1. Introduction 2. Unaccompanied minors from the Northern Central American countries in the migrant stream: social differentials and institutional contexts 3. Re-conceptualising agency in migrant children from Central America and Mexico 4. Deportation as a sacrament of the state: the religious instruction of contracted chaplains in U.S. detention facilities 5. Integration of unaccompanied migrant youth in the United States: a call for research 6. Best interests, durable solutions and belonging: policy discourses shaping the futures of unaccompanied migrant and refugee minors coming of age in Europe 7. Outsourcing the ‘best interests’ of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the era of austerity 8. Better off without parents? Legal and ethical questions concerning refugee children in Germany