Chase, E; (2016) The health and wellbeing outcomes of former 'unaccompanied minors': Shifting contours of vulnerability and precarity. In: Handbook of Migration and Health. (pp. 195-210). Edward Elgar Publishing: Cheltenham, UK.

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Abstract

Institutional definitions of vulnerability and the governed responses to it have significant implications for young people in transition. This chapter considers the challenges to young people’s wellbeing as they make the complex shift in status from the ‘unaccompanied child’ to that of ‘adult’ within immigration and social care systems. At this juncture, ‘vulnerability’ takes on very different economic, social and political meanings and associations. While young people may no longer meet the institutional criteria of the ‘vulnerable child’ (in need of care and protection), paradoxically they may become more vulnerable as they encounter multiple changes and uncertainties as young ‘adults’ with undetermined immigration status. Drawing on emerging themes from ongoing research, this chapter outlines the multiplicity of interacting factors influencing young people’s wellbeing and vulnerability to adversity (Thomson 2011; Hardgrove et al. 2014). In doing so, it draws distinction between vulnerability, precariousness and precarity in the context of these young people’s lives, arguing that refocusing the lens away from individualised factors and circumstances associated with vulnerability towards broader questions of precariousness and the politics of precarity forces a reconsideration of policies and practices that fundamentally determine young people’s wellbeing outcomes.

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