Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age
The recent national debate concerning unaccompanied minors at the border has often seemed strangely narrow and parochial, more focused on domestic political points and NIMBYism than human rights and humanitarianism. Jacqueline Bhabha’s timely new book, Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age (Princeton), promises to put the issues of child migration into their larger context. In fact, Bhabha speaks directly to the US issues on this youtube video. Jacqueline Bhabha is professor of the practice of health and human rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, director of research at Harvard’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, and the Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Lecturer at Harvard Law School. One can only hope that her long view of these complex issues will have some influence, though Texas Governor Rick Perry’s deployment of 1000 National Guard troops to the Mexico border suggests that more constructive, less politicized approaches may be a long time in coming.
According to the publisher’s blurb:
Why, despite massive public concern, is child trafficking on the rise? Why are unaccompanied migrant children living on the streets and routinely threatened with deportation to their countries of origin? Why do so many young refugees of war-ravaged and failed states end up warehoused in camps, victimized by the sex trade, or enlisted as child soldiers? This book provides the first comprehensive account of the widespread but neglected global phenomenon of child migration, exploring the complex challenges facing children and adolescents who move to join their families, those who are moved to be exploited, and those who move simply to survive.
Spanning several continents and drawing on the actual stories of young migrants, the book shows how difficult it is for children to reunite with parents who left them behind to seek work abroad. It looks at the often-insurmountable obstacles we place in the paths of adolescents fleeing war, exploitation, or destitution; the contradictory elements in our approach to international adoption; and the limited support we give to young people brutalized as child soldiers. Part history, part in-depth legal and political analysis, this powerful book challenges the prevailing wisdom that widespread protection failures are caused by our lack of awareness of the problems these children face, arguing instead that our societies have a deep-seated ambivalence to migrant children—one we need to address head-on.
Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age offers a road map for doing just that, and makes a compelling and courageous case for an international ethics of children’s human rights.
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On a different note, we give a special shout-out to Henry Freedman, on the occasion of his retirement as Executive Director of the National Center for Law and Economic Justice. Today, August 8, is his last day on the job. In a legal career that started when he was a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow, Henry has blazed a trail as a poverty lawyer and advocacy leader for nearly five decades. He has been the Executive Director of NCLEJ since 1971, at the helm weathering cuts to legal services funding, responding to vehement attacks on welfare and those who need it, and more recently, warning about complacency over growing economic inequality. A true human rights hero, we give a a tip of the HRAH Blog hat and send our best wishes to Henry as he closes this chapter.