Childhood and Migration in Europe: Portraits of Mobility, Identity and Belonging in Contemporary Ireland

by Allen White, Fina Carpena-Méndez, Caitríona Ní Laoire, Naomi Tyrrell, Anne J Kershen

Overview

Childhood and Migration in Europe explores the under-researched and often misunderstood worlds of migrant children and young people, drawing on extensive empirical research with children and young people from diverse migrant backgrounds living in a rapidly changing European society. Through in-depth exploration and analysis of the experiences of children who moved to Ireland in the first decade of the 21st century, it addresses the tendency of migration research and policy to overlook the presence of children in migratory flows.

Challenging dominant adult-centric perspectives on contemporary global migration flows and presenting understandings of the lives of migrant children and young people from their own experiences, this book presents a detailed exploration of children's lives in four different migrant populations in Ireland. With a unique comparative perspective, Childhood and Migration in Europe advances upon current conceptualisations of migration and integration by interrogating accepted views of migrant children and focusing on children's own voices and experiences. It challenges the prevailing assimilationist discourses underlying much existing research and policy, which often construct migrant children as deficient in different ways and in need of 'being integrated'.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781409492887
Publisher:	Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Publication date:	12/28/2012
Series:	Studies in Migration and Diaspora
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	18 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Caitríona Ní Laoire is Research Coordinator at the Institute for Social Sciences in the 21st Century at University College Cork, Ireland
Fina Carpena-Mendez is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Oregon State University, USA

Naomi Tyrrell is Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Plymouth, UK

Allen White is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Geography, University College Cork, Ireland

Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction: childhood and migration; Migrant childhoods in Ireland; Multiple belongings: the experiences of children and young people migrating from Africa to Ireland; From East to West: children's experiences of family migration in the 'new' Europe; In and out of Ireland: Latin American migrant families and their children in transnational circulation; Children of the diaspora: coming home to 'my own country'?; Conclusions: migrant children's multiple belongings; Bibliography; Index.