Preface to Section 2: Voices of separated migrant youth

Sue Clayton worked with separated refugee youths between 2006 and 2017 as a film-maker and academic, and as more recently as a consultant for the BBC, ITV News and Channel 4 News. She has interviewed over 200 young refugees. This preface draws out themes from these interviews and uses the young people’s own words to tell their stories. The participants have been anonymised for reasons of privacy. These narratives are told in the way the young people wished to tell them. Together they present a collective picture of typical life journeys - hopes, fears and aspirations - which can be read to inform and inflect the chapters that follow which focus on young people’s experiences within immigration and welfare systems.