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Research on the intersection between migration management and child protection is limited and, yet, contradictions between these two domains and ambivalence in the area of child migrants' rights across the developed world have already been highlighted. Based on fieldwork with policymakers and service providers in Albania, a middle-to-high income country with a significant history of emigration, this paper aims to shed light on the interaction of these institutional and policy domains and the impact they have on professional practice. The State's impact on migrant children's rights at the domestic level is affected by the resourcefulness of its system of social and child protection. This key factor appears to affect the work of professionals on the ground and ultimately mean a variety of categories of child migrants have limited access to child protection services. Professional practice in this context highlights the need to include material dimensions--the resources needed to realise child protection on the ground--in its definition, and to consider the impact of multi-scalar influences on service providers' work. The two domains of migration management and child protection appear to converge in the case of unaccompanied minors (UAMs). In turn, stateless, returned migrant children and those from very disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds are overlooked, giving rise to unequal access to state support. Nonetheless, an overall disjuncture appears in the context of transnational child protection, due to the rigid focus on nationality as a precondition for state support.

The literature on 'second-generation migrants' has widely viewed ethnicity as the key marker of identity formation. This article explores the identification processes of Albanian-origin teenagers in Thessaloniki, investigating whether, when and why ethnicity plays a role in these processes. The paper draws upon data from 28 in-depth interviews and one focus group with teenagers, alongside participant observation involving families, schools and immigrant organisations. The findings show that youth of migrant origin construct their identities within intersecting simultaneous transnational, national and local dynamics and alongside a public-private divide. More specifically, youth culture, a city/urban identity, and emotional ties that bind peer groups and family and kin within and across the national borders provide important sources of identification. These strategies are partly indicative of a weak ethnic agency -- the ability of people to change the conditions around them by relying on the belief in a shared common past and common destiny with co-ethnics, and the assertiveness that comes with this belief. Nonetheless, in the local, multi-scalar forms of political and cultural power intersect within people's daily lives, while this multiplicity of sources of identification calls for a closer look at the linkages between the local, the national and the global.

Return migration has been traditionally conceptualised within a framework of 'homecomings', emphasising primordial ethnicity at the expense of micro-level and cognitive aspects of migrants' belongingness. Drawing on the narratives of Albanian-origin children and young people who moved (back) to Albania with their families from crisis-ridden Greece, this paper explores their experiences of otherness in the presumed homeland, and puts emphasis on their agency in the context of return migration. Memory emerges as an important aspect of agency in the process of what we term 'the transnational mirroring of otherness'. Brought up in Greece, the Albanian-origin children are othered upon return because of their perceived 'Greekness' among the locals and limited ability to speak Albanian. Beyond establishing and maintaining transnational ties and identities, participants show initiative in positioning themselves against shifting transnational identification frameworks, as they contemplate a spatially mobile future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the intersection between migration management and child protection is limited and, yet, contradictions between these two domains and ambivalence in the area of child migrants' rights across the developed world have already been highlighted. Based on fieldwork with policymakers and service providers in Albania, a middle-to-high income country with a significant history of emigration, this paper aims to shed light on the interaction of these institutional and policy domains and the impact they have on professional practice. The State's impact on migrant children's rights at the domestic level is affected by the resourcefulness of its system of social and child protection. This key factor appears to affect the work of professionals on the ground and ultimately mean a variety of categories of child migrants have limited access to child protection services. Professional practice in this context highlights the need to include material dimensions—the resources needed to realise child protection on the ground—in its definition, and to consider the impact of multi-scalar influences on service providers' work. The two domains of migration management and child protection appear to converge in the case of unaccompanied minors (UAMs). In turn, stateless, returned migrant children and those from very disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds are overlooked, giving rise to unequal access to state support. Nonetheless, an overall disjuncture appears in the context of transnational child protection, due to the rigid focus on nationality as a precondition for state support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on qualitative research with migrants, their children and key informants in Albania, this paper investigates the experiences of return migrants with social protection and their positionality towards social protection stakeholders. Return migration to Albania has intensified in the past few years due to the economic crisis in different European countries where many Albanians have migrated to since the beginning of the 1990s. Findings of multisited fieldwork testify to the centrality of social protection in the process of migrants' relocation to the country of origin. Due to the trans-national and trans-temporal dimensions of the return process, access to and overall experiences of social protection are mediated by different understandings and regulation of the thresholds of vulnerability, need and welfare held by return migrants, locals, policy makers and service providers. These staggered understandings and thresholds are embedded in an observed trans-national and trans-local developmental gap between the country of immigration and country of origin where migrants relocate to. Resource environment in the context of return is, therefore, characterised by cognitive and material discontinuities at trans-national and trans-temporal level. Experiences of these discontinuities impact on returnees' social protection strategies and have significant implications for their social and economic positioning upon return to the country of origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Return migration has not been associated with negative psychosocial outcomes, while the experience of children involved in this process has been largely overlooked. This article looks at the migration experience of Albanian-origin children and young people upon their families’ return to Albania. Contrasting with a primordial understanding of ‘homeland’, ‘belongingness’ and ‘return migration’, which is focussed on the nation-state, the findings show that a lack of (diasporic) belongingness affects children’s wellbeing upon their families’ return to the country of origin. While children show remarkable mechanisms of coping and resilience, contextual factors moderate the links between migration and psychosocial wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]