The child's – or the state's – best interests? An examination of the ways immigration officials work with unaccompanied asylum seeking minors in Norway

This article questions the way in which Norwegian immigration officials apply the principle of the child's best interests in cases concerning family reunion for unaccompanied asylum seeking minors in Norway. It is claimed that the official definition of child migrants and the interpretation of what is in their best interest does not take the child's background and circumstances into account with sufficient detail and sensitivity. This paper further discusses the bureaucratic procedures that turn an individual child with individual interests into a judicial and generalized prototype that appears to have the same interests as the immigration authorities. Thus the combination of a culture‐blind and context‐free consideration of an abstract child's best interests primarily serves to justify increasing restriction of family reunion for child migrants, and thereby serves the state's best interest at the cost of the individual child.