Images of Childhood and Family in the Context of Institutional Accommodation for (unaccompanied) Refugee Minors in Switzerland and the Dynamics of Their Marginalization

In the context of global movements of refugees and migrants, the structures of asylum policy as well as the (social) pedagogical institutions for institutions are shaped by specific conceptions of childhood and family. In the field of institutional accommodation, (un)accompanied refugee minors are not only categorised as 'legitimate' or 'illegitimate' refugees according to the administrative logic of asylum policy. They also move in different ways along other lines of difference, such as social origin, gender, age and generational order, against the background of normative (Eurocentric) images of childhood and family, in the field of tension between external and self-positioning: How is childhood, and above all what kind of childhood, produced in institutional contexts of placement?

This presentation examines (institutional) representations of childhood and family in the placement contexts of (un)accompanied refugee minors in Switzerland. It asks what practices of inclusion and exclusion these representations entail for the children and young people concerned. To this end, we draw on ethnographic material from two research projects: 'Unaccompanied refugee minors in institutional care' and 'Between home and return centre: an ethnography of the everyday lives of refugee children and their families'. Through a contrastive analysis, we reconstruct how unaccompanied minors are treated as special in comparison to accompanied refugee minors and reflect on the related dynamics of marginalisation in terms of socio-political provision and social status. The focus is on social practices and interactions in refugee accommodation centres, which are analysed in the context of normative notions of childhood, parenthood and intergenerational relationships.