‘Vulnerability shopping’ making migrants invisible : intersectional analysis on the impact of EU vulnerability identification policy on unaccompanied and separated girls in Greece

Abstract

Unaccompanied and separated girls (UASGs) are one of the most paradigmatic examples of intersectional discrimination, given their placement in minimum the following social locations: migrants, children, people without any family references, and girls. This thesis started with a specific aim: to study how intersectionality could improve the effectiveness of EU mechanisms that identify migrant vulnerability, so that these mechanisms could better identify the vulnerabilities of the people who are at the complex intersection of different inequalities, such as UASGs in Greece. However, the obstacles encountered throughout the study have led to a much broader conclusion: the way that human rights rhetoric uses the notion of vulnerability, building on the ‘vulnerable groups’ approach, together with the lack of intersectionality in the international human rights framework, particularly regarding international migration, has impacts on the visibility of UASGs’ specific protection needs and risks at the legal, policy, field-work, and academic level. Therefore, the introduction of an intersectional approach not only improves the policy’s efficiency but is a conditio sine qua non to end the invisibility of UASGs. Finally, intersectionality as a methodology tool led us to discover an existing binding legal figure that is able to fill the intersectionality gap in this case: the ‘best interest of the child’.