IJFS - Interdisciplinary Journal of Family Studies

Our paper aims at problematizing the relationship between unaccompanied minors, biological families and some social workers belonging to Roman residential care services. Considered as experts of the phenomenon, three social services’ managers’ representations have been investigated with narrative interviews. Relationship with biological family, very little explored by psychosocial literature, appears to be fundamental. From our analysis of social workers’ representations, family emerges not only as an interlocutor of the emigrational process, but also as the real dealer. Therefore, our exploratory contribution aims at raising the problem of the relationships between social workers and unaccompanied minors, due to the peculiar “presence” of their biological families.