How many times do we hear the word "MENA" or "minor"?
Why is it so hard for us to talk about children or youth when they are migrants?
Unaccompanied Minors "MNA", "Separated Minors", "Unaccompanied Refugee Minors", "wandering youth", "Unaccompanied Migrant Minors" (MMNA), "Unaccompanied Migrant Children and Adolescents" (NNAMNA), "Migrant Minors without Family References" or the most repeated in recent years, "Unaccompanied Foreign Minors" (MENA) (Quiroga, Alonso and Soria, 2009). These are some of the concepts and acronyms used to describe in a generalised way the migration carried out by children and/or young people.
The way in which migration is socially constructed and conceived, influenced by government policies focused on the control of borders and migratory flows, as well as by administrations, the media and the cultural industry (who reinforce terms such as cultural diversity or ethnic minority), hinders the possibility of reconsidering models of care that are welcoming, protective and emancipatory. On the contrary, it highlights the categorisation of people according to origin, age, gender, socio-economic and cultural status (Maldonado, 2007; Hadjab, 2016).
The dominant narrative, employed in institutions, media and different spaces, through the use of language that takes little or no account of children's rights, has the capacity to fix certain ideas and images on a subject, thus generating a direct impact on perception, reception and interaction, on, in this case, migrant children and youth. Ultimately, dominant narratives about migrant youth permeate our society, yet they do not include the subjects of the narratives' own perspectives (Pak, 2023).
These dominant and hostile narratives are used in a variety of settings, including legal, public, private and online spaces, generating exclusionary social representations that shape a "general perception" of what migration means for young minors. Through predefined discourses and practices promoted by institutions and entities such as the legal system, education and the media, a dominant narrative is constructed that imposes an erroneous identity on young people. The use of the term MENA, for example, is a narrative in itself, a term that bureaucratises and dehumanises the underlying issue.
The use of these terms in the various differential discourses is nothing more or less than a reflection of a society marked by a racist structure typical of nation-states. A structure that sets in motion various devices that reproduce these discourses in an apparently innocent manner. This hegemonic representation does not circulate in a vacuum. It is intertwined with existing power dynamics in society, which determine the capacity of a narrative to articulate or silence one's own experiences, to "include the stories of some and omit those of others". These power dynamics refer to who has and who does not have the authority to generate and reinforce narratives. In other words, this discursive logic responds to structures of racial exclusion within which certain mechanisms are set in motion that decide who is deserving of their apparent 'benevolence'.
The hegemonic and stigmatising representation of migrant children and youth has an impact on the construction of a negative view of these people, which leads to discrimination and exclusion. This social and legal construction homogenises an entire group and prevents the visibility of the individualities of children and adolescents (Horcas, 2016), which favours the tendency to hold young people and children responsible and blame them for the situation of precariousness and social exclusion they face, problematising migratory movements and reinforcing the construction of stigmatising representations of the group.
Migratory control generates situations of vulnerability, making it difficult to protect children and adolescents. Before any other reflection, it is important to understand that we are talking about children and young people. Of boys, girls, children and young people, whose best interests must be respected. And whose rights - established and protected by countless laws and international conventions - must be guaranteed.
The legal framework surrounding these young people and children who migrate alone focuses on two aspects: protection and migration control (Bravo and Fernández, 2009). According to Arce (2020), there is a clear tendency to emphasise the status of foreigners over that of "minors", which highlights the lack of understanding between those who should be protected and those who have the legal obligation to protect them, as well as the tension between legislation on foreigners and child protection regulations. The author describes how the condition of foreigner is privileged over the condition of "minor": age determination procedures, attempts by autonomous communities to cease guardianship of these children and the increasing difficulty in accessing and maintaining documentary regularity when they reach the age of majority (Quiroga, Chagas, Camerota, Molero and Moral, 2021, p.91).
In the specific case of Melilla, this lack of protection for children and young people is notorious. In the "La Purísima" minors' centre, its geographical location, some 40 minutes from the city centre, generates a climate of greater vulnerability and exposure to multiple risks. The absence of pavements to get to the centre and therefore the obligation to walk on the asphalt and the road, the lack of lighting in different sections as well as the passage under the tunnel, are not places, spaces or a safe environment in which to walk.
Sometimes, young people are forced to sleep on the streets, again exposing themselves to multiple risk situations. When these absences are registered and the young person does not go to the centre to sleep, Purísima does not activate any search protocol, which exemplifies the absence of mechanisms to protect children and a type of institutional abandonment. In short, the structural logics of lack of protection and expulsion carried out by the institution are evident in the daily actions of the young people, who make several references to risky behaviour, to their desire to be transferred to the "Gota de leche" centre or, as in many other cases, to commit a minor crime in order to be transferred to the "Centro de Menores Infractores Baluarte" (Baluarte Juvenile Offenders Centre).
There is still a long way to go to ensure that the rights of children and young people are not only addressed in the media, but also by institutions. To this end, it is essential to identify the practices that can generate stereotypes and prejudices, criminalisation, scaremongering and dehumanisation, in order to continue moving towards a treatment that places the rights of children and young people at the centre. To achieve this kind of narrative change requires the ability to change the norms and rules by which our society is governed.
Finally, and in addition, to recognise the multiple configurations that family, friendship and support ties take on, especially during the migration process. Before pronouncing the word "unaccompanied", we can ask ourselves if there is only one way of being present. If there is only one way of accompanying.
BIBLIOGRAFÍA:
Arce, E. (2020). El sistema de protección a la infancia: entre la condición de menor y de extranjero. Una mirada jurídica. En V. Quiroga y E. Chagas (Coords.), Empuje y audacia. Migración transfronteriza de adolescentes y jóvenes no acompañados/as (pp. 99-128). Madrid: Siglo XXI.
Bravo, A. y Fernández, J. (2009). Crisis y revisión del acogimiento residencial. Su papel en la protección infantil. Papeles del psicólogo 30(1), 42-52.
Hadjab, H. (2016) Las nuevas generaciones de personas menores migrantes. (Tesis doctoral). Universidad de Granada: Granada. Recuperado de http://hdl.handle.net/10481/45098.
Horcas, V. (2016). Entre el control y la protección. Los dispositivos de atención de los Menores Migrantes en el País Valencià (Tesis doctoral). Universidad de Valencia: Valencia. Recuperado de http://roderic.uv.es/handle/10550/50818.
Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). Sobre la colonialidad del ser: contribuciones al desarrollo de un concepto. En S. Castro-Gómez y R. Grosfoguel (Eds.), El giro decolonial. Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémico más allá del capitalismo global (pp. 127- 168). Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre.
Pak, R. (2023). Comprender y reimaginar las narrativas de la juventud migrante en España. Fundación Porcausa.
Quiroga, V., Alonso, A. y Sòria, M. (2009). Somnis de Butxaca. Nois i noies menors migrants no acompanyats a Catalunya. Barcelona: Fundació Jaume Bonfill.
Quiroga, V., Chagas, E., Camerota, N., Molero, L., & Mora, I. (2021). Adolescentes y jóvenes migrantes no acompañados/as: de la discriminación al reconocimiento de los saberes. Quaderns 37, 1, 87-108.
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