Suffer the Little Children: Child Migration and the Geopolitics of Compassion in the United States by Anita Casavantes Bradford (review)

Reviewed by: Suffer the Little Children: Child Migration and the Geopolitics of Compassion in the United States by Anita Casavantes Bradford Angela McCarthy Suffer the Little Children: Child Migration and the Geopolitics of Compassion in the United States. By Anita Casavantes Bradford. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022. xiv + 288 pp. Hardcover 105. 00, paperback 24. 95, e-book 19. 99. This book offers the first comprehensive history of unaccompanied child migration to the United States between 1930 and 2020. Set against the contemporary backdrop of Central American minors seeking new lives in the US, Casavantes Bradford's study charts and interrogates the historical precedents of this movement by merging immigration history, diplomatic history, and the history of childhood. An interdisciplinary approach also facilitates her interrogation of key questions around the admission of children to the US, the evolution of laws and policies, and the ways key adults and organizations have shaped responses of inclusion or exclusion over time. Comparative and transnational perspectives are also deployed to analyze a range of sources, which include government and NGO records, newspapers, and immigration and naturalization records. Beginning with Jewish children's migration and a particular focus on the German Jewish Children's Aid, an organization assisting relocation as a result of Nazi pressure, Casavantes Bradford notes that entry to the US for Jewish children was more challenging than for adults and often perceived as temporary. Chapter 2 examines child evacuation during World War II, while Chapter 3 explores the war's aftermath. These movements generated opposition, although some childless couples sought adoptees from these cohorts. Unaccompanied minors fleeing after the Hungarian anti-Soviet uprising of 1956 are the focus of Chapter 4, while Chapter 5 follows the children who left Cuba in the wake of Castro's rise to power in 1959. Chapter 6 considers the movement End Page 317 of Southeast Asian refugees, while Chapter 7 brings the book up to the present day by covering African, Haitian, Mexican, and Central American children. Casavantes Bradford's introduction highlights areas of commonality and difference through key themes, such as the influence of war on the evacuation of British children during the Second World War and the movement of Vietnamese youngsters. Her comparative focus is a strength in bringing together specific examples of unaccompanied child migration usually studied in isolation. Casavantes Bradford's overarching argument is that the welfare of migrant children is subservient to national interests, which are themselves shaped and influenced by public opinion around matters such as race, class, religion, and gender. Race especially, she argues, influences responses to child migrants from poor, non-white countries, with many portrayed as threats to the nation through alleged deviance or criminality. Consequently, only select groups of children have gained entry to the US, their arrival then used to propagandize the nation's benevolence. This is the "geopolitics of compassion" of Casavantes Bradford's title. Covering such a large timeframe as well as different migrant groups, Casavantes Bradford limits her focus primarily to laws and policies, responses to child migration, and the factors surrounding the movement. We read of varied legal obstacles preventing or curtailing entry, the efforts of those supporting children to identify loopholes in the legislation, and sympathetic as well as hostile media reporting. She provides useful statistics of these mobile children, particularly for those arriving from the 1970s onwards. Although Casavantes Bradford does not adopt the perspective of these youngsters, she provides insights into their sobering and at times chilling experiences. European Jewish children, for instance, grappled with emotional trauma arising from their displacement as well as the death or disappearance of close family members. Hungarian refugee youth expressed their loneliness and confusion through smoking, consuming alcohol, and acting out. Cambodian youngsters needed support due to severe trauma as well as assistance to transition from rural to urban environs. Mexican and Central American children fell victim to sexual violation and assaults at the hands of law enforcement officials and gang members. In light of ongoing debates around immigration globally, the book will appeal not just to historians but also to interdisciplinary scholars with interests in migration, childhood, and US politics. End Page 318 Angela McCarthy University of Otago. . .