They don’t look like children
- In October 2016, following a campaign led by Labour Peer Lord
Alfred Dubs, the first child asylum-seekers allowed entry to the UK
under new legislation (the ‘Dubs amendment’) arrived in England.
Their arrival was captured by a heavy media presence, and very
quickly doubts were raised by right-wing tabloids and politicians
about their age. In this article, I explore the arguments
underpinning the Dubs campaign and the media coverage of
the children’s arrival as a starting point for interrogating
representational practices around children who seek asylum. I
illustrate how the campaign was premised on a universal politics
of childhood that inadvertently laid down the terms on which
these children would be given protection, namely their innocence.
The universality of childhood fuels public sympathy for child
asylum-seekers, underlies the ‘child first, migrant second’
approach advocated by humanitarian organisations, and it was a
key argument in the ‘Dubs amendment’. Yet the campaign
highlights how representations of childIn October 2016, following a campaign led by Labour Peer Lord
Alfred Dubs, the first child asylum-seekers allowed entry to the UK
under new legislation (the ‘Dubs amendment’) arrived in England.
Their arrival was captured by a heavy media presence, and very
quickly doubts were raised by right-wing tabloids and politicians
about their age. In this article, I explore the arguments
underpinning the Dubs campaign and the media coverage of
the children’s arrival as a starting point for interrogating
representational practices around children who seek asylum. I
illustrate how the campaign was premised on a universal politics
of childhood that inadvertently laid down the terms on which
these children would be given protection, namely their innocence.
The universality of childhood fuels public sympathy for child
asylum-seekers, underlies the ‘child first, migrant second’
approach advocated by humanitarian organisations, and it was a
key argument in the ‘Dubs amendment’. Yet the campaign
highlights how representations of child asylum-seekers rely on
codes that operate to identify ‘unchildlike’ children. As I show, in
the context of the criminalisation of undocumented migrants‘,
childhood is no longer a stable category which guarantees
protection, but is subject to scrutiny and suspicion and can,
ultimately, be disproved.…
Author details: | Carly McLaughlinORCiD |
---|---|
URN: | urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-412803 |
Title of parent work (English): | Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies |
Subtitle (English): | child asylum-seekers, the Dubs amendment and the politics of childhood |
Publication series (Volume number): | Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Philosophische Reihe (150) |
Publication type: | Postprint |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2018/08/03 |
Publication year: | 2017 |
Publishing institution: | Universität Potsdam |
Release date: | 2018/08/03 |
Tag: | Politics of childhood; child asylum-seekers; humanitarianism; innocence; ‘refugee crisis’ |
Number of pages: | 18 |
Source: | Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2017) DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2017.1417027 |
Organizational units: | Philosophische Fakultät |
DDC classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 30 Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie / 300 Sozialwissenschaften |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access |
Grantor: | Taylor & Francis Open Access Agreement |
License (German): | ![]() |
External remark: | Bibliographieeintrag der Originalveröffentlichung/Quelle |