Containing futures: the governance of youths’ migratory aspirations in comparative context

ABSTRACT

This article traces how aspirations management interventions – specifically those that accompanied the United States-Mexico Southern Border Program of 2014 and the Italy-Libya Memorandum of Understanding of 2017 – influence young people’s aspirations and decisions to migrate. The article details three typologies of aspiration management specific to migrant children and youth: child protection interventions, awareness and education campaigns, and development initiatives. Drawing from ethnographic research with unaccompanied migrant youth in Guatemala and Italy, this paper examines how young people understand and consider these programmes when deciding whether and under what conditions to migrate transnationally. Analysing aspiration management programmes alongside young people reveals that these interventions do not deter young people’s migratory decisions, yet do shape who, how and under what conditions they move. A cross-regional case study analysis extends the scholarship on border externalisation as a physical and administrative deterrent to examine how aspiration management has become a critical mode of migration governance of young people.

KEYWORDS:

• Child migration
• comparative studies
• migratory decisions
• aspirations

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the young people who generously shared their time and perspectives with me and to the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Border externalisation agreements include Turkey-EU statement (2016), the Morocco-Spain agreement (2019), U.S. Migration Protection Protocols (2018), and third-country agreements between the United States and Guatemala and Honduras (2019), among others.

2 UNICEF. Making the Invisible Visible. Located at: https://www.unicef.org/eca/media/10676/file/This%20Analysis.pdf.

3 2015, October 12. ‘EEUU paga a México millones para ‘represión feroz’ contra los migrantes,’ La Opinion. Located at: https://laopinion.com/2015/10/12/nyt-eeuu-paga-a-mexico-millones-para-represion-feroz-contra-los-migrantes/.

4 Italia Libyan Friendship Treaty, Trattato di Amicizia, Partenariato e Cooperazione tra la Repubblica Italiana e la Grande Giamahiria Araba Libica Popolare Socialista (2008).

5 Law No. 19 (2010) on Combating Irregular Migration, Article 6, and Law No. 6 (1987) on Regulating Entry, Residence and Exit of Foreign Nationals to/from Libya and amended by Law No. 2 (2004).

6 EU Emergency Trust Fund. 2019, December. EU Support on Migration in Libya. Located at: https://ec.europa.eu/trustfundforafrica/sites/euetfa/files/eutf-factsheet_libya_dec_2019_1.pdf.

7 IBID.

8 Eurostat. 2020. Asylum applicants considered to be unaccompanied minors. Located at: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/10774034/3-28042020-AP-EN.pdf/03c694ba-9a9b-1a50-c9f4-29db665221a8.

Additional information

Funding

Research in Mexico and Guatemala was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant [number SES-1456889]. Research in Italy was supported by the Fulbright-Schuman Foundation (2018-2019).