Debates and discourses about children on the move do not occur in a vacuum. They are shaped by social and political contexts and create dominant frameworks about children, gender and about migration. There are plenty of studies about unaccompanied boys on the move in Greece, yet girls have received minimal attention, consisting of someone could say the invisible category of the refugee population.
Though this lack of attention can be easily attributed to the low number of unaccompanied and/or separated girls on the move, it also reflects a tendency to reproduce the state of invisibility to which girls and women are continually subjected to hetero-patriarchy.
The right to appear is deeply political in that certain subjects are considered worthy to appear and others are rendered less important and thus, we will have to search for scattered traces of their existence in literature, academic studies, journal articles, and field research.
This is the case with girls on the move, “the weirdos” of the refugee population, as Hesther said, who have not received much attention until now. This study comes to cover an important gap in the existing literature on migration and refugee studies in Greece. By focusing on girls’ stories of travelling to Greece, we strive to “make space” for them by letting their stories “take place.”
Instead of “speaking for them” we chose to bring their stories to the forefront with the aim to offer a better understanding of their lived realities. Drawing from our primary research with girls followed by a review of the existing literature, we strive to provide a critical reflection on “girls on the move” and at the same time offer a set of recommendations that will strengthen the work with girls in the Regional “Children on the Move” program.
Senior Researcher
Diana Manesi
Maria Liapi
Research Assistant
Iasonas Gousetis
