ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the under-researched and often misunderstood worlds of migrant children and young people. It draws on extensive empirical research with children and young people from diverse backgrounds that have moved to, or within, contemporary Europe as part of transnational migration flows. The book examines the experiences and subjectivities of Latin American children in Ireland, by exploring the possibilities of reconciliation of their transnational childhoods with the migratory projects and illusions of their parents and their contingent encounters with other Irish and migrant children. It shows the dominant adult-centric perspectives on contemporary global migration flows, and reveals the partial understandings of the mobilities, identities and belongings of migrant children and young people from their own perspectives, through an in-depth exploration and analysis of the experiences of children and young people who have moved to Ireland in first decade of the 21st century.
