Multiple identities, multiple realities: children who migrate independently for work in Southeast Asia

Abstract

This paper focuses on the range of experiences of children who migrate independently in Southeast Asia, exploring the multiple complex motives that cause children to migrate seeking work. The paper challenges assumptions held by some international children's welfare agencies that children who migrate for work are passive victims of exploitation who are ‘trafficked’ or forced do so, or that when they migrate it is for purely economic reasons. To ensure that children's rights are not being violated in the name of ‘protection', the paper emphasises the need for further participatory rights-based research in order to understand the multiple motivations and lived experiences of child migrants in different contexts.