Ensamkommande och försvunna barn är också rättighetsbärare – En analys av barnrättsperspektivet och sociala konstruktioner i uppdrag, kartläggning och åtgärdsförslag om ensamkommande barn som försvinner

Abstract

In 2015, over 35 000 unaccompanied minors arrived in Sweden. As a result of a more strictly regulated migration policy and changes in legislation, some of them have deviated. The knowledge about deviation is low, whereupon the county administrative boards (länsstyrelserna) in 2016 were commissioned by the government to make a mapping of the phenomenon and to formulate action proposals on how the situation can be managed. This study aims to examine how a child rights perspective can be found in the assignment, mapping and action proposals and further how constructions of unaccompanied minors is presented in the documents and how they relate to the child rights perspective. The three documents thus represent the material for the study, which has been analyzed from a social constructionist perspective using qualitative content analysis. The main result shows that a child rights perspective has to some extent been applied but is weak and, in many ways, inadequate. Furthermore, the material contains three different constructions of the children; partly as important to create an understanding of the phenomenon of deviation and as actors in their own lives, partly as vulnerable victims, and partly as strangers who do not belong in Sweden. These constructions are shown to in some extent influence the child rights perspective, in the sense that it is weakened when children are regarded as other than rights holders and actors in their own lives.