A rite of reverse passage: the construction of youth migration in the US asylum process. Issue 9 (15th July 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Galli, Chiara
• Is Part Of: Ethnic and racial studies. Volume 41:Issue 9(2018)
• Page Start: 1651
• Page End: 1671
• Publication Date: 2018-07-15
• Subjects: Asylum -- unaccompanied minors -- migration -- rites of passage -- Central America -- legal brokerage; Race -- Periodicals; Race relations -- Periodicals; Ethnic groups -- Periodicals; 305.805
• DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2017.1310389
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0141-9870

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Drawing on ethnographic research at a legal aid organization, I analyse the legal brokerage of youths' asylum applications. As youths increasingly seek asylum alone, the US has adopted policy changes allowing them more favourable access to the asylum process than adults. Despite this opening, I argue that mediating youths' asylum claims remains challenging. First, youths have more difficulty sharing their stories than adults, and I identify three youth-specific interviewing strategies that legal intermediaries employ to elicit their accounts of forced migration. Second, I analyse how intermediaries edit these accounts to satisfy the asylum system's expectations about childhood, as well as forced migration, constructing narratives that distance youths from criminalized adult identities and depict them as innocent child-refugees, which configures the asylum process as a victimizing and infantilizing rite of reverse passage .