Advancing Research on "Stateless children": Family Decision Making and Birth Registration among Transnational Migrants in the Asia-Pacific Region

Jessica Ball; Leslie Butt; Harriot Beazley; Natasha Fox

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Advancing Research on "Stateless children": Family Decision Making and Birth Registration among Transnational Migrants in the Asia-Pacific Region

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Advancing Research on "Stateless children": Family Decision Making and Birth Registration among Transnational Migrants in the Asia-Pacific Region

Jessica Ball, Leslie Butt, Harriot Beazley and Natasha Fox

CAPI Working Paper Series, MMP 2014-2, University of Victoria, Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives

2015

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Abstract

Human Geography

birth registration

child statelessness

transnational migration

This paper foregrounds parental decision-making about birth registration in order to expand understandings of the determinants of child statelessness in contexts of transnational migration. Discourses on "stateless children" - children who lack birth registration or who live as undocumented international migrants or refugees - have typically emphasized human rights challenges resulting from statelessness, as well as the need for states to have accurate demographic data for planning and security purposes. Stateless children tend to be viewed from a deficit perspective emphasizing risks and deviations from dominant views of the conditions for optimal child development. While risks are not in doubt, positive motivations and reasoning of parents and, sometimes, older children themselves, for not obtaining birth registration, have not been seriously considered. Many states have mobilized to achieve universal birth registration as part of the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals (UNICEF, 2005; Plan International, 2010). As providers of the means for identity documentation and the benefits that typically accompany citizenship - including health care, education, and social protection - states are seen as the primary source of solutions to child statelessness.

Details

Title: Advancing Research on "Stateless children": Family Decision Making and Birth Registration among Transnational Migrants in the Asia-Pacific Region
Authors: Jessica Ball (Author)
Leslie Butt (Author)
Harriot Beazley (Author)
Natasha Fox (Author)
Publication details: 14
Series: CAPI Working Paper Series; MMP 2014-2
Publisher: University of Victoria, Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives
Date published: 2015
Organisation Unit: Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre; School of Social Sciences - Legacy; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Law and Society; Sustainability Research Cluster
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99449481002621
Output Type: Working paper

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