Conference Paper

Recently, the increase in the number of unaccompanied children crossing borders has caught the attention of the public, policy makers, and pundits in receiving countries. Unaccompanied children can be particularly vulnerable as they lack the protection and care of an adult, necessitating the international authorities to find alternative ways of protecting them. But infant forced migration is not a new phenomenon. This growing visibility as actors of their own migration has led to social scientists recognizing the importance of focusing on the historical experiences of refugee children in education, socialization, integration, and assimilation. One historical example can be found in the aftermath of The Spanish Civil War. In 1939, about half a million refugees crossed the French border. Many of them were unaccompanied children who in an act of bold action based on solidarity, found refuge abroad. Some examples of hosting countries were: France (20,000 children); England (4,000); and, the former Soviet Union (3,000). In the same decade, there were other examples, such as the 70,000 children from Finland sent to other Nordic countries, or the ethnic Germans in Central Europe and the Kindertransport to England that saved 10,000 Jewish children from the Holocaust. These historical examples framed within global refugee crises caused by the violence of different wars will serve as case studies for analysing the practical, legal, humanitarian and political challenges which had to be assumed not only by the countries of origin and the host nations but by many others, because these were problems demanding global solutions, like the problem we are experiencing today.