Childhood, Migration, and Identity in Chris Cleave’s The Other Hand

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

DESPITE THE FACT that many of the world's migrants are children,1 they have, until recently, been largely neglected in studies of migration across most disciplines, from diaspora studies through sociology to childhood studies. The lack of distinction between adults and children even in the collation of migration statistics2 reflects implicit assumptions about childhood as merely a transitory stage on the way to adulthood. According to such assumptions, children are dependent and vulnerable until they become rational, adults.3 In migration studies to date, children have tended to be treated as appendages of their parents, dependants who follow the migratory patterns and experiences of their guardians, and who are either left behind or sent for.4 Where children have been the focus, it has tended to be on children as victims of migration - as child labourers, sex workers, and refugees who travel and arrive as 'unaccompanied minors.' The representation of such children as victims of migration exposes the darker side of globalization, and is often concerned with highlighting the need for new laws and policies which would protect vulnerable children. This is undoubtedly an important and valuable part of the study of childhood migration, yet this approach also obscures other aspects. Furthermore, this connection of childhood migration with violence and criminality reinforces the traditional, Western perception of a normal, healthy childhood as one grounded in stability and fixity. This is a perception belied by many children across the world whose childhoods are shaped by migration. The lives of many children in parts of Africa and Asia, which are characterized by independence, multilocality, and temporary residence, expose the understanding of children as needing stability, protection, and domestication in order to form 'normal', 'healthy' identities as a Western construct. Indeed, the Western association of children with qualities such as innocence and vulnerability also accounts for the tendency to neglect those groups of children who display 'adult' features of behaviour by virture of the fact that they work or travel long distances by themselves.In 2010, the international journal Childhood dedicated its May issue to the topic of childhood and migration. Its starting point was the recognition of the dominant view of childhood as a construct tied to a specific social, historical, and cultural context which had little to do with the daily experiences of many children across the world. As the introduction states,the powerful ideologies that place idealized childhoods in fixed and bounded spaces are challenged by the complex realities of the lives of many, or most, of the world's children.5This publication is typical of a recent shift towards a pluralistic, poststructuralist understanding of childhood which has opened up the range of social phenomena investigated by childhood scholars, including migration.6 The new focus on children as migrants has entailed an acknowledgement of the agency children demonstrate in migrations, which in turn challenges the traditional view of children as passive receptacles of the outside, adult world.7One way in which children show agency is in the formation of distinct transcultural identities. The recent identification of childhood as an ontological category distinct from adulthood amounts to a reassessment of children as autonomous and creative beings producing social reality and culture.8 The increasing recognition in childhood studies that children seek out and perform various identities in the same way as adults suggests that, in the context of migration, regardless of whether they migrate as unaccompanied minors or as part of a stable family unit, children have as much of a claim to agency and subjectivity in the negotiation of new cultural identities and sense of belonging as their parents do. It is this shift that allows children to be considered in their own right in the context of migration. …