Unbearable Lightness of Agency: Eritrean Unaccompanied Refugee Minors from Flight to Arrival in the Netherlands. ካብ ንቅሎ ክሳብ መዓልቦ፡ ዘይሕለል ተበግሶን ሕርያ-ውሳነን፡ተሰዲዶም ዝመጹ ትሕቲ ዕድመ ኤርትራውያን ኣብኔዘርላንድ።

This dissertation seeks to explore how Eritrean unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs) are, on the one hand, perceived as a nuisance in the host society and, on the other hand, framed as victims of the Eritrean regime. However, URMs’ trajectories of flight from Eritrea to arrival in the Netherlands such as withstanding violence and smugglers, are evidence of crafting agency and deep-seated strength. Accordingly, based on ethnographic encounters and observation-participation, this dissertation asks how Eritrean URMs navigate constraints throughout their journeys before and after their arrival in the Netherlands and how agency and vulnerability emerge and are enacted during those journeys. To answer this question, this dissertation illustrates typologies of agency and analyzes their narratives of displacement and reception centres. It will spotlight instances of URM’s agentic engagement, actively getting things done, resisting against visible/invisible forms of power, resisting normalized structure through reflection, maintaining delayed form agency, and choosing marginality. The dissertation situates URM’s narratives within the historical context of Eritrea, which links them to the PhD candidate’s own lived experiences as a racialized researcher who embarked on a similar journey long ago. This will illustrate that URMs often enact their agency when faced with precarious situations. Although, act agentively is overlapped with becoming vulnerable. Therefore, the dissertation argues that vulnerability and agency are intertwined and URMs should be understood in relation to different faces of power.