1. “Crisis Overload”:
“Vulnerability” in the “State of Permanent
Emergency”
Or,
the making of clandestines out of young
forced migrants.
Winter seminar at the NIA: “Migration in the Margins of Europe”
17.01.13, Presentation by Sonia Vlachou,
PhD student, at the “Hamburg Institut für Ethnologie”
Email: SVlachou@gmx.de

2. 1. Aims and contour:
Focus group/ Research duration/ Location/
Ages
“Childhood” and “Youth” as
• Livelihood Capital
• Manifestations of the biopolitical border.
Symbolic, legal, factual facets to explore.

3. 2. Time horizon of the
research
2. a . Integration of the
issue to a 2.b. New migration
contemporary era realities in the South
according to legal of Europe since 2000
developments:
From a “European and
• 2003, the “Dublin II global South to the
regulation” EU North”- scheme
• 2005, the adoption of To a
the UN “Guiding “global South moving
Instructions for Asylum- to the EU South”
Applicant Children -scheme
Migrants”.

4. 3. West, sub-Saharan African
migrants in Greece:
• 3. a. Constant
push factors out of
Sub-Saharan West
Africa.
• 3. b. The tracing
of new routes into
the European
continent.

5. First the maritime, and later on the land
border between Greece and Turkey.

6. 4. Conceptualizing Childhood
and Youth within a migratory
framework:
Both categories pending in socio-cultural
transitivity.
• 4. a. The overlap of “Migrant” and
“Child” = vulnerability maximized.
• 4. b. Forced Children Migrants as a
social scientific category connected to
states of ‘RUINED VITAL SPACE”.

7. 4. c. Possible Administrative/
Bureaucratic cases of
Independent Children Migrants:
• The “Invisibles”
• Those re-invented from authorities:
• Self- reinvented ones
• Non- asylum applicant Independent child
Migrants
• Those attempting family re-unification in the rest
of EU
• Consciously asylum applicant minors
• “No- clues”.

8. 5. Unaccompanied Minors as
asylum applicant children
migrants:
5. a. Legal definition (PD 220/2007, article 1, point 6)
…any individual that is a citizen of a third
country of non-Greek nationals, under 18
years of age, who arrives separated from
his parents and who is not taken care of
by any adult guardian, responsible to do
so. An underage person is considered to
be an “Unaccompanied Minor” for as long
as he is not placed under the legal
guardianship after his/ her entering
Greece ( Dimitropoulou, Papageorgiou 2008, UNHCR) .

9. 5. b. The detention and reception
of Children Migrants.
First,
detention with
adults,
Then,
homelessness, or
reception centers for
minors
(12 structures
housing minors all
over GR).

10. 6. Margins of Agency
6. a. “Youthency”:
• The self-conscious re-infantilization as a
• life strategy, as catalytic piece of Agency to
overcome the biopolitical border.
• A “human rights equalizer”.
• a time of suspension from reaching the state of
living of a Bogus Migrant.

11. 7. Institutions
Implications of their
classification
under vulnerability
status:
Re-infantilization
process that converts
them to “institutional
children”.

12. 7. a. The spatial semiology
of existing centers
7. b. Aspects of institutional
protection deficiency:
• Unpreparedness to educate analphabetic,
people with limited educational experience.
• Lack of design to educational needs
of mixed origins, (languages)
• Absence of qualified staff
• Funds scarcity + unclear arrangements
• Exclusion from apprenticeship workshops
• Exclusion from the schooling system

13. 7. b. Aspects of institutional
protection deficiency (continue):
• Essentializing social –educational deficit.
• Re-constructing the Undeserving poor
out of the “Vulnerable Children”.
Outcome:
The essentializing, normative view on
alterity invalidates in fact the legal
protection framework.

14. 8. “Durable solutions” (?)
• 8. a. The lack of a transition plan for a
sustainable adulthood.
• 8. b. Systematic breaches of duty of the Greek
police in renewing “pink cards”.
• 8. c. The instrumentalization of the “Crisis
Apparatus” as an exclusion mechanism based
on nationality and race.

15. 9. Conclusion:
An inglorious end for vulnerabilities
Maximizing
transitivity =
maximizing
vulnerability
by driving Young forced
migrants into clandestine,
illicit, precarious labour.
Who does really profit from this systematic,
massive waste on human resources?