Book Review: The Criminalisation of Unaccompanied Migrant Minors: Voices From The Detention Processes in Greece

Guest post by Masha Hassan. Masha is a PhD student in Global Histories, Cultures and Politics at the Department of History and Cultures, University of Bologna, Italy. Her Research project in Anthropology, supervised by Professor Luca Jourdan focuses on the self perceptions and identity constructions of migrant smugglers at the Italian borderlands. 

Review of The Criminalisation of Unaccompanied Migrant Minors: Voices From The Detention Processes in Greece by Ioannis Papadopoulos (Bristol University Press, 2023) 

Are these voices heard? Is the Child heard? Are they [meaning the detained UAM] being treated with proper humanitarian assistance?  
No, No and no..... (p. 117)  

In 1966 American jurist and lawyer Justice Abe Fortas rightly exclaimed  

“There is evidence . . . that the child receives the worst of both worlds [in juvenile court]: that he gets neither the protections accorded to adults nor the solicitous care and regenerative treatment postulated for children”. While Fortas’s was speaking about a juvenile convict in the United States in the ‘60s, his words resonate with the contemporary situation of unaccompanied migrant minors who are subjected to ‘de facto criminalisation’ due to their irregular entry in Europe.  

Ioannis Papadopoulos’ timely work researches the longstanding policy of detaining unaccompanied migrant minors upon their arrival in Greece. Papadopoulos traces these detention practices during the years of 2016 to 2020. His initial interest in this theme began in 2013 when, as a young researcher, he witnessed the dire living conditions of migrant children in Greece. As a field researcher, Papadopoulos spent almost 4 years in refugee camps, visiting detention and reception centres located at Greece’s national borders. He uses his experiences to critique legal positivism in the Greek context by scrutinising the various discrepancies in laws within Greece's reception framework. Additionally, he fills these gaps by highlighting the voices of unaccompanied migrant minors, voices that often remain unheard."  

The book systematically examines the legal landscape concerning unaccompanied migrant minors in Greece, delving into both national and international legal frameworks and agreements such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and specific Greek legislation and agreements pertaining to migrant minors. While the UNCRC is an international treaty rather than a law itself, its principles significantly shape the development of domestic legislation and policies, including those concerning the rights and protection of children within the Greek context, once ratified. The emphasis is on two main articles: Art. 3 (best interests of the child) and Art. 12 (right to be heard). This comprehensive study investigates repeated violations of these rights occurring within the Greek administration. The author calls this procedural phenomenon ‘the vicious circle of unaccompanied migrant minor detention’ (p. 53). In Chapter 3 the arbitrary detention of children is positioned within the critical lens of Juliette Stumpf’s crimmigration debate.  

The essence of this book lies in the voices of the minors and very aptly, Chapter 2 is dedicated to the right to be heard (Art. 12 of UNCRC). In this chapter, the author also describes the methodologies used to conduct interviews. He moves away from a ‘tokenist’ approach of giving voice (p. 53) and instead successfully brings forth the narrative articulations of unaccompanied migrant minors. To achieve this, Papadopoulos embraces the methodological stance of Heidegger’s double hermeneutics and interpretive phenomenology. This process of meaning making is explained thoroughly in Chapter 2, which is highly beneficial for researchers such as myself who work with marginalised peoples.  

In Chapter 6, empirical accounts reveal the harsh realities of these assigned ‘protective measures’, the mistreatment, abuse and hostility instead of safe and secure environments. In the concluding chapter, the author unearths the disillusionment of minors seeking asylum. He describes how they normalise their experiences of police brutality inside custody, while at the same time feeling as though they were committing a crime by requesting international protection (pp. 128-129). This particular observation is noteworthy as it subtly brings up the psychosocial impact of detention and extreme securitisation on minors.  

I sit in Ventimiglia, where I am reviewing this book, and in this Italian-French borderland, unaccompanied migrant minors experience constant brutal pushbacks and detentions. The French police falsify birth dates on the ‘refusal of entry’ (refuse d’entrée) papers, based on racist and vague age assessment procedures. I draw parallels to the book’s Greek context, realising that in both, minors are made to pendulum between adultification and infantilization by the referral mechanisms.  

Researchers and scholars who do not possess a legal background may find the initial chapters as a difficult read. However, as one progresses through the book, they discover that the author has successfully translated this legal jargon into simpler terms. This enhances the accessibility and usefulness of the content to readers across various academic and non-academic disciplines involved in child rights.

It should be noted that migration, crimmigration, and immcarceration studies have been majorly adult oriented. Lately there has been a sudden surge in research involving children in migration, yet many works mute children’s lived experiences. Contrary to this trend of overlooking children’s perspective, Ioannis Papadopoulos’s analysis transforms children into key informants and, in turn, contributes to our understanding of children’s agency in migration and decision-making.