Everyday Ruptures: Children, Youth, and Migration in Global Perspective

9. The Transnationally Affected: Spanish State Policies and the Life-Course Events of Families in North Africa

174 Chapter 9 The Transnationally Affected Spanish State Policies and the Life-Course Events of Families in North Africa Núria Empez Vidal Changes in Spanish law produce changes in migration strategies in North Africa. These state policies contribute to the everyday ruptures child migrants and their families experience, as I show in this chapter. Spanish legislation on unaccompanied minors is contradictory: on the one hand, they are immigrants in an irregular administrative situation, that is, “illegal immigrants” who should be deported; but on the other hand, as minors, they should be safeguarded by the child protection system or be fostered with families in Spain and thus are treated very differently from other unauthorized immigrants. Spain’s policies on migrant children are contradictory in their image of childhood. Children are seen as vulnerable and in need of protection, and simultaneously, the decision to migrate causes children to be seen as adults breaking the Foreigners Law (or La Ley de Extranjería, the popular name for often revised immigration laws associated with a constitutional act originally passed in 2000, about the rights and freedoms of foreigners in Spain). Using the case of unaccompanied minors—boys who attempt to migrate from Morocco to Spain without the company of a responsible adult—I explore the transnational dimension of life-course events, actions that start in one country which produce vital event outcomes among people in another. This case, which I situate in the wake of national (Spanish and Moroccan) and European Union (EU) policy changes over the last twenty years, shows that regulations and laws gov- Spanish State Policies and Families in North Africa 175 erning migration control have a lifelong impact on the boys who come to Spain. Besides the impact on the individual, this migratory process affects vital events of family members. Such vital events of direct concern to Moroccan families may overlap with the categorical concerns of an anthropologist —marriage, birth, and death, among others—but they are not necessarily the same. Others include experiencing a ritual transition, coping with a serious malady, or entering school. Moreover, vital event changes in individual lives in Spain or changes in the place of origin can, in turn, affect future events in either country. Having a brother in Spain, even if he is still in a minors’ protection center, increases the possibility of a young Moroccan woman obtaining a higher-status husband, because having a brother in Europe raises her status. The migration of unaccompanied minors not only produces changes in vital events, but also produces ruptures and breaks that children will have to deal with in their integration into a new social order and in their ties to the family. As a result, I pay special attention here to the concept of linked lives. Research on unaccompanied minors raises important issues of agency. Some researchers—including Massey (1990), Wood (1981), and Taylor (1986)—argue that families or households are the principal agents of migration decision making. I have found that some families encourage their children to migrate as unaccompanied minors, some even paying to send the boys abroad. Furthermore, most of the minors keep in contact with their families. But there are also many cases in which the minor makes the decision to migrate without consulting his family members . The decision could be taken alone or with peers. The rich effects of such decisions over multiple locations and over much of childhood and early adulthood are illustrated here through empirical findings from fieldwork in Spain and Morocco. Transnationalism and Life-Course Theories Transnationalism Transnational studies have arisen to address the complexity of the globalization process in which movements of people, goods, and capital occur beyond the boundaries of a nation-state. Globalization, which has drawn considerable attention in the last few decades, is usually seen as the increasing connectivity of economies and ways of life across the 176 Everyday Ruptures world. During the 1990s, scholars such as Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc (1994), Portes (2000), Portes, Guarnizo, and Landolt (1999), and Smith and Guarnizo (1998) intensified discussions about the need to create a new concept to designate both contemporary migration that involves all countries in the world and the cross-border relations between migrants in their destination and their compatriots in their countries of origin. Some scholars proposed the word “transnationalism” to describe this phenomenon, a term that attempts to capture the relationships between and among individuals and other...