Paper short abstract:

This paper explores care arrangements for unaccompanied minors in Belgium through the narratives of guardians and unaccompanied minors. It aims to assess the inclusionary potential of these relations of care in light of the often insurmountable constraints caused by immigration policies.

Paper long abstract:

Embedded in a larger qualitative study of care arrangements for unaccompanied minor foreigners in Belgium, this paper explores the narratives of guardians and unaccompanied minors about their relations of care. It examines how the minors' care arrangements can generate and accumulate social capital and value for both the unaccompanied minors and their caregivers and increase their feelings of belonging, self-worth and citizenship. It looks at both the unaccompanied minor foreigners and their caregivers as raced and classed intersectional bodies that are worked and reworked in the current capitalist conjuncture through emotions and affect. Their stories provide an interesting lens to the ways utopian imageries of solidarity and humanitarianism, and/or imageries of kinship, cultural heritage and national belonging intersect with the participants' everyday lived realities and practices. However, the inclusionary potential of these care relations is rather limited as they are played out in a discursive and material context that creates opportunities but also often insurmountable constraints for unaccompanied immigrant minors, positioned at the interface between humanitarian concern for children and national control of immigration.