The creation of a ‘crisis’: Using a dialogical lens to examine self-other misalignments between unaccompanied minors and adult professionals

The creation of a ‘crisis’: Using a dialogical lens to examine self-other misalignments between unaccompanied minors and adult professionals | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article The creation of a ‘crisis’: Using a dialogical lens to examine self-other misalignments between unaccompanied minors and adult professionals Sarah Crafter, Evangelia Prokopiou, Nelli Stavropoulou This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7589945/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Published Journal Publication published 26 Nov, 2025 Read the published version in Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science → Version 1 posted 7 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Young people who travel across national borders as unaccompanied minors have become central figures in modern narrations about the ‘migration crisis’. At the macrosocial level, legal and policy frameworks often designed to protect unaccompanied minors have at times explicitly, or inadvertently, created a ‘crises’ for asylum and welfare provision for children. In this paper, we use sociocultural approaches and dialogical theorising to examine how a form of ‘crisis’ is also created at the psychological level, through misalignments in the self-other relationship between unaccompanied minors and professional adults. To do so, we add to these theoretical ideas the concepts of misrecognition and dialogical approaches to trust, to examine the forms of sense-making in both parties. We illustrate our theoretical points by drawing on data from the Children caring on the Move (CCoM) project. A dialogical analysis was undertaken on 112 semi-structured interviews with adults from several sectors (e.g. social worker, law, NGOs, healthcare, education, accommodation services, policy) and participatory approaches involving 75 interviews with 38 unaccompanied young people, including care object interviews and day-in-the-life interviews. The self-other misalignments discussed are ‘I-as-agentic-self’ as misaligned with ‘They-as-savvy-users-of-the-system’, and ‘I-as-detective/truth-seeker’ as misaligned with ‘They-are-testing-you’. We argue that both young people and adults can get caught in a dialogical loop of misrecognition, leading to the development of mistrust. Unaccompanied minors dialogical self Mistrust Misrecognition professionals Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Published Journal Publication published 26 Nov, 2025 Read the published version in Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science → Version 1 posted Editorial decision: Revision requested 01 Oct, 2025 Reviews received at journal 29 Sep, 2025 Reviewers agreed at journal 14 Sep, 2025 Reviewers invited by journal 14 Sep, 2025 Editor assigned by journal 12 Sep, 2025 Submission checks completed at journal 12 Sep, 2025 First submitted to journal 11 Sep, 2025 You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. 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