Children as Individuals: Assessing Their Rights in the Context of Global Migrations.

• Author: Burns, Andrew
• Position: Book review

A Review of Child Migration & Human Rights in a Global Age

By Jacqueline Bhabha

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 392 pages.

The central thesis of Child Migration & Human Rights in a Global Age argues an interesting position. Rather than treating children as subservient dependents of adult migrants, Jacqueline Bhabha makes a compelling case for examining them individually. In many cases, their needs differ starkly from their parents', and they are especially susceptible to an entirely different collection of dangers. The text is skillfully layered with a legal history of the field, and to maintain its accessibility, the author takes pains to include anecdotes that illustrate "small," day-to-day tragedies. A particularly tragic example follows the travails of a Somali woman whose efforts to bring her children to Ireland were obstructed by bureaucratic incompetence. (1) Despite a pair of issues that surfaced infrequently--specifically, a rare reliance on oversimplified examples and an overreliance on Western policy--Child Migration is a very accessible, well-grounded introduction to the hazards facing child migrants.

Bhabha, an academic lawyer dividing her time between Harvard Law School and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, is deeply involved in contemporary discourse on migration and refugee policy. Bhabha's expertise belies her treatment of the material in Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age. Her coverage extends beyond the aggregate migration patterns with which American readers will likely be most familiar. Child Migration expands to the far grimmer dangers facing child migrants in conflict zones, particularly trafficking and conscription. Her work celebrates complicated efforts to bring war criminals to justice, with a particularly strong focus on the convictions issued by the Special Court for Sierra Leone. (2) The author's call for action to curb the recruitment of child soldiers and the attending carnage left behind is eloquent, and her appreciation for nuance is a welcome addition to the conversation.

Particularly impressive was her eye for the limited utility of popular coverage (the author cites the film Blood Diamond and the book A Long Way Gone prominently) of child migration. Both offered a picture of refugee challenges in Sierra Leone and Liberia to a wide audience, but aside from providing entertaining ammunition, they did not spur serious policy changes. Her acknowledgement of the...