Catching dreams and building hopes for children: A research-led policy agenda on migration and displacement

Abstract

The now-iconic image of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s body washed up on a beach in Turkey in September 2015 sparked a public outcry and turned the world’s attention to Europe’s forced migration dilemmas involving children. Since then, Aylan’s image has been replaced with many, many others, like him and also unlike him. While he has been quickly left unremembered, the recurrent multilayered yet somehow homogenous narrative of a very large number of children displaced invokes anxiety, demands our attention and underlines the central problem – we simply do not know enough about the dynamics and complexities of children and young people on the migration pathway.2 There are a lot of assumptions about children’s migration and displacement but not enough research-informed understanding of this phenomenon.