Parents of global youth: contesting debt and belonging

ABSTRACT

In the United States, recently arrived migrant youth encounter competing media and institutional discourses that cast them as dependents who have been rendered ‘left behind,’ ‘on their own,’ or ‘unaccompanied’ by their parents. A corresponding narrative emerges in which young migrants’ parents are framed as abusive, neglectful, and ignorant. Combined, these portrayals may garner specialized services and contribute to success in the legal realm. At the same time, however, they fail to recognize and even imperil the intimate intergenerational networks that facilitate transnational migration. In this article, we trace the homogenizing power of public discourses on young people and their families across two diverse ethnographic contexts, that of Chinese and Guatemalan migration. Focusing in particular on narratives of debt and belonging, we argue that the pervasive pathologization of migrant youths’ parents diminishes and contorts valued relationships over time. It correspondingly demands broader efforts to historicize and to contextualize youth mobility.

KEYWORDS:

• Parent–child relations
• unaccompanied migration
• social agency
• debt
• comparative research

Acknowledgments

This article emerges from our jointly created and curated website (www.youthcirculations.com) which illuminates the unconsidered experiences of global youth as they actively self-represent as complex, agentive, skilled, creative, and relational actors. The authors wish to thank Children’s Geographies’ Editor John Horton and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The National Science Foundation generously funded Heidbrink’s (SES-1456889) and Statz’s (SES-1124572) studies.