This image created by UNICEF shows the generally accepted norms or understandings surrounding childhood- that children are under eighteen years of age, have rights to be cared for and protected, and should be supported in reaching their dreams. However, we must take caution when presented with such a normative or narrow definition of any life stage. When asked to define childhood one may say that a child is anyone under eighteen years of age who has not yet been afforded the rights and freedoms, or responsibilities, of adulthood. However, one could also say that a child is only a child until they reach the age of sexual maturity. Or, would it be better to say that childhood ends when adolescence begins? The reality is, that childhood is much more complex and varying a term than can be explained only in years that a person has been alive, or even in rights afforded to them.  I argue our obligation as adults is to ask children to actively participate in the definition of their status as children or adults. 

In this paper, I will make an intersectional analysis of childhood that considers an individual's social location and migration status. Let us begin by defining social location so that we know what factors we will be considering in our intersectional analysis. According to the Inclusion and Diversity Committee at the National Council on Family Relations, “An individual’s social location is defined as the combination of factors including gender, race, social class, age, ability, religion, sexual orientation, and geographic location” (2019). I will take a look as well at the differences between their social location after and before migration and assimilation into US cultural systems and how this assimilation plays a role in redefining childhood for migrant children that move to the US or confining our definition of childhood within a heteronormative and ethnonormative system. 

It is important when considering the social location of migrant children and how it will impact their experiences of childhood that we consider how their social location relates to their current geographic location, as well as their location of origin. One example of how childhood is impacted by social location is the religion the child is raised in will impact their beliefs as well as play a role in how they define coming to adulthood. Children of the Jewish faith have their bat mitzva or bar mitzva at age thirteen to be proclaimed as adults, however, in Muslim communities reaching adulthood is defined by biologically going through puberty and only after this are they seen accountable in the eyes of Allah for their actions. We also must consider how their definitions of gender and ideas around gender norms are shaped by their home country and its views and social structures. Furthermore, an analysis of how social class impacts childhood will allow us to begin to ask the question of whether childhood labor and work expectations, or the assumption of what we may consider “adult responsibilities” at a young age can change childhood experiences and possibly even lead someone to no longer exist within the realm of childhood at an age much younger than 18 years.

“Sofia,” a 17-year-old tobacco worker, in a tobacco field in North Carolina. She started working at 13, and she said her mother was the only one who taught her how to protect herself in the fields: “None of my bosses or contractors or crew leaders have ever told us anything about pesticides and how we can protect ourselves from them….When I worked with my mom, she would take care of me, and she would like always make sure I was okay.…Our bosses don’t give us anything except for our checks. That’s it.” © 2015 Benedict Evans for Human Rights Watch.

Dr. Jacob Breslow’s book- Ambivalent Childhoods- asks important questions about childhood that will help structure our ideas. He discusses which individuals get to be children and which are kept outside the experience of a “Typical Childhood.” He points out how childhood is stolen from black and migrant children by the criminal justice system as well as the system of laws in place in the United States because they have to mature and act in ways that protect them from a system set up to disadvantage them and to put them at risk for violence. Migrant children often experience discrimination when they move to the United States, and may not be afforded the same opportunities as other children, especially if English is not their first language, or if they do not have the privilege of passing as white. He also provides a spectacular analysis of Ambivalent childhoods and how “‘child’ and ‘nation’ produce meaning for one and another, as well as how undocumented children and their parents reworked the terms of this pairing in the wake of the DREAM Act’s failure” (Breslow, 136). One of his main points is that separating children from their parents creates rifts that distance children from their culture and that allow for these children to be assimilated more thoroughly into the normative culture in the US that strips them of their autonomy and ability to make choices and support themselves or their family. It is their very assumed “innocence” or incapability of choice that keeps them from being deported in the first place. Yet, little consideration is given to the impact of stipping away love and nurture or their need for connection to a parent to remain within the bounds of a typical childhood. 

Breslow asks us to challenge our definition of childhood. They explain that we cannot say all people under eighteen years of age should not be afforded the same rights as adults, or that they are all in need of adult protection and support. He speaks to how these ideas of what a child is and of categorizing people by age were developed in tandem with the idea of the nation-state, and how they support each other’s existence. One point that Breslow makes is that the DREAM Act legislature, in classifying children as innocent and inculpable, takes away the agency of minors- further pushing them into the normative category of childhood. However, these ideas that any minor is innocent and incapable of self-sustaining do not coincide with reality in many countries, or even for many migrant families in the US. Many children work every day to support their families. Migrant children even, those who have been separated from their parents and forced to “grow up” and find their transportation or even in some cases live on their own before they turn 18. Is the migrant child who takes the bus to and from work on their own to bring money home and feed their sibling more of a child than the twenty-two-year-old who lives at home and has never paid bills and still does not know how to do their laundry only because they are under the age of eighteen? In a blog post for UNICEF Rayan Najeeb says, “There are some 18-year-old individuals who are still children because of the lack of awareness and experience in life, making them incapable of taking right actions or decisions” (Najeeb). This argument should mean of course that there are some individuals under the age of eighteen whose cumulative life experiences qualify them to have the same rights and level of responsibility as an adult. 

One way that the DREAM Act redefined childhood for many migrants is that it forced them not only to out themselves as illegal in the United States to take advantage of the rights afforded by this act, but also to put themselves in a separate category of illegality or legality than their own family. Many DREAM Act recipients were not so aware of their existence outside the norm and of US society’s unwillingness to accept them until their undocumented status was brought to light by events such as getting a driver's license or applying to vote. Thrust into a new reality in which they must fear for their status and safety in a country they have grown up in, they are arguably thrust outside of the normative definition of childhood that we discussed earlier in which children have a right to be heard and protected. One powerful first-hand account of this from Breslow's book is quoted below:

“My mother sent me to live with my grandparents in the U.S. when I was 12. When I was 16 and applied for a driver’s permit, I found out that my green card- my main form of legal identification- was fake. My grandparents, both naturalized citizens, hadn’t told me. It was disorienting, first discovering my precarious status, then realizing that when I had been pledging allegiance to the flag, the republic for which it stands didn’t even have room for me” (Vargas, 2012).

In considering what childhood is for the child DREAMer we must consider these first-hand accounts of the unique challenges and circumstances faced by these young people. Breslow discusses how the state in this case becomes the so-called “parent or protector of the child”. Yet, this protector does not afford real security, only a prolonging of judgment. Allocating the DREAMers childhood into a sort of parole-like existence in which the state monitors said child and considers if they are worthy or innocent enough to stay. Breslow describes this shift of parenthood from the family to the state as “the actual relations of kin and familial belonging must be violently negated and interrupted” (147). The state is incapable of providing childhood to DREAMers and instead leaves them out on their own in a world they are still learning to navigate. Thus, one could say classification as a child under the DREAM Act strips a child of traditional means for safety and childhood security and changes their experience of their formative years. 

So what does childhood look like for these migrant children? The video 

The Life Of An Unaccompanied Minor In L.A. by the Los Angeles Times does an excellent job of showing how different the childhoods of these 60,000 or so unaccompanied undocumented minors living in the United States awaiting decisions that will determine if they can stay in this country they have sacrificed their family and home to come to. Gaspar Marcos lives in Los Angelas. He goes to school, studying hard to try and build himself a better future. He came to the U.S. at 13 years old and has been raising himself since he was 5-years-old. An orphan, fending for himself and working to afford his basic rights, Gaspar has had more responsibilities than many adults do for almost his entire life. He had to work harder than other people in the U.S. to learn English and then catch up on his studies, all while also working a job. So, Gaspar is not a child if we say children are protected and allowed to dream and grow in a nurturing environment until they are eighteen. Yet, his residency status in the U.S. depends on him being legally defined as a child. 

Another story of resilience and redefining childhood and work is the story of Raquel Perez documented in the video From Migrant Farmer to Future Teacher created by raiseyourhandtexas on YouTube. She is a migrant farm worker who began working with her family at twelve years of age. She works seven days a week from 7 am until she finishes all of her orders- likely between 7 and 9 pm, long hours keeping her occupied with what many would consider adult responsibilities. She is just as instrumental to her family's economic success as her parents. During farming season she had to transfer back and forth between schools and face conflicting feelings about leaving farming behind and choosing to focus on education because it hurt her to let go of what her family expected. She saw how hard her family needed to work and decided to put her dreams on the front burner and fight to get into college. Her days are busier and filled with more responsibility than most children are aware of when they are sitting in a classroom. Now she is going to be a teacher so she can support other people to learn. Hers is a story of resilience and of a childhood that was a battle hard fought, not a right or privilege handed over to her. 

With the stories of Raquel Perez and Gaspar Marcos, we see how intersectional childhood is- and how much economic opportunities, legal status, and family culture and or the lack of familial bonds all play huge parts in defining what childhood is for these young people. 

Scholar Steven Mintz says when we want to define whether one is a child or not we must look at several things. He says to define one as a child we must combine the factors of their physiological and biological development (for example brain plasticity and ability to learn new languages rapidly), social status, developmental stage and milestones, legal category (for example, would the court try them as a juvenile or adult), age defined set of experiences, and way of thinking. He says that, 

“In 1890, childhood was not defined by schooling and leisure. It was probably the case that a majority of children over the age of 8 or 10 worked, planting and picking crops, milking cows, shepherding animals, toiling in mines and factories, tending looms, and sometimes engaging in various forms of street labor, such as hawking newspapers, delivering packages or selling petty items. Today, in contrast, schooling and childhood are largely synonymous, with solitary play and adult-supervised play far more common than in the past” (Mintz, 2022).

So what of the migrant child who did not exist within and grow up within these systems of schooling in the US? Are they a child now that they have arrived because their social status expects of them a certain level of naivete and supervision that was not expected of them previously in their own country? The fact that we allow teens to petition for emancipation before the age of eighteen if they meet certain qualifications (such as maturity and ability to work and live on their own) shows that to some capacity our legal system already recognizes the age bounds of childhood as flexible and negotiable. Another example of this is when minors are tried as adults because they are seen to have made adult-level decisions. So why do we not consider a migrant child’s perspective on what rights they should be afforded and on where they fall within developmental stages, as opposed to stripping them of their ability to make choices? Especially in the case of children separated from their parents, an inability to apply for certain rights can be extremely limiting. On the other end of the spectrum, perhaps if a migrant child has not been afforded the time and leisure of being a child and going to school and having their learning nurtured they should be protected as a child even after they turn eighteen. 

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/has-childhood-changed

https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/11/13/children-working-terrifying-conditions-us-agriculture

https://www.unicef.org/sudan/stories/universal-definition-what-it-means-be-child

https://read.amazon.com/?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_pbcb_rnvc00&_encoding=UTF8&asin=B09NDXBZJX

https://www.ncfr.org/ncfr-report/spring-2019/inclusion-and-diversity-social-location

https://read.amazon.com/?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_pbcb_rnvc00&_encoding=UTF8&asin=B09869G52L

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk9vP62EiL8  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaBfyVFHJ0g&t=5s