Constructing Deportable Minors. Family Norms, Development and Belonging in Dutch and Belgian Migration Policies

This paper interrogates the discourses and norms mobilized in the deportation trajectories of unaccompanied minors in Belgium and the Netherlands. While unaccompanied minors have always participated in migratory movements across the world, they became the center of media and policy attention in the aftermath of the so-called ‘long summer of migration’ in Europe. Academic research shows that media and policy act upon unaccompanied minors in a dichotomous way: as children/minors deemed deserving of protection, versus immigrants/non-citizens who should be excluded. These accounts show that the policy category of ‘unaccompanied minors’ is contested and subject to powerful politics of migration control. This paper further interrogates these politics by analyzing the policy responses and programs directed at ‘deportable minors’ in Belgium and the Netherlands. Following a constructivist approach to the study of policy and by relying on interviews, policy documents and parliamentary debates, this paper seeks to destabilize the implied dichotomy between ‘deserving children’ and ‘deportable immigrants’. It does so by using feminist intersectional analysis, which provides a complex and situated understanding of how discourses and norms tied to gender, ethnicity, age, family situation and class are implicated in the governance of migration. Following the analysis, the paper highlights how policy and its actors rely on family norms, belonging and narrow understandings of child development to justify the deportation of unaccompanied minors from Europe. The paper shows that the ‘deportability’ of minors is socially constructed throughout the removal process, and serves an important function in effectuating expulsions and define belonging to Europe.