Constructing Viable Futures as ‘Adults’

This chapter investigates how young people seek to construct viable futures through the process of migration. While many young people arriving in England, and to some extent in Italy, alluded to the expanding futures emerging in Europe, they frequently saw these new horizons shrinking as they approached adulthood, particularly if they still had uncertain legal status. At the juncture between institutionally defined childhood and adulthood, the notion of vulnerability, used by immigration and social care structures and systems as a sorting mechanism for deciding who is and is not eligible to support, takes on very different economic, social, and political meanings. No longer meeting the institutional criteria of the 'vulnerable child', young people may paradoxically become more vulnerable as they encounter the multiple uncertainties of having an undetermined immigration status or, even when they do have status, are propelled towards independence with little preparation or support. Refocusing the lens away from individualized factors and circumstances typically associated with vulnerability towards more fundamental questions of the precarity forces a reconsideration of policies and practices and how they fundamentally determine young people's wellbeing outcomes, and whether or not they can construct the sorts of futures they aspire to.