Migrant teenagers play football at the new camp in Calais. Kashfi Halford/Demotix. All Rights Reserved.
During the course of my research on unaccompanied migrant minors (mineurs isolés étrangers) in Marseille, France in 2008-2009, I stumbled upon a case of a young migrant boy from North Africa that clearly illustrated how our dealings with migrant youth have all the appearances of a clenched spasm. He was supposedly 16 years of age, and after arriving by boat—as is the case for many of these boys escaping home countries they feel have nothing to offer them—the boy tried to make a living as a (contraband) cigarette vendor in Marseille’s informal market. His living conditions worried social workers and the boy eventually was brought before a juvenile judge who placed him under tutelage in a state institution. This judge deemed the boy ‘in need of state protection’, his minority playing a central role in that decision.
Not so long after, the boy was apprehended for pickpocketing. The public prosecutor (procureur) was evidently so fed up with what he almost surely saw as ‘welfare scroungers’ that he ignored both the boy’s identity papers—which described him as 16 years old—and the earlier court decision. He ordered a bone x-ray (teste osseux) to determine the boy’s ‘real’ age and ‘true’ identity. This test, which has a fault margin of about 1.5 years, resulted in a dramatic twist of fate: the boy was suddenly now eighteen years old, and thus was no longer a minor in need of protection but an illegal migrant. The child protection measure installed by the juvenile judge was annulled and the boy was ordered to leave French territory within three months.
