Informal child migration in Europe (completed)

About the project

The project involved research in five Western European countries (Norway, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Italy), two Eastern European countries (Moldova and Ukraine), two African countries (Angola and Cape Verde) and one country in Latin America (Ecuador).

The research was organized around three areas of investigation, focusing on:

• The social models of family and kinship that exist as integrated parts of arrangements and practices of marginal populations currently living in Europe. We will study the tensions between these practices and policy discourses and implementations which emphasize a biogenetic logic of kinship, the nuclear family, individual rights and citizenship.
   
• The gendered experiences of social belonging and mutual dependencies related to women and men´s caring work in informal kinship networks. We will explore the tendency within public bodies to render invisible the social relations constituting this kind of caring work.
   
• People´s access to knowledge through their informal transnational networks which help them to manage their marginal situation. We will investigate the mechanisms of social marginalization by looking at the restricted access people have to specialized knowledge about the conditions of governance which influence and frame their lives.

Objectives

A main scientific objective of the N-ICME project is to produce new knowledge about the changing conditions of informal practices and transnational networks of care, including such practices as child sifting, guardianship and apprenticeship, as they enter into new contexts of European governance.

Sub-projects

• Each participant in the project has designed and will carry out an individual sub-project. The titles of these are:

  • Transnational informal child migration in Norway: Dilemmas in international and national regulations on family life and citizenship. Researcher: Dr. Hilde Lidén, The Institute of Social research, ISF.
     
  • Little Migrants: A study of transnational informal child migration from Moldova. Researchers: Dr. Lise Bjerkan and Guri Tyldum, FAFO Institute for Applied International Studies.
     
  • Children`s mobility and immobility in Cape Verdean transnational family networks. Researcher: Jørgen Carling, International Peace Research Insititute, PRIO.
     
  • Women who migrate - children who are left behind: Moldovan children in informal networks of care. Researcher: Professor Elisabeth L´orange Fürst, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo.
     
  • The impact of national policies on child care arrangements: The case of Ukrainian immigrants in Spain. Researcher: Phd student Alexander Tymczuk, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo.
     
  • The transnational networks of care of Angolan children in Portugal. Researcher: Cecilie Øien, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo.
     
  • Artefacts of migrant lives: The moral economy of Ecuadorian family reunifications in Spain. Researcher: Dr. Esben Leifsen, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo.

Methods

The project employs two different methodological approaches to the research on migration, children, transnational care networks and the formality - informality complex: 1) Through the main actors themselves - the children, their female and male caretakers - employing multi-sited field-based research, and 2) through governance institutions, actors and knowledge producers and products which in variegating ways regulate informal child migration and social existence - employing different qualitative and quantitative strategies for data production

Cooperation

The project brings together experts from four institutions in Oslo: Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo; The Institute of Social research, ISF; FAFO Institute for Applied International Studies; and International Peace Research Insititute, PRIO.

Workshops

Informal child migration and transnational networks of care
Workshop at the 9th Biennial Conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), 
18th – 21st September 2006, Bristol, UK.

Invitert arbeidsgruppe, NAF konferansen 2008
Transnasjonale familier: Barn i bevegelse

Children and migration in Europe:
Between new citizenships and transnational families
Workshop at the 10th Biennial Conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA),
26th - 30th August, 2008, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Child Migrants' Rights as Citizens:
Rights Discourses, Claims and Realizations
A workshop organised by the research programme
Informal Child Migration in Europe (N-ICME),
Department of Social Anthropology (University of Oslo) and Institute of Social Research, Oslo.
11-12th September 2008

Debattmøte
18 år – hva nå? Barnemigranters rettigheter etter fylte 18

Child Migrants' Rights as Citizens:
Rights Discourses, Claims and Realizations
A workshop organised by the research programme
Oslo. 11-12th September 2008 

TRANSNATIONAL
PARENTHOOD AND
CHILDREN-LEFT-BEHIND
Oslo, Norway • 20–21 November 2008

Barn og migrasjon: Mellom transnasjonale familier, stat og egne erfaringer. Heldagsseminar
8. des. 2009 09:30 - 17:00

Financing

The project was financed by the Research Council of Norway