Asylum, Children as Seekers of

Broadly speaking, an asylum seeker can be defined or described as a person who has left his or her country of origin and formally applied for asylum in another country, which has not yet been granted. Historically, children’s involvement in seeking asylum has been subsumed under family or kin migration. Consequently, children were largely treated as objects travelling with adults, or their experiences were conflated with those of women and mothers.

However, the last 20 years has seen a gradual shift away from this perspective to understanding children’s role in migration as people with both feelings and agency in their own right, separate from the adults around them. By considering some of the legal, procedural, psychological, and personal challenges they may face, this entry engages the ...