Through the eyes of vulnerability: Young migrants integration processes in Luxembourg and Italy

The notion of vulnerability is as popular as it is fuzzy. Its increased prominence in academic literature, policymaking and discourses on migration has led many to treat the concept as a self-evident condition. Some groups of migrants are labelled as vulnerable based on normative innate, situational or structural characteristics, and this label is o)en used to direct their access to services and aid. However, the notion of vulnerability appears to be conceptually multi-layered, contextually and temporally embedded and dynamically experienced and negotiated. Migrants may $nd themselves in di#erent conditions of vulnerability, in di#erent places and at di#erent moments of their lives and may experience and process their vulnerability in di#erent ways. "us, based on data gathered within the EU-funded project MIMY, this study proposes to use vulnerability as an analytical lens through which to examine the integration processes of young non-EU migrants in Luxembourg and Italy. Speci$cally, the paper proposes to apply a recently developed conceptual model for vulnerability in the context of migration (Gilodi et al. 2022) to analyse the challenges and resources described in focus groups conducted with young migrants and parents of young migrants living in these two countries.