Dissertation
"¡Solo valiente!": los menores que migran solos de Marruecos a Cataluña
Empez Vidal, N.
Alone courageous: minors who migrate alone from Morocco to Catalonia
340 pages. Barcelona, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (2015)
ISBN 9788449051838
Abstract
The purpose of this dissertation is to provide new data for the knowledge of unaccompanied minors (UAM), boys that under adult age undertake a migratory project alone. Most of them come from the Maghreb area (specially Moroccans) and their destiny or transit passes through Catalonia, especially the province of Barcelona. This dissertation is especially interested in children that have not been or are no longer in the protection system. Even though the ethnography, that combines participant observation with in-depth interviews and life story narratives, is based in Catalonia, a large part is based on the fieldwork in Morocco, mostly at the Tangier port, but also other neighborhoods and the hometown rural areas of some of the children whose itineraries are reconstructed in the thesis. The transnational perspective, has been a key guide in the design of the investigation, as It has permitted us to determinate the scope of the minors networks, and encompass their members as the 'transnational affected'.
Therefore, among specific goals, I will provide data to improve comprehension on the children’s elections or choices and their behavior; data that highlights our knowledge about how they experiment the every day world. This thesis also pretends to analyze the necessities inside the protection system that are successfully covered, and those that are not; which are the rights that are being respected and which ones are being violated.
Continuing with the specific objectives, they aim to provide not only a review of historical and current policies on foreigners and child protection treatment in the autonomous community of Catalonia, but also, the relations between individual processes (decisions taken) and these policies. Furthermore, it acknowledges mechanisms that influence the bonding or non-bonding of children with child protection institutions and mechanisms that make them run away. Ultimately, it tests the hypothesis that minors in street situation were not street minors before reaching the peninsula, and that the own protection system design for the UAM contributes to this unintended destiny. Lastly, the thesis provides a corpus of basic data in order to design effective and guarantee-based policies to protect children and adolescents that can be specified in projects and programs that fit their needs and characteristics.
The following thesis is the result of 14 years of involved research with, for and about children who migrate alone, known as Unaccompanied Minors. Ii is structured in 14 chapters. Although it is primarily ethnographic, it is also the result of documentation on laws and administrative operations. It includes photographic support, it is complemented with several annexes and the link to the documentary that names the thesis, "Solo valiente" (only/alone courageous).