Menores não acompanhados na União Europeia: motivações, expectativas e realidade

• Autor(a) principal: Mota, Susana Maria Teixeira Fernandes Cardoso
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/17672
• topic: Unaccompanied minors; Motivations; Expectations; Conditions; Challenges; Independent child migration; Mobility in Africa; Migration in the EU; Acolhimento de crianças; Migrantes; Proteção social; Direitos da criança; Sociologia da população; União Europeia

Children have always been part of migration flows into the European Union (EU), whether moving with their families or independently. The general agreement is that they have been fleeing conflict and persecution and searching for better life opportunities. Among others, factors such as inequality, lack of employment, the expectation of success in the modern world, the spirit of adventure and educational purposes, often overlap. The number of unaccompanied minors presently living in the EU is only an estimation based on the number of asylum applications processed in EU Member States and does not count the unaccompanied minors who do not seek the official channels to legalise their entrance. International and EU laws foresee the protection of refugees and other migrants with special regard to the need of vulnerable groups such as unaccompanied minors, whether they request asylum or not. The latter should be treated in the same way as national children deprived of parental care and as specified in the national legislation of each Member State. However, there is a gap between the EU political efforts to protect all children’s rights and the reality faced upon arrival. Legal procedures, suitable accommodation, the right to non-discrimination and mental healthcare are well defined on paper, however, in practice, there is still much to do. This dissertation focuses on the situation of unaccompanied minors in the EU, more specifically, it aims to better understand who they are, what their motivations for migrating alone are and to what extent their expectations are in line with the conditions the EU has to offer. It concludes with some remarks from the professionals working with this target group in Portugal and Greece.