Migrant childhoods and identity formation: tensions between structural vulnerability and social agency
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62452/9xz3v360Keywords:
Migrant childhood, identity, agency, rights, exclusionAbstract
Migrant children inhabit a space marked by the tension between imposed vulnerability and their capacity for subjective reconstruction. In the face of restrictive migration policies, systemic discrimination, and cultural uprooting, they experience processes of dispossession that endanger their fundamental rights and identity formation. Nevertheless, these children develop forms of agency that challenge institutional narratives of passivity, engaging in new languages, practices, and social bonds. Migrant childhood is not merely a passive recipient of public policy but a subject of complex adaptation, rights assertion, and symbolic construction. It is therefore essential to rethink reception and protection policies through a lens that recognizes progressive autonomy, the right to difference, and the active participation of migrant children in shaping their social and cultural integration.
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