La migración indocumentada y su influencia en los proyectos de vida de adolescentes: estudio de casos en comunidades transnacionales de la provincia de Cañar

Abstract

In this document a study is presented which seeks to understand the influence of undocumented migration on life projects of adolescents in the Cañar province. The generation of migrants who left Ecuador in the crisis of the end of the century comes to three million people. Many of them let others take care of their children due to their age; but after more than a decade, those children have grown up and are adolescents, who find themselves in conditions of infringement of the right to live with their parents. Reunification projects remain valid in the transnational families. However, the people who migrated to the United States do not wish to return to their original communities. A situation that creates new risks and infringements of the rights of adolescents, sons and daughters of migrants, without any intervention by the Ecuadorian State and the government in power in order to provide the special protection needed in these cases. Transnational life has created imaginaries about a better life in the North, and therefore family reunification is pursued by transferring the adolescents to the United States, despite the risks – including the risk of death – involved in this migration journey. It is urgent for the State to fully comply with its role and for Ecuadorian society as a whole to understand that undocumented migration of adolescents does not only concern the family but is also the responsibility of the State.