children. Unaccompanied minors then encounter the state both as a
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paternal actor (responsible for care for children who lack the ‘normal’ parental care) and as a

punishing regulator (as done towards refugees) (Heidbrin, 2014), a state that is oscillating

between ‘pity’ and ‘control’ (Fassin, 2012).

To conclude, care policies for unaccompanied minors have become strongly framed within a

migration management perspective, as ‘new regimes of control’ (Garrett, 2015), whereby

governments increasingly aim to reduce the ‘influx’ of unaccompanied minors, as illustrated

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in the (increased) use of age assessment procedures (Silverman, 2016). Moreover, as

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illustrated in the differences in ‘quality of care’ (e.g., number and educational background of

staff members, infrastructure,…), between the reception systems for most unaccompanied

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minors in the asylum system and the mainstream youth care systems, governments also
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seemingly try to reduce the costs of the care and reception structures for this group through

limiting the ‘quality’ (cf. supra) of the services provided to most unaccompanied children and
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restricting the more intensive (and thus more expensive) services to small subgroups. The

expressed anxiety to create ‘pull factors’ for migrants/refugees is also echoed as possible
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argument here (Ni Raghallaigh & Thornton, 2017), although with little scientific support.

This migration management perspective also ‘objectifies’ young refugees through reducing
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them to certain ‘objective characteristics’ (age, gender, nationality, documents) instead of

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starting from their personal histories and needs, instead of taking the CRC’s main guiding

principle of the ‘best interest of the child’ as point of reference. As such, a ‘culture of
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disbelief’ (Crawley, 2007) is installed, whereby more and more unaccompanied minors are

defined as ‘undeserving’ and ‘unwelcome’, or even portrayed as ‘perpetrators’ through

pointing to, for example, their ‘illegal’ border crossings, the use of smugglers or their ‘lies’

about the asylum story and/or age7 (Chauvin & Garcés-Mascareñas, 2014; Crawley, 2007),

with growing impact onto the care and support services they are provided with or considered
7
Recently, the Belgian Secretary of State of Asylum and Migration , Mr Theo Francken, launched the idea that
unaccompanied minors should refund the costs of their (medical) age assessment test if the test would ‘prove’
that they had lied about their age.
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to deserve (Crawley, 2007; Silverman, 2016)8 . And while this way of creating care and

reception structures for unaccompanied young refugees with lower ‘quality standards’

initially might not has been driven by these migration management and economic motives,

governments keep on reinforcing this approach, despite the repeated claims of experts and

scholars on the detrimental impact of these types of care and reception structures. A

minimum requirement therefore would be to introducing at least the same quality levels and

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standards for these separated care and reception structures for unaccompanied young

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refugees. Yet, the needs-based pedagogical and human rights approach that we strongly argue

for essentially requires a care offer that is aligned with each individual’s needs and strengths,

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contrasting the current one-size-fits-all structures for unaccompanied children.
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6. Implications for practitioners and researchers

The way care and support structures for unaccompanied minors are organized by states and
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policies evidently impacts professionals working in these structures (Cemlyn & Briskman,

2003; Crawley, 2007; Dunkerley et al., 2005). This becomes evident in the story of a social
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worker of a youth care-based service for unaccompanied minors (intensive support structure)

told during a supervision session led by me where he was explaining how as a team they
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largely struggle with questions such as whether they can ‘give’ their services to
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unaccompanied minors who are ‘clearly’ older than 18 or who are involved in criminal

activities such as selling drugs in order to being able to pay back their smuggler, when at the
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same time so many unaccompanied minors are on their waiting list. Who receives which

support and care? Who is more/less deserving?

“So, the professionals responsible for the care of unaccompanied minors are

representatives of the state, but are simultaneously situated between the state and

the child. As such, they embody the double and tense role of the state, as they are

8
The same tendency is noted in increasing attemps of governments to ‘define’ ‘vulnera bility’ and ‘vulnerable
groups’ in the overall asylum-seeking population (see Mouzourakis et al., 2017).
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part of both the immigration and the care regime. They have to act in the best

interest of the child, but are simultaneously acting as the gatekeepers of the state”

(Kohli, 2006).

While scarcity of care resources is not limited to the group of unaccompanied minors only,

very different arguments that are related to a migration (management) policy perspective are

at stake here, enlarging the ethical questions these professionals are confronted with (see also

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e.g. O’Higgins, 2012). In a similar way, guardians of unaccompanied minors or professionals

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in asylum centres caring for this group need to be very ‘creative’ to find appropriate solutions

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for some of their unaccompanied children with particular (huge) needs. Yet, the network,

skills and work experience of the guardians and/or professionals strongly influence their
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success, particularly regarding what they are able to achieve in terms of care and support,

hereby evoking huge inequalities between unaccompanied minors. These professionals thus
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often face strong ethical challenges in how they need to deal with their ‘discretion’ (Lipsky,

1980), in contexts of scarcity of appropriate support structures and high pressure of a

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migration policy that is in strong contrast with their pedagogical, needs-based orientation.

“For everything I wanted, I received the opposite. […] I used to trust people, but
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now I have feelings of distrust, especially towards assistants. Before, I always

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thought they acted to my benefit, but now I want to read everything to look if they

do their job right.” (Afghan young man) (Vervliet, 2013: 155).

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Equally, also researchers get influenced by political frameworks and public discourses,

surprisingly often without strongly questioning this impact. For example, many scholars, also

in the field of unaccompanied youths, want to distinguish between (forced) ‘refugees’ and

(voluntary) ‘migrants’ and do so through relying on whether participants asked for and/or

were granted refugee status by the migration authorities of the host country. Yet, at the same

time, it is widely acknowledged that outcomes of asylum procedures say little about the
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perceived voluntary/forced character of the decision to migrate by people themselves, nor

about the kind of (past) experiences they had (see e.g. Lietaert, Broekaert & Derluyn, 2015).

Equally, research on unaccompanied minors relies entirely on the policy-based, artificial

distinction between ‘minors’ and ‘adults’, and in practice often even takes outcomes of age

assessment tests as a reliable measure to define the participant group. The relatively recent

shift from a ‘problem-related’ focus in research (e.g., prevalence of mental health problems)

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to a ‘strengths-based’ perspective (e.g., research on ‘agency’ or ‘resilience’) is a third

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example: while for sure this shift puts the necessary attention onto parts of unaccompanied

youths’ functioning and experiences that have been neglected for long time, we need to

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reflect whether this shift possibly not also reflects the political change from ‘vulnerability’ to
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‘maturity’ in (in particular) 16- to 18-years old unaccompanied adolescent refugees, hereby

also creating arguments to strengthen these political choices. While research is always
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embedded in a particular (political) context, I thus argue that the scientific community needs

to be much more aware of how political and public discourses also impact their views and
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methodological choices, urging for critical ethical reflections on the possible impact of their

study findings onto policy and practice and thus for the target groups under study.
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Declarations of interest
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None
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Figure 1: The Belgian reception structures for unaccompanied minors after the introduction

of the Guardianship Law (2004)

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Figure 2: The introduction of care and reception structures for ‘vulnerable’ unaccompanied

minors

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Note. Figure illustrating the Belgian reception system for unaccompanied refugee minors,
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pointing to the changed criteria in the referral systems (from ‘asylum versus no-asylum’ to

‘vulnerability’) compared to Figure 1.

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Highlights

 Care structures for unaccompanied minors are mainly separated systems, different

from services for native peers in similar contexts

 While age entitles them to care, the separated systems are justified on basis of

‘maturity’

 The creation of intensive care systems for (extra) vulnerable minors are mainly based

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on their age and gender

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 This migration management policy views unaccompanied minors mainly as

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‘refugees’, not as ‘children’

 This policy also impacts professionals and researchers in this field.

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