International Conference, 4rd – 6th of December 2013, University
of Vechta, Germany
___________________________________________________________________
Childhood and migration: Gendered and generational
perspectives
___________________________________________________________________
(contact: Christine.Hunner-Kreisel@uni-vechta.de or Sabine.Bohne@uni-vechta.de)
The topic of the proposed conference is childhood and migration with a particular focus
on gender and generational perspectives. The conference aims to examine children and
their opportunities for development in different countries and regions, to situate this
examination within a migration perspective, and to interrogate in particular the impact
of gender and generations on the realisation of children’s rights to participation and selfdetermination. On one hand, this will contribute to the development of the fields of
childhood and migration research the intersection of which has received little systematic
inquiry (see also Tyrell/White/Ní Laoire/Carpena-Méndez 2013: 133). On the other, the
theoretical focus on gender, generation and children’s rights aims to illuminate both
children’s migration processes and the impact of these processes on notions of
childhood and generational orders. In these dynamics gender is particularly important
because migration processes have different consequences for girls and boys. Indeed,
empirical evidence suggests that in the context of transnational migration gender can
become a volatile element in parents’ child-rearing strategies (Faulstich Oranella 2001;
Kasymova 2013; Stephan 2013). In addition, other impacts of migration, including
poverty, affect girls and boys differently (Semerci et al. 2012). Further empirical studies
have shown that girls do not have the same rights as boys to participate in migration in
particular when migration is for education (Hunner-Kreisel 2013).
Children, childhoods, and childhood research in the context of migration: Issues of
gender and generation
In debates about the nature of childhood and what it means to be a child universalist
perspectives have argued that the notion of children’s rights implies, on one hand, a
“subjectivity imbued with rights” (Andresen 2013: 29) and, on the other, the need of
protection for the growing person. This notion of what may be, or should be, common to
all children contains a paradoxical element, which becomes especially clear when
viewed in a generational perspective on childhood and children’s everyday behaviour1:
A children’s subjectivity imbued with rights and children’s agency need to be negotiated
in light of the agency of adults (Bühler-Niederberger/Schwittek 2013). This process of
negotiating children’s own agency is also linked to the issue of protection: Children’s
bodily welfare depends at least in part on the care and protection of adults with whom
children may have positive or negative relationships. The extent to which growing
children will be able to obtain life skills and enjoy the freedom to develop their own
1
Following the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child the term children includes all persons up to
18 years of age without distinguishing between children and youth.
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notion of what might be a “good life” (Sen 2009; Nussbaum 2011), respectively the
well-being of children (Ben Arieh 2000) depends on the nature of their relationships
with adults. Paternalistic relationships may become problematic when adults try to
impose on children the adults’ view of a good life. Balancing children’s selfdetermination with adequate protection throughout childhood is a societal challenge that
concerns all children but which in many parts of the world affects girls in particular. In
everyday life children’s rights often differ for girls and boys, a gender bias that may be
inflected further by social, ethnic, or religious backgrounds, and which needs to be
analysed accordingly.
Leena Alanen (2001) needs to be credited with offering an analysis of generation as a
critical conceptual category for gender research. In this analysis a key conceptual tool is
the notion of generational order, which is used to theorize societal ideas and norms
about children and childhood. More specifically, Alanen argued that „in the industrial
society the concept of generation has acquired a broader meaning than in earlier societal
formation as ‘children’ and ‘adults’ have now assumed structural attributes that are
relative to each other“ (Alanen 2009: 159). Based on this understanding of generation,
research has focused on social practices that distinguish between children and adults
within specific generational orders. The family is one, and possibly the central,
institution in which parents and children meet and where being a child and being an
adult is constructed and reproduced. An analysis of families also shows that the different
social locations of children and adults, which influence their interrelationships, are
associated with wider cultural, political and social arrangements. These include relations
of authority and power as they may be legitimated within different societal orders such
as patriarchy, but also political and economic circumstances. Within such power
relations the location of children vis-à-vis adults is often one of asymmetrical power,
which has led to calls for conceptualising generation as a potential dimension of social
injustice (Bühler-Niederberger/Sünker 2006: 39) and to view generation “in analogy to
the concept of ‘gender’ as a socially constructed category of societal inequality”
(Qvortrup 2009: 21ff.; Bühler-Niederberger/Sünker 2006: 36; Alanen 2001: 17f.).
Within migration studies, and with few exceptions, children as a group have been
„invisible“ for a long time and have remained outside the main analytical focus
(Semerci et al. 2013; Bailey 2009: 408). Recent research findings show that children,
just like their parents and other elders, are involved - more or less - in the process of
migration (White et al. 2013; Camacho 2010: 127). Even more so, beyond being
passively involved - according to Hutchins (2013: 61) also in dependence on the
parents concepts’ of childhood children take actively part in migration; for instance in
the process of decision making , but also in migrating independently (Punch 2007). Yet,
this form of children’s participation in migration processes has received little attention
in migration studies. Children have remained invisible in particular as actors with
agency (Punch 2007; Huijsmans 2006). An early exception has been the work by
Faulstich, Orellana et al. 2001 on children’s participation in family migration. In
addition to revealing children’s agency the study has documented the significance in
migration of children’s social networks, of which families, and children’s integration
into family relationships, are particularly important (see also Whitehead/Hashim 2007).
Another aspect rarely acknowledged in migration studies concerns the effects of
migration on children’s lives and worlds (Nukaga 2012). Children may be part of
migration because they are migrating together with one or both of their parents or with
other family members. Yet, children are also affected by migration when they are left
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behind because one or both parents migrate for work and leave their children in the care
of relatives or acquaintances (Heintz 2013). Although the latter case does not involve
children’s actual travel during migration, it does show the need for a broader perspective
on migration and childhood: such “secondary” impacts of migration processes are
significant for children as actors and as a social group. The impacts of migration
processes have both local and global dimensions, which migration research has
discussed in terms of transnationality and transculturality. Migration processes rarely
are unidimensional; beyond societies of origin and societies of destination research
needs to pay attention to spatiality—the emergence of new spaces that are constituted in
the process of migration. This includes the crossing of national and political borders and
of cultural boundaries, and the merging of collective and individual identities into new
hybrid forms (Brettell 2008). For example, with regard to childhood research Adrian
Bailey (2009) has shown how mobility discourses challenge societal notions and
discourses of childhood and call for their renegotiation (Bailey 2009).
The goal and scientific purpose of the conference is to bring together scholars whose
work concerns children and children’s rights in the context of migration and migration
research. The conference promotes discussion of these topics within a theoretical
framework in which gender and generation are central analytical categories.
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