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Explores how humanitarian aid workers help and hinder the care of unaccompanied children as they arrive in the United States
Every year, tens of thousands of children cross into the United States without a legal guardian at their side, often fleeing violence and poverty in their countries of origin. In Unaccompanied, Emily Ruehs-Navarro shows us one aspect of their heartbreaking journeys, as seen through the eyes of the aid workers who try—but too often fail—to help them.
Drawing on interviews with aid workers, migrant children, and others, Ruehs-Navarro follows unaccompanied youth as they seek help from a wide range of professionals. From legal relief organizations to family reunification specialists, she shows us how different aid workers may choose to work for, with, or against unaccompanied immigrant youth, deciding whether they should be treated as refugees, child dependents, or, in some cases, criminals.
Ruehs-Navarro highlights how aid workers, and the systems they represent, often harm the very children they are designed to help. Unaccompanied brings into focus the plight of immigrant youth at the border, illuminating our failure to manage the human casualties of a growing crisis.
Emily Ruehs-Navarro takes us on a compelling sociological journey that maps out what drives youth to migrate by themselves and what they encounter when they arrive at the U.S border. Using multiple qualitative methods, she illuminates the ways in which border securitization, racialized child welfare, and humanitarianism intersect to shape how we think of and respond to unaccompanied migrant youth. Integrating the experiences and perspectives of both youth and the professionals who work with them, this valuable book brings into focus the complex landscape of aid they operate in and the contradictions and possibilities they navigate to access aid.
— Lorena Garcia, author of Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself: Latina Girls and Sexual Identity
This work is important because it demonstrates the conditional nature of humanitarian legal aid toward youth and highlights the continued traumatization of youth even after crossing the border.
Redesigning the asylum system requires a sea change in U.S. politics that seems unlikely at present. Nonetheless, Unaccompanied joins a chorus of work that explains why it matters.