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This research sets out to understand the why, how and with whom of rural-urban internal migration of children to the Mozambique border town of Ressano Garcia. In doing so, it aims to address the overarching research question of how to strengthen child protection systems for unaccompanied migrant children. Research took place at the border town of Ressano Garcia and in the Mozambican capital city of Maputo, between July and September 2012. Following a thorough analysis of the qualitative data, engaging with the current debate on migration and child protection issues, this paper critically assesses the current interconnected 'protective actors' and protection mechanisms and provides recommendations. Under a qualitative child participatory approach, children and their views are placed at the centre of the research. Research participants also include protective actors that are the cornerstone of child protection mechanisms, including: civil society organizations (CSOs) in both Ressano Garcia and Maputo, and government officials at local, district, provincial and central level, thus allowing for a triangulation of sources. ; This research sets out to understand the why, how and with whom of rural-urban internal migration of children to Ressano Garcia, a border town between Mozambique and South Africa. It addresses the overarching research question of how to strengthen child protection systems for unaccompanied migrant children. By identifying children's reasons for migrating, it identifies the main risks they encounter once they start living and working in Ressano Garcia. These include: lack of access to educational opportunities, exposure to child labour exploitation, trafficking and smuggling. This paper argues that child protection systems must respond to the unique situation of migrant children's needs. Child protection and migration policies need to strike a balance between discouraging unsafe migration, which has the potential to expose children to violence, and ensuring that systems are in place for safe migration at all stages of their journey. It provides a set of specific policies to address the needs of unaccompanied migrant children in Mozambique.

This paper attempts to explain why education fails to facilitate upward mobility for migrant children in China. By comparing a public school and a private migrant school in Shanghai, two mechanisms are found to underpin the reproduction of the class system: the ceiling effect, which is at work in public schools, and the counter-school culture, which prevails in private migrant schools. Both mechanisms might be understood as adaptations to the external circumstances of - and institutional discrimination against - migrants rather than as resistance to the prevailing institutional systems. Thus, the functioning of these mechanisms further strengthens the inequality embodied in the system. (China Q/GIGA)

AbstractIn this paper, we question the promotion of financial inclusion, and microfinance specifically, as a means to achieve 'Decent Work' (DW) under the International Labor Organization's (ILO) programme. Drawing upon original research findings from two types of internal migrants in Cambodia, we make a twin contention: first, that excessive levels of microfinance borrowing by garment workers are part-outcome of the failings of the DW programme to engender 'decent enough work', and second, that microfinance borrowing is actually eroding rather than contributing to the prospect of decent work for debt-bonded brickmakers in the country. The data presented on two of the largest sectors contributing to Cambodia's growth in recent decades, enable the paper to show how microfinance and labour precarity are intertwined through the over-indebtedness of workers in both cases. The paper ultimately looks to caution the ILO on its current promotion of financial inclusion and microfinance in particular, stressing the need for significant sectoral reforms before this form of credit can be considered to align with the core principles of the DW programme.

The hukou system in China uses residency permits to divide Chinese citizens into urban and rural dwellers. A person's hukou status determines his or her access to state services. Under normal circumstances, a person with a rural hukou status is not eligible for state services in urban areas, and vice versa. Because hukou is primarily inherited from one's parents at the time of birth, children born in urban areas to parents with rural hukou are similarly designated as rural hukou holders. As a result, children living in cities with rural hukou are ineligible for enrollment in urban public schools even if they were born within the district. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that a massive number of people are engaged in rural-urban migration in China each year. The central government has promulgated numerous laws and regulations in an attempt to grant these migrant children free access to urban public schools, but most local governments have been hesitant to implement the changes. Further, as a prerequisite to enrollment, urban public schools commonly require excessive amounts of documentation and charge expensive fees that make public education inaccessible to migrant families. This comment argues that to fix the current problems with hukou and educational access, the central government needs to clarify the responsibilities of local governments in administrating public education and should devote more funding to urban and rural schools. Both of these measures would encourage local officials to comply with existing education laws regarding migrant children. Additionally, the central government must encourage stricter enforcement of relevant laws in order to incentivize local compliance. Making these changes will have long-term political and economic benefits for China because educating this large group of children can soothe social tensions in cities, lessen income inequality, and facilitate China's transition to a service-based economy.

The presented article focuses on two main objectives. On the one hand, it presents the complex and multifaceted issues of migrant children's education from a theoretical perspective, which have a significant impact on the course of their integration process, their quality of life and their chances of a better future in the country of migration. We draw attention to the importance of migrant children from the perspective of a child-centred approach, which emphasises children's agency and subjectivity, the importance of their voice, their experiences, as well as the mission of the school and the roles of the professionals (teachers, cultural mediators, social workers) working with them and influencing their integration success. We show the school as a space that is not only institutional, formal and oriented towards intercultural education, but also a relational space in which informal processes take place to shape the future of children, dependent on significant others but also on the educational system. On the other hand we refer mainly to the contribution of the research project Children Hybrid Identity (CHILD-UP) to formulate theoretical explanations about the visibility of migrant children, their agency in school, and to uncover empirical findings about their achievements, barriers, challenges. Although these are in various locations, in different schools and educational programmes, they nevertheless bring about changes in the structure of a class and the occurrence of important processes due to their ethnic and national, cultural, religious, and language context.

The offence of child trafficking appears to have a clear definition in the UN Trafficking Protocol and in laws based on it. In practice, this is an illusion. This article reviews the experiences of three countries (Benin, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam), in two of which anti-trafficking laws and policies regard a broad swath of children who migrate to earn a living, without being subjected to coercion, as victims of trafficking. It questions whether the definitions in international law and in the laws of many countries of what constitutes the crime of trafficking committed against a child are appropriate to distinguish between adolescent migrants in general and those who are victims of crime (at the hands of a trafficker) in particular. It suggests that this is in part because there is no international understanding about the ages at which children habitually leave home to find work and what should be done to protect them when they do. It concludes that a possible result of considering a very broad range of children to be 'trafficked' is that measures to protect and assist those who suffer acute harm are inadequate.