I and Therese were interns in the project in the Autumn term of 2014. During the internship we wrote a report on the rights of children in irregularity, which we also had an opportunity to present earlier this year at Nottingham University as part of their Human Rights Law Centre’s Annual Student Conference.
Recently we received news that our report is now available to be read on the MIM (Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare) website. The report is accessible from here.
In the report we mapped the rights that undocumented children are entitled to according to the international and national level in the UK and Sweden. Our focus was on the rights connected to education, healthcare, social services and housing, as these are the four highlighted issues from the previous research (among them the Pilot Study conducted in Malmö in 2012 by Anna Lundberg and Emma Söderman).
We found that the two countries have moved in rather different directions in the past decade. In the UK, the undocumented children were previously entitled to some fundamental rights but their situation has worsened significantly in the last years. Sweden, on the other hand, has in the past years made the fundamental rights for children in irregularity more accessible. However, it became clear that even if there seems to be a full entitlement to these rights on paper, in practice other obstacles and practical barriers hinder accessing the rights in both countries. Apart from the law, the lack of sanctuaries or safe places, together with uncertainty around reporting obligations are factors that almost invariably increase the insecurity under which undocumented children live.
/Maarja, former intern in the project