Refugee Children as a Site of Critical Intervention

This Leverhulme Trust funded project focuses on the experiences of refugee children from a range of geographical spaces: North Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, Rwanda, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The focus is on those who have sought asylum in either neighbouring countries or the UK, Europe and the USA. Through an analysis of a range of media, including memoirs, autobiographical narratives, documentaries, YouTube videos and blogs written by refugee children or focusing on refugee children as is the case of documentaries, I engage with the particularities of the child as a refugee, which is an understudied dimension of refugee studies. I am also including the stories of children I met in Calais during my recent trip to understand their experiences of transitory spaces and how human rights organisations come to their aid. By doing this, I underline the importance of attending to the specific circumstances of being a child refugee, the provisions that are in place (or the lack thereof) and how this might affect individuals in the longer term. Ultimately, this project offers a critical analysis of what refugee children’s experiences enable us to understand about the impact of forced migration, mobility and integration (or the absence thereof) has on children.