Arendt’s Children in the Bahamian Context: The Children of Migrants Without Status

• Main Author: Kristy A. Belton
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of the Bahamas 2010-09-01
• Series: International Journal of Bahamian Studies
• Subjects: children, discrimination, haitian: international law; migration; statelessness
• Online Access: https://journals.sfu.ca/cob/index.php/files/article/view/127

In this increasingly globalized world, with hundreds of millions of people living outside the country of their birth, and States guarding their sovereign right to control membership ever more closely, the number of children without secure citizenship status is on the rise. This article is a case study of non-citizen children in the Bahamas, focusing specifically on children born of Haitian parents without status, “Arendt’s children”. It examines how the Bahamas, a State party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), fails to consider adequately the best interests of the Bahamian-born non-citizen child in its laws and policies. It analyses how the Bahamas’ ratification of relevant human rights treaties translates into practice at the domestic level and concludes with an examination of ways in which Arendt’s children might be integrated into the Bahamian polity.