Browsing by Author "Väärikkälä, Sandra"

This thesis studies how Finnish immigration officials talk about separated asylum-seeking children and simultaneously make definitions of children and childhood. The study is motivated by the fact that it has been argued that Western-origin conceptualizations of children and childhood have spread across the world forming a 'global model of childhood'. This globalization of the Western model of childhood has affected the way children who do not conform to this model have occasionally been marginalized and defined as ‘out of place’. The term ‘out of place’ derives from the work of Mary Douglas (1966) whose ideas on symbolic classification systems also frame this research. The research question guiding this work is: How do the immigration officials construct in their speech ‘children’ and how are the separated asylum-seeking children presented in relation to that? The data was collected through eleven interviews with immigration officials whose work includes or has included asylum interviews with separated underage asylum applicants. The conducted interviews were theme interviews. The interviews were understood as interactional situations and this was taken into consideration throughout the research. The collected interview material was analyzed through category analysis with the focus on the membership category of a child. Through analyzing the immigration officials’ definitions of the membership category of a child and the activities and other attributes attached to it, the officials’ categorizations of children were exposed. In the analysis, the immigration officials’ ideas on what children should do were analyzed as elements of 'proper childhood'. The analysis showed that the immigration officials considered 'proper childhood' to consist of safety, school-going, children’s separation of adults, family and residential fixity. Additionally, in 'proper childhood' children were not considered to work. Children were viewed through the development psychological understanding, according to which all children develop through scientifically determined stages. In relation to the 'proper childhood', separated asylum-seeking children were considered to be ‘out of place’ as they did not fit into this model of childhood. Furthermore, a problem story constructed in the interviews by the immigration officials was analyzed. The problem story was constructed with regard to the problem of asylum applicants telling an inconsistent story in the asylum interviews. Through analyzing the problem story, the immigration officials’ definitions on the nature of children were revealed. According to the problem story, children were regarded as incompetent actors who lack agency, and as victims of the actions of other competent actors. The problem story was significantly different with regard to adult applicants. This was interpreted to mean that the nature of children and adults is different. In conclusion, the immigration officials seemed to consider separated asylum-seeking children’s childhoods and their status as children to be endangered when they did not resemble the 'proper childhood'. They risked of being ‘out of place’. As a result, they were either aimed at to be put back into 'proper childhood' in the Finnish society or they were considered to approach already adulthood. The analysis also showed that while the immigration officials categorized children, they simultaneously categorized adults as the opposites. Adult asylum applicants were as well in risk of being ‘out of place’ when they resided in same places as children. Consequently, the presence of child asylum applicants in places of adulthood and similarly, the presence of adult asylum applicants in places of childhood seemed to upset the division between childhood and adulthood as opposites in the Finnish society.