Vulnerable yet agentic: Independent child migrants and opportunity structures

Abstract

While agency and vulnerability have been central organizing concepts in analyzing independent child migration, studying these in isolation from the opportunity structures that define it provides only a partial picture of its occurrence. In introducing the five contributions to this volume, this chapter argues that agentic capacities emerge and interact across a spectrum of contextual influences that may undermine or promote these. Although most contributions offer insight from forced migration, they illustrate the fluidity of migration processes in general. This chapter also calls to move beyond compartmentalized approaches and oversimplified structural categories such as chronological age to describe independent child migration.