The best interest of the child
- As seen by an outreach worker
Line Ruud Vollebæk
Outreach social worker at Uteseksjonen,
Agency for Social and Welfare Services, City of Oslo
Training on the human rights and best interests of children in
transnational child protection cases, Helsinki 21. september 2016
City of Oslo, Agency for Social and Welfare Services
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The best interest of the (migrant) child
The ideal solution
The next best solution
The best possible solution
The least harmful solution
Not make matters worse
City of Oslo, Agency for Social and Welfare Services
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The social worker’s
perception
Our perception is often based on
limited information, and influenced
by concepts of
• childhood and family
• age
• sex
• type of activity (harmful, illegal)
Professional knowledge
Children’s rights
vs.
Legal barriers (immigration law)
Age determination
City of Oslo, Agency for Social and Welfare Services
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The minors
The children and youths are
influenced by
• traffickers / exploiters
• family and friends
• dreams and aspirations
They can be
• forced, coerced
• manipulated
• tricked
• driven by their own agency
Protection
Vs.
Participation / right to be heard
City of Oslo, Agency for Social and Welfare Services
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“Harragas” selling drugs in Oslo
• Harragas (from Arabic ,‫حراقة‬ḥarrāga, ḥarrāg, "those who burn" (the
frontier/their passport))
• Minors (in Oslo: mostly 15-17 years)
• Without parents / other guardians
• From Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia
• Drifting in Europe
• Asylum seekers / undocumented
• Concerns related to: physical and mental health, substance abuse,
criminal activities, housing, lack of care and adult supervision,
vulnerability to exploitation
• “Protected” or controlled by adult drug dealers
• Organized crime, local networks and individuals
• Victims or criminals?
City of Oslo, Agency for Social and Welfare Services
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The support system vs. adolescents' life projects
(Dr. Nick Mai 2010)
• European social services and institutions address migrant children and
young people mainly as vulnerable victims in need of protection.
• The subjects see themselves as young adults who have to provide the
means of subsistence for their families left at home and for themselves. In
fact, they feel victimized by the very instruments of protection preventing
them from working as a way to avoid child exploitation.
• As a result, many leave the institutions and programs targeting them and
decide to live on the street, which is seen as offering better ways of meeting
their aspirations and priorities.
• Paradoxically, the street and errance are the only spaces of social interaction
allowing them to express their contradictory aspirations to a late modern
lifestyle of fun and self-realization (freedom) and the necessity to provide for
their families at home (money).
City of Oslo, Agency for Social and Welfare Services
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Errant mobility
Many eludes help and choose a life on the street, because the street
life is believed to provide better opportunities to meet young people's
own aspirations and priorities. This leads young people into a kind of
mobility that Dr. Mai describes as "errant mobility“, characterized by:
• a constant movement between different cities and nations in Europe,
• highly illegal and dangerous strategies for survival (sex work, drug
smuggling and sales, theft, exploitation in unskilled and unregulated
sectors of the labor market),
• ambitions of a fast, linear and easily achievable economic and social
independence, and
• the inability to reconcile “old” and “new” moral worlds
City of Oslo, Agency for Social and Welfare Services
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Migrant street children
Street careers (Lucchini 1993)
• Instrumental competences: concrete actions to make money to survive
(visible)
• Symbolic competences: long term survival strategies
Learning to be illegal (Gonzales 2011)
Migrant street youth have to learn both how to survive on the streets (both
short term and long term) and how to be an illegal, in a foreign land where
they don´t know the language, the system or their rights.
= long term effects, difficult transition to adulthood
City of Oslo, Agency for Social and Welfare Services
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The relationship between street life and migration
status
City of Oslo, Agency for Social and Welfare Services
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Amin (13): ” If I stay here, I can’t help my dad”
Sydsvenskan 29. mars 2015
- Jens Mikkelsen - Foto: Hussein El-Alawi
“He wants to lift us from poverty”
Jens Mikkelsen - Foto: Hussein El-Alawi
City of Oslo, Agency for Social and Welfare Services
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Osama (11) has been
reunited with his father
Sydsvenskan, 22. june 2015, Jens Mikkelsen
Hicham went to Fez, made
contact with some street children
and gave them 50dirhams [43 SEK]
to help him. A few hours later, the
street children came back. They
brought with them Osama.
- I hugged him so hard that he
got hurt, says Hicham when we talk
to him on the phone.
What did he say when he saw you?
- He said, Dad, I do not want to go
home, I want to go to my brother.
City of Oslo, Agency for Social and Welfare Services
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Belal (27)
VG 30. mars 2015 Foto: Espen Rasmussen
"I've never had documents and migrated
illegally from my home country when I was
a minor.“
"I've been unlucky my whole life. I have not
had any adult to take care of me as a child
and my bad luck in life continues to this
day. “
"There is one world and all people should
have had the same opportunities. If you are
born here or there should not play any role.
I regret the mistakes I have made. But
imagine yourself, what would you have
done if you were uneducated and were not
allowed to work or contribute with your
abilities? "
City of Oslo, Agency for Social and Welfare Services
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Amalia (16): - Pregnant
and begged with Mom
Dagbladet, june 2016
The police and the child protection services (CPS) agreed:
They believed that Amalia had been trafficked by her own
parents.
The girl's lawyer claimed that Amalia wanted to be with the
family and that she begged because she wanted it for
yourself - not because their parents forced her to it, but
rather against their will.
The County Council decided that Amalia would not stay at
the institution. The County Council believed that Amalia
experienced the institutional placement as far more
distressing than to beg with her mother.
“From their culture and difficult background is it considered
natural that the older children is contributing. This is
unfortunate, but not difficult to understand.”
This decision triggered an outrage, claiming it was based
on “the worst form of cultural relativisms”, and that the
outcome would be different if it was a Norwegian child
begging with her parents.
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References
• Gonzales, R. G. (2011): Learning to Be Illegal: Undocumented Youth
and Shifting Legal Contexts in the Transitions to Adulthood. American
Sociological Review 76(4) 602-619
• Lucchini, R. (2007): “Street children”: Deconstrucion og a category,
In: I. Rizzini et al (Eds.), Life on the Streets. Children and
Adolescents on the Streets: Inevitable Trajectories? (pp 49-75). Sion:
Institut International des Droits de l-enfant
• Mai, N. (2010): Marginalized young (male) migrants in the European
Union: Caught between the desire for autonomy and the priorities of
social protection. In: Kanics, Hernándes and Touzenis
(Eds.):Migrating alone. Unaccompanied and separated children’s
migration to Europe. UNESCO Publishing
City of Oslo, Agency for Social and Welfare Services
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