Deconstructing Adultism in the Refugee Claim Process: How Childism Can Advance the Rights of Unaccompanied Minors in Canada

Ciufo, Dustin

The continual development in both theorizing and analyzing the experiences of children and youth reflects the vast possibilities for advancing Childhood Studies. Building upon the New Sociology of Childhood paradigm (Canosa & Graham, 2020; James & Prout, 2015), Childism is an innovative theoretical framework that critiques the hierarchical relationship between adults and children specifically and strives to facilitate children’s voices across social institutions more broadly (Biswas, 2024; Wall, 2022). It is this clarion call to explore children and youths’ life worlds across new frontiers that offers significant richness to not only the development of Childhood Studies as a field, but this may in turn inspire positive change throughout society.

Recognizing such possibilities, this paper applies the Childism theoretical framework to the experiences of unaccompanied minors navigating their refugee claim process in Canada. Broadly speaking, the prevailing literature on the refugee process both in Canada and around the world takes a legal approach that remains focused on adults (Araya, 2024; Chalupovitsch, 2024). Nevertheless, Jason Pobjoy (2017) and Geraldine Sadoway (2018) have utilized international law to both challenge the adult-centrism of the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees while simultaneously incorporating the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to better support unaccompanied minors. This paper wishes to build upon Pobjoy and Sadoway’s work by complimenting their legal approach with the philosophical principles of a Childism lens, within the specific context of Canada. Through qualitative field research with settlement service professionals, legal experts, and government officials conducted throughout Toronto, Ontario, Canada, this paper provides both a Childism critique for the inherent adultism that permeates refugee legal structures while proceeding to re-imagine possibilities for a child and youth-adaptable system that may advance the rights of unaccompanied minors for their refugee claim process in Canada.