Children, adults or both? Negotiating adult minors and interests in a state care facility in Malta

ABSTRACT

In a state care facility in Malta, young refugees classified as unaccompanied minors and staff charged with their supervision and administration interact daily. Within these interactions, the young refugees and the staff negotiate interests, which I examine ethnographically. These interactions were contentious, because young refugees’ and care staffs’ understandings of interests were often at odds. In these negotiations, I argue that the refugees were both positioned and positioned themselves as ‘adult minors’. The other-positioning suggests that care workers viewed them ambivalently – sometimes as mature adults, sometimes as immature children. Similarly, the young refugees’ self-positioning also made use hereof, at times presenting oneself as independent and autonomous, at other times presenting oneself in need of assistance. Analysing everyday practices of interest negotiations represents a shift away from legally-centred research on best interests to empirically-founded understandings of the (un-)fulfilment of interests.

KEYWORDS:

• State care facility
• social interaction
• adult minors
• young refugees
• Malta

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The term ‘refugee’ is not equated here with its legal definition. Here, it refers to the experience of the migrated individual.

2 All research participants and institutions were given pseudonyms.

3 Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology.