Description
Workshop 3 – Integration Friday 23 June 2017
Venue: The Rivers Suite, Craiglockhart Campus.
Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are a vulnerable group: they live not only in a difficult situation as minor refugees staying in another country, but face other risks due to the absence of their parents, such as traumatic experiences, exploitation or abuse. Receiving states, such as the UK, typically view these children from a legal perspective as ‘refugees’ and ‘migrants’, rather than as ‘children’. It is predominantly this legal perspective that forms the basis on which the receiving state care system is built. This legalistic perspective contrasts sharply with the focus on the best interests of the child set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989. Recent research suggests that whilst various international NGOs and national agencies focus on seeking to provide appropriate emotional and psychological support and care, they fail to address those priorities articulated by the children themselves, for example, access to citizenship in the receiving state.
These concerns will be explored in a series of workshops drawing together policy makers, lawyers, social workers, psychologists and educationalists to explore these concerns in relation to unaccompanied child refugees in Scotland.
In the final workshop of the series, the theme of the presentations and discussions is integration.
Confirmed speakers:
- Professor Madeleine Arnot (Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge)
- Andrew Sirel (child and asylum law specialist)
- Andriani Fili (Oxford Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford)
- Virginia Xythali (NGO practitioner)
The Workshops are funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. There is no cost to attend.
