Who still wants to protect unaccompanied minors in France?
Arrived in the course of the 1990s, unaccompanied minors are individuals under 18 who, after a migratory journey, are on French territory without their legal representative. Children at risk to be cared for unconditionally by the relevant departmental services, why these minors have become the objects of a policy of sorting and control? How could these considerations have been invoked in the field of child protection? Who are the actors involved in this changeover of the path dedicated to unaccompanied minors? Minors to protect on one side and foreigners to control on the other, the bipolarity of representations that surrounds this population has led to the construction of administrative, institutional and symbolic boundaries that today mark the course of the reception of these youth. While their minority and their isolation should be sufficient to justify a care, the suspicion that hangs over these young people made these two criteria data scrupulously verified by the authorities. The contribution goes back to the logic of subcontracting the evaluation and shelter mission which made it possible to exclude these minors from the traditional circuit of child protection. Associations, humanitarian organizations, civil society, the Ministry of Justice, embody the new protagonists of a welcoming landscape where ideals and commitments to the defense of the rights of children have been relegated to the background.