ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, the migration of unaccompanied children as a social phenomenon has become increasingly visible, yet what remains obscured are the perspectives of young people. In bringing the perspectives of Office of Refugee Resettlement bureaucrats, non-governmental organization staff, and migrant youths into a conversation, this chapter argues that the state has enlisted humanitarian organizations under the guise of “care” to maintain, manage and expel undocumented youth. The chapter traces the ways professional understandings of “care” oscillate between narratives that problematically frame unaccompanied children as simple victims in need of saving and as delinquents requiring containment and removal. In examining how care turns into containment within the spaces of ORR facilities, it likewise argues that care itself is underwritten by problematic and privileged models of childhood. These intersecting models include the romanticization of childhood, the pathologization of mobility, and the criminalization of transnational parents. Such models are rooted in heteronormative, Western notions of the family, which implicate both kin and culture. By examining the everyday experiences of unaccompanied children alongside the stakeholders claiming to ensure their best interests, this chapter highlights the complex ways young people experience care as violence.
