In early June we participated in the International scientific conference “CHILD MIGRATION AND INTEGRATION: TRENDS AND CHALLENGES” in Ljubljana, Slovenia to present the paper “Child agency and integration of unaccompanied minors in Sicily”, drafted by the members of Higher Education and Research Unit of CESIE.
The paper presents the findings of the Horizon 2020 MiCREATE project’s research carried out in Sicily during September 2020 – April 2021 for the purpose of better understanding the legal and social framework of the established reception system in Italy to support migrant children in transition. More specifically, the research explored whether the existing laws and current practices are compliant with the child-centred approach, and whether child agency is indeed taken into account in the reception and integration system at the national, regional and local level. The methodology applied was desk-based research, participant observation and interviews with minors and professionals.
The research revealed that even if the Italian legislation generally address the rights of the unaccompanied minors taking the perspective of children into the consideration and provides a comprehensive framework for protecting UAM, several protection gaps exist, for example the Italian guardianship model is reliant on volunteers and suffers significant bureaucratic delays; accommodation for unaccompanied minors is poorly managed through private contracting arrangements, that show evidence of corruption; children after being wrongly assessed to be over 18 years old, often become homeless.
The paper will be published in the Monitor ISH Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
About the project
MiCREATE – Migrant Children and Communities in a Transforming Europe, funded by Horizon2020 programme of the European Union, aims to stimulate social inclusion of diverse groups of migrant children in EU countries by adopting a child-centred approach to migrant integration at the educational and policy level, also through child-centred research.
Partners
- Coordinator: Znanstveno-Raziskovalno Sredisce Koper (ZRS), Slovenia
- The Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), France
- Mirovni Institut, Slovenia
- Univerza v Ljubljani, Slovenia
- Syddansk Universitet, Denmark
- Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
- Hellenic Open University, Greece
- Stowarzyszenie Interkulturalni PL, Poland
- Universitat Wien, Austria
- HFC Hope for Children CRC Policy Center, Cyprus
- CESIE, Italy
- Udruge Centar za Mirovne Studije, Croatia
- Dypall Network, Portugal
- Fakulteta za Dizajn, Samostojni Visokosolski Zavod, Pridruzena Clanica Univerze na Primorskem, Slovenia
For futher information
Read more about MiCREATE, visit the website www.micreate.eu and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Contact Ruta Grigaliunaite: ruta.grigaliunaite@cesie.org.
