Children in liminality: Case studies from Ireland and Iran

Children living in poverty are excluded from certain opportunities and are susceptible to a range of cognitive, social and emotional problems. This chapter addresses the institutionalisation of enforced poverty experienced by children who are asylum-seekers and refugees in Ireland and Iran. It cuts across the disciplines of philosophy, sociology and anthropology in order to re-think the approaches to child poverty. Drawing on Victor Turner’s concept of liminality and Vittorio Bufacchi’s three-dimensional approach to social injustice, this chapter addresses the institutional practices of social injustice that perpetuate child poverty for children living in liminality. It consists of a comparative analysis of the governmental practices and policies that extend poverty for children who are living in Ireland and Iran. While both these countries have divergent approaches to addressing the needs of young asylum seekers and refugees, the children have similar experiences of vulnerability, poverty and social exclusion. Thus, the aim of this chapter is to examine how children of asylum seekers and refugees experience poverty while in a transition stage in their host country. In turn, it aims to rethink the relationship between institutional practices and global child poverty.