Social Work, Young Migrants and the Act of Listening : Becoming an Unaccompanied Child

"This book is about 20 young unaccompanied refugees who have sought refuge in Europe and how they experience and try to navigate their new situations, including their contacts with social workers, friends and family members left behind. The book contains stories of powerlessness and frustration from being held under suspicion, from meeting authorities and abstract people of power from "the system", or from constantly being categorized in a static category of "the unaccompanied child". It also contains stories of human meetings characterized by thoughtfulness, reciprocity and listening. This book also explores the experiences of meeting social workers as a young migrant in Sweden. The narratives depict how social workers can often reproduce powerlessness and frustration among the young people, but also how there are those social workers who provide something else through the act of listening. By extension, this is a book about society, about how important it can be to reframe people and to listen to their stories, needs and wills. Demonstrating the importance of listening to the stories of young refuges, this title will appeal to students, researchers, community workers and social workers interested in migration, race and ethnicity, youth studies, social work, sociology, anthropology, pedagogy and health"-- Provided by publisher A special edition of Child & Family Social Work focusing on the lives and circumstances of refugee and asylum seeking children and families in several countries - Australia, Ireland, Norway and the United Kingdom. Predominantly focusing on unaccompanied or separated children who come to these countries without an adult to look after them. But equally importantly, many children are accompanied by adult members who seek asylum, and sometimes achieve their goal of full refugee status.Papers include:* The child's or the State's best interests - An examination of the ways immigratio