This book investigates the emergence of the unaccompanied child refugee as a 'crisis figure'. It shows how the sense of exceptionality attached to the figure translates into ambiguous and at times extremely contradictory social practices that have far-reaching effects on the lives of refugee youth.

Annika Lems is Head of the independent research group 'Alpine Histories of Global Change' at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. Her work broadly concerns the ways people experience, negotiate, and actively create place attachments in an age of rapid global transformations.

Kathrin Oester was Professor for research on migration and mobility at the University of Teacher Education, PH Bern, Switzerland; her work is focused on youth, media, migration, and education. Today, she is an associated researcher at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern, Switzerland.

Sabine Strasser is Professor at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern, Switzerland. Her work is situated at the intersection of feminist, postcolonial, and critical border studies and addresses the impact of the European border regime on the everyday life of people on the move

1. Introduction 2. Family project or individual choice? Exploring agency in young Eritreans' migration 3. The border event in the everyday: hope and constraints in the lives of young unaccompanied asylum seekers in Turkey 4. Children, adults or both? Negotiating adult minors and interests in a state care facility in Malta 5. Across the threshold: negotiations of deservingness among unaccompanied young refugees in Sweden 6. Being inside out: the slippery slope between inclusion and exclusion in a Swiss educational project for unaccompanied refugee youth 7. The limits of freedom: migration as a space of freedom and loneliness among Afghan unaccompanied migrant youth 8. Transitions, capabilities and wellbeing: how Afghan unaccompanied young people experience becoming 'adult' in the UK and beyond 9. Methodological innovations, reflections and dilemmas: the hidden sides of research with migrant young people classified as unaccompanied minors