The book "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Migrant Children and Adolescents. Contexts of Central and North America". The book integrates the work of 23 top-level authors from universities and research institutes in Central America, Mexico, the United States and Spain and has been published under the publishing imprints of UNAM's Centro de Enseñanza para Extranjeros (CEPE) and UNAM's Center for Mexican Studies in Boston.
Among others, the book presents three outstanding contributions. The first is the scientific interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenon under study, since the vast complexity that characterizes the migration of children and adolescents requires an approach based on a dialogue between different fields of knowledge. The book approaches the study of the phenomenon from three fundamental fields of knowledge -legal, educational and health-, which allows for a rich analysis that answers numerous research questions but opens up many new ones.
The second relevant contribution of this work is that it shows how diversity is a constant in the mobility processes of migrant children and adolescents in the study contexts. This is revealed in two main ways: 1) the causes of child and adolescent migration, the multidirectionality of the flows and the different ways in which these actors are present in mobility; and 2) diversity as an intrinsic characteristic of migrant children and adolescents, which is manifested through their sex-gender, socio-economic and ethnic class, and the different migratory statuses they present.
A third contribution to highlight is how the book answers adultcentrism. Through their work, the authors challenge the idealized, univocal, and simplistic conception from which migrant children and adolescents are usually conceived and show how the agency of their protagonists blurs the contours of adult-centric ideology, from which they are presented as passive individuals.
Among other comments by Dorothy, Maricruz and Adriana point out: "The authors touch on such varied and complex issues within these axes as the impact of the pandemic, the impact of restrictive policies, the lack of preparedness of governments to support this population and the lack of humanitarian responses."
This work is dedicated to the memory of Professor Alfredo Nieves Molina, who was coordinator of Continuing Education at the Institute of Anthropological Research of the UNAM, and always showed great professionalism and commitment to the academic and scientific activities of the Maximum House of Studies inside and outside Mexico.
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