by Ana María Fores Tamayo (English below) © Birds in Red La maestra recogía lo que había dibujado la niñita. Al verlo, miró fijamente el trabajo de su pupila: observó en la página una pequeña mocosa, separada del mundo por barras. Una gran capa de carmesí cubriendo los árboles. Una señora en el fondo lejano, marrón contra marrón, su cabello salvajemente golpeando la página. Solo percibía retazos de sepia con un poco de verde y mucho más rojo de sangre. La indómita mujer que contemplaba en la imagen tenía un grillete encadenando su tobillo, la cara manchada de lágrimas.   ¿Qué pintaste, c ..read more

by Lauren Heidbrink and Sarah Diaz This ground-breaking study examines the treatment of unaccompanied children held in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody. The findings provide valuable insight into the government’s legal obligations to protect and care for migrant children and youth. When established in 2003, the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s (ORR) Division of Unaccompanied Children’s Services cared for roughly 6,000 children in thirteen facilities. Twenty years later, ORR’s program has grown to over 240 facilities and programs spread across 23 states. Global child migration is at an al ..read more

By Sarah J. Diaz and Jenny Lee The Trump Administration’s policy of family separation cannot be accepted as a legitimate government immigration policy. Instead, it is imperative for the global community to recognize that the policy of family separation, and the manner in which parent-child separations were carried out, constitute crimes against humanity. AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills In the spring of 2018, United States citizens bore witness to the unfathomable: children, toddlers, and even breastfeeding infants were ripped screaming from their parents’ arms by U.S. immigration officials and the ..read more

By Neha Tummalapalli The movement of unaccompanied minors along the Southern border of the United States has increased exponentially in the last decade. The primary federal entity responsible for the care and custody of unaccompanied children in the United States is the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which places children within one of 200 subcontracted shelters typically run by nonprofit organizations. If ORR’s operational capacity, or bed space in licensed facilities, exceeds 85% occupancy for 3 days, it becomes categorized as an influx period. During these periods of increased immig ..read more

by John Doering-White and Alejandra Díaz De León (Español abajo) This post examines recent reforms to Mexican migration law that prohibit holding children—whether accompanied or unaccompanied—in detention centers. Drawing on fieldwork at a migrant shelter in Central Mexico, we explain how these seemingly progressive reforms, which off-load care responsibilities onto overburdened grassroots migrant shelters, can leave families feeling protected and abandoned simultaneously. Migrant families—parents and/or guardians traveling with children—make up a growing number of people who access the loose ..read more

By Smita Ghosh and Mary Hoopes This post explores the rise of immigration detention in the United States. It explores a puzzling institutional dynamic between the executive and legislative branches, and explains how immigration detention began as an ad hoc executive initiative and evolved into one imposed by the legislature, over the objections of the immigration agency. In this article, we explain how a transformation in the perceptions of asylum seekers was critical to this transformation. Our interest in this project began when we encountered a puzzling congressional hearing from 1981. In ..read more

By Bonface Beti, Adey Mohamed, and Susan Frohlick  To counteract the perception that HIV does not exist in Canada, African migrant youth from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Kenya who had settled in Winnipeg, Canada created and performed a short skit as a community-focused HIV awareness activity. One of the many poster sheets used to brainstorm ideas with the youth group on the issue of how HIV mattered to them. [Photo taken by Susan Frohlick.] For youth who grew up in African countries grappling with high numbers of HIV infections—and wi ..read more

By Elisabeth Lefebvre This post explores boarding schools as an often-coercive form of child and youth mobility in colonial Uganda. As in other places and times, a careful reading of this history suggests that when child-rearing practices of marginalized communities are so easily dismissed and the ‘best’ educational options privilege the powerful, we lose opportunities to affirm collective and more culturally responsive approaches to schooling. We also run the risk of (re)creating systems that reproduce, rather than disrupt those same inequalities.   Beliefs about the proper care of chil ..read more

By Diane Sabenacio Nititham Associate Professor of Sociology, Murray State University Mahal and Cara migrated from the Philippines to Ireland as dependents of their families in the early 2000s. Here, they reflect on their immigration status and transition to citizenship. Mahal, Cara, and I met together on an afternoon just outside of Dublin during summer 2019. Cara invited us to her mother’s house for our group interview where we could have space to share pictures, drink tea, order food, and have Cara’s and my toddlers run around. I first met Mahal and Cara during my dissertation fieldwork in ..read more

By Sara Gomez I recently concluded two and a half years working as a legal assistant at the International Refugee Assistance Project, an organization that provides legal assistance to and brings systemic litigation on behalf of refugees, immigrants, and other displaced people. As an immigrant myself, I cherished the opportunity to learn how to use the law as a tool to help families seeking safety in the U.S. I never expected that I would get so caught up in the technicalities of a lawsuit that I would ever, even briefly, lose sight of my own complex and complicated immigration journey.   ..read more