eprintid: 10183550
rev_number: 18
eprint_status: archive
userid: 699
dir: disk0/10/18/35/50
datestamp: 2023-12-12 11:09:35
lastmod: 2024-11-15 16:26:31
status_changed: 2024-11-15 16:26:31
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
sword_depositor: 699
creators_name: Ioffe, Yulia
creators_name: Viterbo, Hedi
title: No Refuge from Childhood: How Child Protection Harms Refugees
ispublished: inpress
divisions: UCL
divisions: B04
divisions: C06
divisions: ZZ3
note: This version is the author-accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
abstract: This article sheds new and critical light on the notion, enshrined in international
law, that child refugees are a uniquely vulnerable and dependent age group
requiring special protection. Although protection is not inherently detrimental,
this conception of child protection harms refugees of all ages. It casts adult
refugees as less vulnerable, less dependent and less deserving of protection than
their younger counterparts. It downplays the contextual, relational and socially
constructed nature of vulnerability, dependence and childhood. It contributes to
the disregard for the capacity and wishes of child refugees. It affords these
children only temporary protection, thereby increasing their uncertainty, driving
them to disengage from welfare services and incentivizing the state to delay
decisions about their entitlements. Meanwhile, international law enshrines child–
parent relations but also authorizes the punishment of supposedly unfit parents,
and this ambivalence helps states weaponize legal principles of child protection
against refugee parents and their children. These issues symptomize broader
problems in international human rights law, international child law and
international refugee law. Therefore, a fundamental reimagining of protection and
deservingness is needed: a shift from dichotomies of vulnerability, dependence
and deservingness toward free global movement based on solidarity and equity.
date: 2024-12-10
date_type: published
publisher: Oxford University Press
official_url: https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chae055
full_text_type: other
language: eng
verified: verified_manual
elements_id: 2116797
doi: 10.1093/ejil/chae055
lyricists_name: Ioffe, Yulia
lyricists_id: YIOFF49
actors_name: Ioffe, Yulia
actors_id: YIOFF49
actors_role: owner
full_text_status: restricted
publication: European Journal of International law
issn: 0938-5428
citation:        Ioffe, Yulia;    Viterbo, Hedi;      (2024)    No Refuge from Childhood: How Child Protection Harms Refugees.                   European Journal of International law        10.1093/ejil/chae055 <https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil%2Fchae055>.    (In press).   
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10183550/1/Ioffe_EJILAW_chae055_updated_correction.pdf