Special Focus on Age Discrimination in Forced Migration Law, Policy, and Practice Introduction

This special focus of Refuge highlights the widespread but under-researched occurrence of age discrimination in forced migration law, policy, and practice. Using a conceptual lens of social age, authors analyze the ways in which people in situations of forced migration are treated differently on the basis of chronological age, biological development, and family status. By framing this differential treatment as discrimination, this special focus approaches age as an equity issue. Such an approach differentiates the articles presented here from other recent scholarship on specific age groups, which is framed largely in terms of their vulnerabilities and needs. This special focus is intended to stimulate further research and activism on age discrimination in all its forms in varying contexts of forced migration.