The report paints a multifaceted picture with many good initiatives and promising practices. It also shows major gaps and challenges, many of which remain unaddressed. It reveals that measures taken in one policy field often affect the degree to which individuals are able to enjoy their rights in other fields.
In addition to that, the report identifies two critical moments, which require much more attention:
During such transitions, people experience gaps in rights and services, which risk undermining their pathway to social inclusion. FRA’s research documented challenges relating to such transitions across the eight different but interconnected policy areas this report covers.
Sufficient, consistent and systematic support from lawyers, social workers and guardians emerges from the research as a key factor for successful integration.
It not only promotes the best interests of the child but also helps children and young adults with the multiple challenges they face, in particular during transition to adulthood or when receiving decisions on their legal status.
The report covers the following topics:
This is not an experience, it is suffering [...] a struggle because you need to wait between 30 and 40 days to register, they give you a number and this number needs to be shown on the screen. The screen works every day from 8.00 until 18.00. I remained 35 days like this [...] waiting for the number to show up. (Refugee from Syria, male, Germany)
Every time, if we wanted to do the residence permit, it goes on for a long time because they ask for a lot of paperwork and there is always something still missing. In fact, I was, I do not know, I was a little shocked because they do not ask you for everything at the same time, every time you have to go, and they ask you for something else. (Refugee from Syria, female, France)
It was really very very difficult. So, everyone ... in fact people were fighting for a place. So, for example, when there are 200 people, they only take 40 [a day], 20-odd or 40-odd. So you had to be in the first 40 or the first 20. You had to come […] four days or six days before the day of the appointment. (Asylum applicant from Somalia, male, France)
A young Syrian beneficiary of subsidiary protection in Germany recalls that his parents: "went to Lebanon from Syria. It [the journey] journey] was a torture for them [...]. They finally reached the embassy but turned back to Syria with big disappointment because the child is 18 years old now. [...] [Travelling] to Turkey was extremely dangerous [...] they travelled while Idlib was under intensive bombing, they stayed 11 days there [at the border, not being able to enter Turkey]. I suffered a lot during those 10 days. They tried to cross borders but they could not until we paid smugglers [...] to transfer the family from Idlib to Turkey, two months ago [...] the costs were high but more importantly the journey was not safe [...] (Subsidiary protection status holder from Syria, male, Germany)
I will be psychologically calm, I will have no anxiety that my parents are in Syria and something can happen to them, because the situation over there and around them is very difficult [...]. There is a slight chance that I will be able to integrate. (Refugee from Syria, male, Greece)
Family, always. No matter if you have found a job, if you're well settled in France, if you have friends and all that ... (Refugee from Eritrea, male, France)
I never asked for information about the procedure, I wouldn't know where to go, where to ask. (Subsidiary protection status holder from Somalia, male, Italy)
When I arrived in Traiskirchen, I think also 200 others came. Back then I only spoke my mother tongue and didn't understand German or English. There were only a few Somali translators there. And in the first night, they took all the children and women, quickly and suddenly all the women were gone and I was alone with the men. That night there were only men, and all the women were gone, and I didn't have anyone who helped me speak in Somali. I didn't find anyone and I couldn't ask what was going on. Maybe they said my last name but I didn't hear it and then I slept outside. And then I found a man who spoke Somali and English and then he went to the office with me and said: 'it's a girl and she is 14 years old and she doesn't have space. (Subsidiary protection status holder from Somalia, female, Austria)
On 28 September 2016, I went to the prefecture, I gave my fingerprints, I was given an asylum seeker's certificate, and during all that time I continued to live on the streets, because there was no accomodation [...]. I also called 115 but they told me that: 'No, we do not take lone boys, we take families, pregnant women, women with children; so if you're alone, there really is no place for you.' So I had no choice, I continued to sleep outdoors, in the underground, here and there. And it was in 2017, in August, that I had this place in the CADA here. (Refugee from Democratic Republic of the Congo, male, France)
A: I've been looking for a house on my own for a year and I still haven't found anything, I'm still looking Q: Why haven't you found one? A: I think it's because I don't have a long-term contract, so maybe ... Q: Only that? A: Let's say it's also because I'm a but coloured Q: Tell me, when you look for a house, what are landlords' reactions? A: Landlords, when you call them, they say somebody's already taken the house, they ask you where you're from, what job you do and then when you tell them you're African they say 'ah somebody's already taken the house, I'm sorry' ... Even where I am now we don't have a regular house rental agreement. (Refugee from The Gambia, male, Italy)
I already applied for social housing, but there they told me that it takes a long time to get something, and I also made requests for a young worker's home, but up to now I have had no response. (Refugee from Democratic Republic of the Congo, male, France)
You can see yourselves the situation here, how it is. It is better that I don't stay here, I want to leave ... there is no school, I cannot work either, it is far from everything. We just eat, drink and sleep. (Refugee from Eritrea, male, France)
When I was under the age of 18, I had more opportunities, I mean it wasn’t an issue. They usually took care of everything. But when I turned 18, it was a lot harder. You just received money for food, nothing else. There were more problems, and I didn’t get any information about how to apply for financial permits or anything else. When you’re under 18 years you have the chance to ... besides food, you can buy clothes and some other stuff. But when you turn 18, it’s a lot harder, it’s just food. If you don’t have a residence permit, you can’t even work, so it’s just money for food. This money you get for food, it’s just money for surviving. (Asylum applicant from Afghanistan, male, Sweden)
People who are over 25 years old, they have the RSA and they ask for housing immediately. And for me there is no RSA, so it's very, very difficult. (Refugee from Afghanistan, male, France)
Each month they [the reception centre's staff] pay me € 240, I buy food, anything I want to buy I buy with that money [...]. We have to buy ourselves [cleaning products], you cook with that money, you buy things, soap, every month. (Humanitarian protection status holder from The Gambia, male, Italy)
For example, I had to go to Stockholm twice by myself and apply for a Syrian passport, and I got it, but I had to pay like SEK 5,000 € 487) for it. So that felt really unnecessary, and I didn't get any extra financial support to cover the costs. And yes, it has been many things like that, the driving licence ... If I hadn't worked during 2017, I wouldn't have managed all that. (Humanitarian protection status holder from The Gambia, male, Italy)
What was a little difficult is that you have to start all over again. They ask you in several different places about your situation, your real problem [...] and that gets to you. It gets to you very badly. Because everything you've experienced and all the stuff that ... the misery you've had or ... there are things you do not want to talk about, and they'll ask you all that again. (Refugee from Guinea who arrived as an unaccompanied child, male, France)
The hardest thing was waiting. For sure, the waiting was very difficult, if I speak for myself personally, it threw me into a whirlwind where I could neither eat nor drink, I was just waiting. (Asylum applicant from Sudan, male, France)
I'm alone there. There is nobody. There is just me. (Unaccompanied child, male, France)
My life is hell. I feel that I am in a prison, and I don't know when they will let me go. My family left, I'm left alone. Since my family left, when I communicate with them I get very sad and feel alone. Loneliness. At night I can't sleep, I can't fall asleep. There are doctors and I go to them for insomnia, lack of appetite. They give me pills for all that, so that I can sleep and get my appetite back. (Asylum applicant from Afghanistan, male, Greece)
I knew no one, I had no German friends nor Syrians, [...] so I wasn't feeling well psychologically [...] I felt lonely [...] yes, I was going to the library and getting Arabic books [...] Sometimes, I stopped eating for days, I just had no appetite. I was doing groceries, cleaning the house, going out [...] despite all of this, I was feeling lonely, I don't know, I felt it was really difficult. [...] I came here; I went out from a jail to another jail. I was expecting that I would start school quickly, get friends, and be smiling. This all turned out the opposite, I had no friends, I had no school, and I was always home [...]. All things accumulated and pressured me, it was really difficult, I attempted suicide [...]. (Subsidiary protection status holder from Syria, female, Germany)
I know a lot of people here who did the same thing as me, who returned to a class two or three years lower, who were forced to redo all the years of high school. They were forced to do the year of MoDAc [i.e. preparatory classes in Marseilles] and I have a friend who was in 'Terminale' [final year] in the country of origin, [...] and [in France] he had to redo, from second [year]. (Refugee accompanied child from Syria, male, France)
They [the school] were trying to direct us towards one direction, vocational training. I did not like this because they trapped us in specific fields in vocational training, in handicrafts, blacksmith, carpenter, painter [...] I was doing my high school in Syria, I wanted to continue university and now I downgraded to vocational training and said 'let's do salesman', and they [the school] wanted me to do carpenter and blacksmith. (Refugee from Syria, male, Germany)
At [the secondary school], the students did not treat us with respect, not all of them, I can't generalise, there is good and bad [...] you can say they tend to be racist towards us; as an example, once we were playing basketball, then a female German student attacked us and said 'go and play in your home country' [...] even the teacher did not react, just distanced [the girl] away from us, even teachers are kind of [racist].(Subsidiary protection status holder from Syria, female, Germany)
[When I registered with the school they] gave me this appointment, and I told the school director straight away that I didn't like this course, that I didn't want to become a bricklayer, then I came here and I spoke with Martina [the reception facility coordinator] and she explained to me that even if I did this course I wasn't obliged to pursue it as a career and become a bricklayer. And so I went and did the courses at the Umanitaria and [...] at the Muraria school ... Unfortunately, [...] I did these courses but in the end nothing, [opportunities for] working as a baker were blocked, as a pizza maker blocked, construction wasn't my choice, so I didn't even try. (Humanitarian protection status holder from Mali, male, Italy)
I wanted to continue studying, but now I cannot. Because for a start, if I study, who will feed me?.(Refugee from Mali, female, France)
I have this friend. We used to live together in [a reception centre for unaccompanied children in Milan]. He turned 18 and he didn't have anything. He wanted to eat, he wasn't working ... If somebody says to you 'I'll give you money, come here and do this' it's easy, and it's what you need. He worked with them and then the police stopped him and now he's in prison for drug dealing. My teacher told me to be careful with these people and I didn't know this before, I didn't know there were these people who give you money, you deal drugs and then it's impossible to leave that [world]. (Subsidiary protection status holder from Somalia, male, Italy)
In the meantime one night, because I was sleeping in the park, I was attacked and they wanted to rape me. The very next morning I went to the psychologist who had told me to go to her if anything happens to me. She told me that we will find a place and that I should not go back to the park. (Refugee from Democratic Republic of the Congo, female, Greece)
[W]hen you work illegally, well, they take advantage [of you]. Sometimes you are not paid, sometimes you are poorly paid, sometimes you are ill-treated ... (Refugee from Syria, female, France)
Here [in the city], there are many youths [...] who sell drugs. I cannot imagine that they create the drugs themselves. They are simply exploited.(Subsidiary protection status holder from Syria, male, Austria)
There are cases that are more complicated and require more investigation and then there are some cases that are easier. What I note is that there are major differences between different nationalities. This is first and foremost what the statistics show. Asylum applicants who come from countries where there usually are no needs for protection often have a relatively quick process. […] And the process is also relatively short for groups who in most cases are granted protection. Syrians for example also have a shorter process than Afghans or Somalis, so there are probably significant differences between different nationalities. (Asylum authority expert, national level, Sweden)
There is another problem that concerns the police headquarters […] an extremely serious barrier […] an applicant might have to wait months before being able to be among the 20 people allowed in to fill in the form [C3]. (NGO legal assistant, Italy)
It is a system that is extremely perverse: meaning that people are asked to integrate, but they are not given the opportunity to do so. [...] There is the phase where everything is blocked, when they have requested asylum, as if it was an illness, and the phase after, when anything is possible. But you have got too far behind. When you have waited two years and done nothing during these two years, you have not given the person the ability to do something. (Reception centre manager, France)
What obviously has changed – that was [the 2016 amendment] – that you can only submit the application within three months after recognition of asylum […]. Obviously that does have an impact, because people have an immense amount of stress. (Lawyer, Austria)
I can say that the new maintenance requirement that was added with [the introduction of] the temporary law has made investigations on family reunification more complicated. I know that case workers to whom I have talked spend a lot of time looking at evidence on whether persons have sufficient funds, if their incomes are enough to cover the maintenance requirement and so on. So the investigations have probably become more complicated and more difficult in this way. (NGO legal adviser, national level, Sweden)
They [young people] have no motivation any more [...] in the beginning, the young people were so motivated. They wanted to attend three courses a day. Learn German as fast as possible [...] if you have waited for too long, for two years, and you are still not sure if you will see your family again, when you will see them again, what motivates you to learn the language? For whom? For your social worker? No. (NGO integration manager and lawyer, Germany)
[F]or example, for seven months the embassy in Kabul has been closed. (Social worker, national level, France)
“The number of times you email and talk on the phone with various embassies […], those are such stressful procedures, everything is always questioned, every document that someone submits is doubted, […] that’s an extremely straining procedure. No. (Lawyer, Austria)
I feel like I can watch them becoming old and grey and skinny. […] And we know of […] clients who went back [to Syria] because they said: ‘I can no longer bear the separation.’ (Lawyer, Germany)
A CADA is more ideal and moreover it shows in the results. People who are supported in a CADA have a level of access to protection that is much better than those who are not supported or supervised, and who do not have, how would you say it, all the advantages that those who are in a CADA can have, it goes without saying. (Local housing authority expert, France)
The situation in Hellinikon, that was a big issue, with thousands of people living there without tents or toilets (there were five toilets for 2,000 people). I believe there was no planning at all for handling so many people. As a result, these people were crammed into camps where conditions were appalling. (Social worker, Greece)
They place these people in smaller villages and earn money from housing them for a shorter period. And then they close down the accommodation centre and the Migration Agency decides to move them far away from there. In the worst case, a person can be taken out of school in the middle of the semester […]. This way of handling these young persons in this country is unprecedented in modern times. (Teacher, Sweden)
You have a housing stock that cannot absorb all the flows, with the migration pressure that we have seen. And today we can have situations of people who unfortunately have not been accommodated at all throughout the procedure. (Local housing authority expert, France)
I have contact with a boy on Facebook who has had his age re-registered. There was no possibility for the social services to offer him anything here, so he had to be moved to the asylum accommodation centre. He didn’t want to because he expressed a fear, like other boys, of winding up with adult men, whom they don’t know. […] They’re afraid of being molested – really, this is what they say. They don’t say it outright, but they say that they are afraid to sleep because someone might do something bad to them, and they don’t have a door to close behind them. So, this boy […] calls himself homeless, but he does have the possibility of living at the Migration Agency’s […] centre. (NGO child expert, Sweden)
You have these fantastic examples that are really touching, take this small village around here. They lacked a permanent dentist at the public dental care for many years. Now they have a Syrian dentist who lives in [town]. Isn’t it beautiful? (Local housing authority expert, Sweden)
I met this guy who was a pharmacist in Pakistan and who was helped by being included in this context, helping the town’s pharmacist, because he was like a local institution and he was 80 years old, so he could ensure continuity to this activity. (Lawyer, Italy)
And I simply believe that the opportunities are best in a foster family. It constitutes an […] intimate setting, personal involvement, personal attachment, personal assumption of responsibility for the individual, and where people take care of everyday problems, challenges, all the paperwork, and simply where someone is around day and night. (Guardian, Germany)
Well, [Gothenburg] received more asylum applicants. They lived here and then they were thrown out of Gothenburg and were placed at different adult asylum accommodation centres all over the region. However, they return to Gothenburg and hang out, because this is the place where they lived. They have their friends there. They have their social context, but they have no accommodation. So they live with friends, or they even live outdoors, or they hang out in Nordstan [a big shopping mall in the city of Gothenburg]. (Law enforcement expert, Sweden)
Young people who have been supported, who have gone to school and reached the age of 18, and who overnight are no longer supported by the ASE [aide sociale à l’enfance, child welfare services], and find themselves in the street. But they are still in school. So that poses a problem obviously to everyone: to them, of course; and to the institutions that support them, because they have homeless pupils. (Law enforcement expert, Sweden)
The child who had lost a leg was a minor. As long as he was in hospital there was no way for him to get a residence permit […]. The hospital could not give him a declaration of hospitality […] and to this day he still doesn’t have a disability allowance, and without that you can’t get a prosthesis other than by paying for it […]. From a legal point of view there was no way out. (NGO legal assistant, Italy)
There are individual cases when, for example, [...] they just haven’t re-registered [at their new address] yet. And then the Job Centre quickly suspends the benefits [...] or they have forgotten to submit the follow-up form for the further approval because the letter has not arrived. Then it could be that someone is destitute [...] (Local social welfare authority, Germany)
And here’s the irrational thing: once you are legally recognised as having all rights, in practice you lose all your rights. […] Immediately upon recognition as refugees, they lose every right they had before and they enter into a ‘grey area’, where there are huge problems. (Local social welfare authority expert, Greece)
What is sometimes an obstacle is when children have no identity documents. We have a case now, so pending the provision of civil status documents by Office Français de Protection des Réfugiés et Apatrides(OFPRA), the CAF necessarily requires the birth certificate for the child, and that’s what drags on, so, while waiting, access to family allowances cannot be opened up. (Social worker, France)
It means nothing to the company. It means nothing, because the residence permit is much more reassuring. Companies are used to seeing them. Whereas they are not at all familiar with receipts. The fact that there are these renewals to be done every three months or six months, it depends, it’s not at all something that encourages the company to hire. (Employment agency expert, France)
Sleep disorders – the main topic here – nightmares, screaming at night. Everything is simply too tightly packed, there are simply too many people in one room, where others have nightmares at night too, and for people with sleep disorders it’s a huge problem to be in bunk beds and other people who live so close. (NGO psychologist, Austria)
Every boy I know has trouble sleeping. Many of them have been to the healthcare centre and have been prescribed sleeping pills. Many of the boys have visited the social counsellors at school for support. Several of them have been referred to the Red Cross, which has been able to provide psychological assistance. Then we have a handful of children who have been admitted to the children’s psychiatry ward or the adult psychiatry wards repeatedly, because of various suicide attempts. (NGO child expert and guardian, Sweden)
It’s rather obvious that people who are children one day and treated like adults the next day will not feel OK. The regulations are rigidly defined, so all changes enter into force from one day to the other. The persons have first been [staying] in a supported independent living accommodation and then they’re just supposed to stay in the Migration Agency’s accommodation centres for asylum applicants, where there is no support from adults whatsoever. […] The staff that is there is to a great extent guards from Securitas, who are there to maintain order. That’s not optimal at all. And because of this, we get a lot of signals from […] the sports associations, who work at the asylum accommodation centres. They say that the group of young men and boys, mainly from Afghanistan, suffer from severe mental health problems. They come from this safe environment and are thrown into a highly insecure environment. (NGO integration expert, Sweden)
Their families are either in refugee camps or in conflict areas. They [the families] turn to the person that’s sitting here in safety: ‘You’re having it all, and we’re under all this suffering.’ […] It’s breaking these people down, psychologically breaking them down. They can’t cope. I think I could say that 90 % of those persons I’ve met in this situation have said: ‘I can’t focus. I can’t learn the language. I can’t go to school. I attend school just to get the introduction benefit, but I don’t understand what the teacher is saying.’ When we send them for work practice, they say that they can’t focus there. Employment works better, because they think that a job might be a way for them to bring their families here. […] Even socially, when we try to invite them to participate in cultural or social activities, to integrate in society, they say: ‘My family is in that situation and you want me to come to a cultural event?’ (NGO integration expert, Sweden)
The observation that we make is that, from the point of view of the people concerned, it’s a little discouraging […] to have overcome so many obstacles, to obtain refugee status and finally find themselves without prospects. There have been problems […] because people imagined that with the status finally they had the holy grail and they were going to have a normal life, and in fact it is only the beginning of a new nightmare. (Local housing authority expert, France)
I think that OFPRA’s decision, in terms of recognition of refugee status or at least subsidiary protection, has the value of a legal decision, a ruling, a form of recognition. (Guardian, France)
There is a lack of willingness when it comes to training workers operating in the field, which means that often basic rights are not guaranteed, starting with the general practitioners who refuse to write prescriptions for patients because they don’t have a fiscal code. (Social worker, Italy)
There is a real lack of awareness on the part of social health workers and this should be tackled. It would be fundamental to have policies of this kind, because this is the real starting point […] another crucial aspect is that of providing sufficiently specialised training allowing professionals to recognise early risk signals for mental health problems. (Psychiatrist, France)
We’ve seen this very clearly. The pupils who stay in the first accommodation centres [for unaccompanied children] with the same experienced staff, they entered the education system in the right way. They were really taken care of in a completely different way. The rest, those who arrived later, were left to themselves and this was extremely clearly reflected in their school results and attendance […] One of the most important success factors to counteract school drop-outs that we have found is ensuring that the transfers are monitored, and pupils followed up when they have been moved. It’s always a sensitive phase. And we can see that the municipalities appear to have forgotten to look after the pupils’ transfers, have forgotten how important it is to do follow-ups on asylum-seeking pupils in upper secondary schools. (Education authority expert, Sweden)
What we can observe is that these guys very often attend school classes in the reception centres rather than in ordinary public schools and this is an approach that they do not deal with very well, because it is not a school, it is the reception centre they live in 24 hours per day, this is not school, the school is something else and they cannot have access to it. (Health professional, Italy)
[I]f you arrive aged 16 and you don’t speak Italian, you can’t access public state schools […] you have to have some requisites […] I would venture to say that even in those years of mandatory education it’s like this. We have asylum seekers and protection holders who are at the age of mandatory education who have not managed to access state schools because these have a tendency to refuse access. (Language teacher, Italy)
[I]f you arrive aged 16 and you don’t speak Italian, you can’t access public state schools; it’s sometimes also hard to access a CPIA. […] Access to upper secondary schools I think is really rare, if you arrive in Italy at the age of 16 and you are an asylum seeker, […] if you arrive at 16 it’s already a bit too late, it’s late because two years to learn the language, obtain the terza media diploma, go to upper school, […] it’s practically impossible. (Language teacher, Italy)
We see it every year. And we have kids who, when they are approaching 17 years and 8 months or 9 months, they are freaked out. They are less and less … because they are thinking about: ‘Right, I will find myself on the streets’.. (Teacher, France)
When pupils who attend upper secondary school have been assessed to be 18 years old by the Swedish Migration Agency and they, as I have understood, are moved to an asylum accommodation centre for adults often in a different municipality at very short notice [...] they are, of course, entitled to continue their education in the new municipality, but for them to take this initiative and participate has been very difficult. And they’ve also lost so much of their safety nets – sometimes their entire social milieu. The result is that some of them have chosen to remain in their municipalities even when they are left without accommodation. (Education authority expert, Sweden)
[Residence permits for asylum seekers or protection holders] exist, it’s true, but it’s not the majority, so sometimes it happens that you come across them for the first time, and you have to be able to recognise them; sometimes they [employers] ask you: ‘Is this OK to work? It’s not written here! It doesn’t say residence permit for work reasons, he can’t work!’ We can’t assume that everyone is aware of the rights connected to the different types of residence permits. Because actually everybody knows that there are some residence permits which don’t allow you to work and hence they are reluctant to employ these people. (Employment service expert, Milan)
Which means that there are a lot of kids who have very good levels of schooling, high school, […] who could go on to further studies, they will rather direct them at the request of social services towards a vocational qualification like the CAP, BEP [Brevet d’études professionnel – vocational studies certificate]. (School coordinator, France)
The university offers very nice things, like integration programmes, sample courses, and so on. Only our [asylum holders with secondary school qualification] can’t make use of any of that, because the job centre says: ‘you need to be available for the labour market and you only get primary care if you are available for the job market.’ That’s why you can’t be students, because as soon as you are students, you are not available for the labour market any more. And my evaluation is … that they are employed far beneath their actual qualifications, because they don’t get the chance – or only to a very limited extent – to find work in an area in which they are trained. (School director, Austria)
One should not make not make hasty conclusions. […] It’s not because one is poor that one will commit a crime … A lot of people find themselves in precarious situations, with no access to housing, etc., and will not commit crime. But the contrary also exists, with no jobs and no access to housing, one can speculate that such a person will more easily steal than someone that has a job and a place to live. It seems to be coherent, logic. But nothing is a given, one should not make any type of determinism that this would push you into committing infractions. (Law enforcement expert, France)
Actually, it is always the same, foreigners basically have, no matter where they are from, always bad experiences with the police. […] Foreigner themselves coming to us […] is very rare. (Law enforcement expert, Germany)
It’s hard to have someone coming to one of our teams to publicly report a crime, whether it’s theft or violence; I don’t have enough facts and statistics to answer [because] there is a lack of trust from these people towards the institution. (Law enforcement expert, Italy)
We are more able to speak about this group when it is an offender than when it is victim. (Law enforcement expert, France)
Finding an apartment in the city without an employment contract is almost impossible. And then it often ends in a way that they are somehow illegally – without a rental contract – in rooms where they pay several hundred euros for a mattress in a mouldy room, where they share a room with other refugees, which is obviously not legal – but there is quite a black market in the area of housing. (NGO expert, Austria)
They are packed in together with all kinds of cultures and they have very limited space to themselves. From what I can tell, this is a major reason for them becoming victims of crime sooner or later. You become an easy prey, especially when you are as young as 16. This is an important reason for moving them to foster families or move them away from the large asylum accommodation centres. The younger you are and the longer you stay, the greater the risk is of becoming both [a perpetrator and] a victim of crime. (Law enforcement expert, Sweden)
Children who become adults and grow up alone and have no experience of the world are very susceptible to becoming victims of sexual exploitation, of violence, of fraud, etc. [...] Such incidents have been recorded, described [...] Yes, [the main risk factor] is inexperience and lack of knowledge of the world. (Government representative working in the integration field, Greece)
A 15-year-old, if he was lucky, he was unaccompanied. He was accommodated in a nice single bedroom […] There are six full-time staff positions for 10 children […] a reference person and cooked food. However, if he was unlucky, he arrived together with his dad and maybe ended up in a shared housing facility. […] A very different key applies there: in some cases we had only two full-time social workers for 600 residents in one shared facility. (Government representative working in the integration field, Germany)
They have been victims of workplace harassment – this is a very common thing because there is a very strong perception among employers that these people [asylum applicants] have a vulnerable legal status and are therefore more susceptible to blackmail. (NGO legal assistant, Italy)
[Police] constantly let them be stopped, searched, […] empty backpacks, in the wallet – ‘you have a [customer] card in your wallet, that can’t be your wallet, it’s stolen’ – and then they always get fines for something, and the fines are coincidentally exactly as high as the amount of money they happen to be carrying with them. That’s actually the most common thing I hear about [with regard to victimisation]. (NGO child expert, Austria)
That’s difficult because which other persons would I tell: ‘Don’t go to the city centre, don’t drink, and make sure you stay somewhere where you cannot be screened in public’? (NGO anti-discrimination expert, Germany)
There are some criminal behaviours related … physical integrity (fighting with each other) or attacks on one’s honour and reputation (insulting each other) or other offences such as … someone who wants to leave and uses a fake document in order to leave (Law enforcement expert, Greece)
Frankly they impress me. I have had about, since 2015, we will say about 300 files. They set me the challenge: nothing, zero. (Guardian, France)
I think this victim-perpetrator thing is lost. I think that a child that gets involved in this [drug dealing] is both victim and perpetrator. When someone, because of the conditions they live in, is dependent on other people, who put pressure on them or blackmail them. (Guardian, Greece)
At some point necessity knows no law, so they will steal a mobile phone, a wallet, break into a car but they know it’s illegal. (Law enforcement expert, France)
This is why we always need to consider the individual case. It is never possible to generalise, or to say, ‘if it is like this in one case, then it is the same in another case’. Everybody is very different, so it is really difficult to tell. […] Moreover, as concerns the pedagogical measures, they have to be adapted to the individual case every single time. And for this reason it is very difficult to say, ‘if it wasn’t for this, then it is always like this’. You cannot tell. (Law enforcement expert, Germany)
“[The] best way […] of integration is with employment; but they do not always find it [employment], it is not possible […] Who has a job is better integrated. (Law enforcement expert, Italy)
That’s a discrepancy, because in support we say ‘first he should take up vocational training or education and learn German’, but there he doesn’t earn money. Now he has pressure from the family and there are cases of those who feel obliged to get into drug trafficking so that they can fulfil their responsibilities to the family. Those are cases that we have again and again. Often there are also cases where the traffickers come and say ‘all right, [you still owe me] a few thousand dollars’, and then even more pressure is exercised. (Government representative working in the integration field, Austria)
The most relevant factor that put the target group at risk of becoming involved in crime is if you for different reasons don’t get them to attend school. If you don’t get them to attend and they continue to be absent and meet others who don’t go to school, they will soon be up to something. I have had a couple of boys who have been stealing and doing drugs and so on, and one is now drifting somewhere in the south of Sweden. So, if you can’t catch them from the start and get them into the school system, there is a really great risk that they will get into strange activities. (Guardian, Sweden)
In this neighbourhood there are big families and they have too small flats, so the youths don’t get peace and quiet to study because they have many younger siblings. They cannot be at home – it’s too crowded – so they hang around the street corners and in the stairwells. Then they form gangs and it’s easy for criminals to recruit them. (Housing authority expert, Sweden)
For a period of time asylum applicants are somehow protected, because they’ve got a place to stay [in the reception system], but then this ends and that’s where the big problem lies. They are accorded a form of protection, and then they have to leave these centres. They can’t find a job, because for various reasons [it’s not easy], so they can’t rent a small apartment or something […]. Then they end up in abandoned areas, in which there are ethnic-based groups, but also groups … I wouldn’t know whether to call them criminal, or tending to criminal activities, they dominate the situation and they start imposing rules. (NGO child expert and psychologist, Italy)
The presence of family members plays a big role for this group, but mostly the family is absent. Those who come with family are always less of a problem than those without family. (Law enforcement expert, Germany)
Someone who is necessarily marginalised will latch on to a specific group to belong to, so either an ethnic group or a criminal group … ultimately they try any means to latch on to a group. (Law enforcement expert, France)
The waiting time in the hotspots creates tension, in general. When they are not sure, when there is no precise information about when they will leave, or sometimes in order to cause their removal from the area, they manifest intense, violent behaviour mainly directed towards the place itself, namely by destroying the infrastructure of the hotspots and camps; this frustration is also directed towards different nationalities or towards any different group in the area. (Law enforcement expert, Greece)
These gangs are recruiting these guys because they [the gangs] know that, if you are an asylum applicant or if you are undocumented, then it’s like you have zero rights. You are invisible, so they can use you to whatever they want. So, you have to [do] the dirty work, as they say, and risk getting into real trouble. (NGO housing and child expert, Sweden)
I also note that many who receive negative decisions on their age assessments [i.e. are re-registered as adults] noticeably often get negative decisions in their asylum cases. It’s not unusual that they disappear. It’s not unusual that they wind up in criminality, either as victims or that they actually commit crimes of different kinds, primarily acts of violence. It’s mainly this part of the target group, the ones who’ve got a feeling that ‘this is really about to go to rack and ruin. I will probably not be allowed to stay’. It’s my experience, given the clients that I’ve had, that many are at risk in this way. (Legal expert, Sweden)
Well, to put it simply, one can say that, wherever the state pulls back from particular fields of competence, [religious extremists] enter and take over these tasks. (Law enforcement expert, Germany)
We haven’t seen at the moment any particular link [between extremism and migration] … It is still being examined if there is such a trend but there is no evidence or statistical data supporting this. (Law enforcement expert, Greece)
The fact of being an asylum applicant isn’t in any way related to a phenomenon of extremism or radicalisation; these two elements aren’t linked in any way whatsoever. (Law enforcement expert, Italy)
The app is an information portal run by people who have fled to Germany. It is financed by the government and private companies. The app provides replies to questions about life in Germany by means of short videos and articles, on the topics of asylum, housing, health, employment, vocational training, childcare or university studies, among others. A search engine assists with finding services and offers in the immediate surroundings. The app is available in seven languages.
For more information, see Handbook Germany, ‘Germany from A to Z’.
The police headquarters of Milan, Italy, dedicates one day a week to asylum claims lodged by children. All different administrative steps, which adults have to do separately, can be done in one day, including photo identification, database verification to avoid duplication of the request, and filling in form C3. This preferential treatment is also applied to renewing a residence permit.
Source: Local child protection authority, Milan
In Vienna, Austria, the city government explicitly promotes and financially supports individual housing for asylum applicants staying in the reception system of the Land. It is considered the best housing arrangement to foster integration and does not require alternatives to be found when international protection is granted. In addition, public costs for individual housing are lower than for organised facilities. Some 70 % of asylum applicants in Vienna live in individual housing. Asylum applicants transferred to basic care in Vienna are required to go to a central service point and there they get the information on individual housing.
Sources: Experts from organisation providing basic care in Vienna (Fonds Soziales Wien).
The municipal housing company Lulebo has aimed to make 25 % of all vacant flats available for international protection beneficiaries who are assigned to Luleå (Sweden) as their “municipality for introduction”. First families and then unaccompanied young people have priority. Single adult men will first go to temporary accommodation.
Source: Housing experts, Norrbotten region, Sweden
In Austria, after the Second World War, the international community granted loans for up to 50 years to municipalities and housing cooperatives to cofinance the construction of homes for refugees. The housing project financed homes for some 5,400 households.
Refugees living there paid rent. Part of the rent was used to pay back the loans and part was deposited in a special fund for assistance to refugees. When a flat became vacant, the authorities assigned it to a new refugee family. Two organisations implemented the project, the Internationale Aufbauhilfe and the Evangelische Verein für Innere Mission. They also managed the loan repayments until 1971, when the newly created Austrian United Nations Refugee Fund took this over. On 21 July 1991, it was replaced by the Fund for the Integration of Refugees, which used part of the income from the housing project for refugee integration activities. The project came to an end in the early 2000s when all loans were paid back. All rights in the housing moved to the municipality or the housing cooperative.
Source: FRA, 2019 [based on various sources, including Yvonne von Stedingk (1970), Die Organisation des Flüchtlingswesens in Österreich seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, Abhandlungen zu Flüchtlingsfragen, vol. VI, Braumüller Verlag, Vienna]
NGOs in Marseille, France, implement a ‘sliding lease’ system. The NGO rents accommodation, which it sublets to a beneficiary. After subletting the accommodation, the NGO also provides overall social and administrative support (e.g. daily budget management, management of administrative procedures). When the beneficiary is sufficiently independent, the NGO ‘slides the lease’ over, and the beneficiary then becomes the tenant.
Source: Évaluation logement initiative altérité.
An initiative by Caritas Italy allows interested persons to host an international protection beneficiary at home. The host offers accommodation and food and accompanies the person in their integration efforts. International protection beneficiaries stay with families for six to nine months. Some 1,000 persons have benefited from this project.
Source: Caritas Italiana.
In Upper Austria, the housing agency Vöckla-Ager works together with NGOs that provide social support and counselling for migrants and refugees, to link them with landlords. The rental contract is concluded directly between the landlord and the tenant. The tenant benefits because the housing agency helps to find affordable housing and checks the landlord, which protects the tenant from rental fraud. Benefits for landlords are fourfold: assurance that the tenant is backed by an organisation; legal counselling on rental law; no need to search for a tenant; and availability of the housing agency in case of any problem. This service is provided for free, as the housing agency is a subsidised programme.
Source: Vöckla-Ager
The programme Mehr Wohnungen für Flüchtlinge in Bremen, Germany (“more flats for refugees in Bremen”), an initiative by a non-profit organisation, brings landlords together with asylum applicants and status holders interested in renting housing. It offers advice to both parties and an opportunity for interested landlords to register flats, houses, student rooms in shared flats or individual rooms in a host family for rent. It is funded by Bremen Senate for Social Affairs, Youth, Women, Integration and Sports.
Source: Bremen city website
Boplats is a housing agency wholly owned by the City of Gothenburg, Sweden. It lists both publicly and privately owned housing available in the region. The agency provides customer service and organises fairs and seminars to help bring tenants and landlords together. However, the waiting time for a flat is on average eight to 10 years.
Source: Boplats
Following pilot projects by the Ministry of the Interior, the Italian Association of Municipalities and UNHCR, Law No. 189/2002 created a decentralised accommodation system for asylum applicants and international protection beneficiaries. It was referred to as the SPRAR system. Interested municipalities could request funding to open facilities, which would offer not only accommodation and food, but various other forms of support. Municipalities often cooperated with civil society organisations. SPRAR facilities were usually on a small scale and distributed over the territory, to avoid marginalisation. In December 2018, the system was renamed SIPROIMI and exclusively reserved for international protection beneficiaries and unaccompanied children, relegating asylum applicants to reception centres.
Source: SPRAR and SIPROIMI
‘Berlin creates new neighbourhoods’ (Berlin entwickelt neue Nachbarschaften – BENN) is an integration management programme at 20 locations in Berlin, Germany, with relatively large refugee accommodation facilities. The regional administration of Berlin has set it up in close cooperation with the respective district administrations. The project runs between 2017 and 2021 and is financed by federal, regional and communal funds within the framework of the investment pact Soziale Integration im Quartier and the urban development programme Soziale Stadt. The project aims at community building by promoting exchange and dialogue between long-established and new residents; it fosters active citizenship, empowers new residents to realise their ideas on shaping the neighbourhood and connects individual volunteers with associations, institutions and public authorities. A local BENN team organises participation processes and supports community services’ work.
Source: BENN, Berlin, Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing
The Youth Guarantee (garantie jeunes) is a nationwide scheme for 16- to 25-year-old people living in precarious conditions in France. The youth employment agencies (missions locales) run it. Recipients may benefit for a maximum of one year from:
Youth employment agencies may offer specific support measures for beneficiaries of international protection, depending on the location; for example, language training is offered in Paris. The supplement facilitates access to housing, and, therefore, provides some stability. However, young beneficiaries of international protection had limited access to the guarantee, interviewed experts found.
Sources: Ministry of Employment and Mission Locale Rennes
The municipality of Athens launched a pilot programme for refugee integration named Curing the Limbo, co-funded by the EU. It covers refugees who have been granted asylum in Greece since 2015 and speak Greek, English, Arabic, Farsi or French. The target group is offered language classes and training on computer skills and audio-visual arts, and takes part in one-to-one career counselling, including on how to find and rent affordable homes.
Source: City of Athens, Curing the Limbo
The initiative SchlüsselBund (key chain) connects housing sponsors with young adult asylum applicants and refugees. Interested residents with a spare room or flat offer housing and guidance to a young migrant. The aim is to support the young adult on their way to independent living. The sponsorship programme is funded by youth welfare authorities. The youth welfare authority and the implementing organisation remain points of contact for the duration of the sponsorship. Participants may benefit from advisory services and seminars that deal with legal questions and practical challenges. The sponsor and the young adult receive financial support from the authorities.
Source: SchlüsselBund
In the region Norrbotten in Sweden, when children with protection status turn 18, social workers move them to flats that they can sublet from social services. The subletting through social services is a guarantee for landlords. Case officers from the municipality regularly visit and support these young persons. After one year, the person usually has the lease transferred to them. Before they turn 18, children and social workers have a talk about the practical implications of reaching adulthood in Sweden, for example in relation to the use of alcohol, drugs and tobacco, as well as individual responsibility to manage their education and continue their activities in sports associations or other physical activities. If the unaccompanied child is assessed as needing extra help during the transition, social services appoint a contact person, to whom the child can turn to for social support.
Source: Local focus group on housing, Norrbotten, Sweden
The municipality of Vänersborg (Västra Götaland, Sweden) has set up a refugee reception unit where refugees assigned to or choosing to live in the municipality are informed of various benefits they can apply for. The unit has drop-in hours twice a week. The Migration Agency refers people to the unit once they are granted international protection. They are assigned a contact person for advice and support (råd- och stödkontakt), who maintains contact during the two-year introduction programme at the Public Employment Services (Arbetsförmedlingen). The contact person is a social worker, who also administers the protection status holders’ income support, if needed. The contact person provides support in practical matters, for example enrolling in a Swedish language class, registering children at school, getting a bank account and a bank card or finding suitable furniture, or simply showing the person around town.
Source: Vänersborg
Persons in need of international protection have difficulty obtaining social security numbers (AMKAs), the Greek Ombudsman found. In response, the Ministry of Migration Policy and the Ministry of Labour and Social Solidarity issued a circular in February 2018 clarifying a number of things, which improved access to health benefits and services: The residence permit for international protection and the asylum application card comply with the requirements for the type of documents needed to issue an AMKA to foreign nationals. There is no need for an employment relationship or the provision of services or work, or affiliation to a social security body or health institution. It is not mandatory for unaccompanied children to indicate the AMKA of a representative or guardian. This circular was complemented by a new one issued in June 2019, which was, however, revoked in July 2019. Following the revocation and in the absence of new guidance, the first circular is not implemented, even though it is in force.
Sources: Greece, Circular 31547/9662/13.2.2018 on the issuance of AMKA to beneficiaries and applicants of international protection; Greek Ombudsman (2018); Circular 80320/28107/1857/20.6.2019; Revocation announcement Φ.80320/οικ.31355/Δ18.2084
In Västra Götaland, the region’s public housing agency (Boplats) has started to provide information in Arabic, Somali and other common languages since the arrivals of 2015. The social services have revised their written and spoken language to make it more accessible and less bureaucratic. They use a programme called Klarspråk (plain language) to adjust the texts used to explain decisions. These changes have improved the clients’ ability to understand the grounds on which they have been granted or denied social support such as income support.
Sources: Social welfare authority expert, Västra Götaland, and Boplats
The ‘advice café’ (Beratungscafé) for young refugees in Bremen, Germany, offers young persons support and advice concerning day-today matters. This may include help in doing homework, applying for a job, housing or social benefits, or reading or writing official correspondence, e.g. invoices for electricity or mobile phones. For legal matters, young refugees are referred to other services. The café is integrated into a more general set of offers to young persons with and without a refugee background, including for example the Youth Meet-up (Jugendtreff). The project specifically supports young persons phasing out – or never having benefited from – youth welfare support, independently of their status as asylum applicant or beneficiary of international protection. The project has relied on volunteers’ activity and secured institutional funding from the City of Bremen since 2018.
Source: Fluchtraum Bremen
The Milan Vulnerabilities Network (Rete Milanese Vulnerabili) facilitates referral to specialised medical services, based on a local protocol. The network has strengthened cooperation among healthcare and social professionals in identifying and treating vulnerable and complex cases among asylum applicants and protection status holders. The network is composed of municipal authorities, NGOs providing housing and psychological support, psychiatric rehabilitation centres, forensic medicine centres, and ethnopsychiatric and neuropsychiatric services. It has been extending its membership to include the regional health service and the different hospitals and public healthcare companies active in the city of Milan.
In Rome, the Local Healthcare Department – Rome 1 (Azienda Sanitaria Locale Roma 1) runs a project called FARI 2. It enhances detection and referral, including by training professionals operating in local healthcare and social services. Each beneficiary of the project will have an individual tailored recovery project, which includes the necessary health and psychological assistance as well as activities to foster inclusion in the labour market.
Sources: Rete Milanese Vulnerabili (2017). Azienda Sanitaria Locale Roma 1 and Ministry of Interior (2019)
The "Start Wien – the Youth College" programme, which is co-funded by the European Social Fund, offers tailored language courses and courses in basic education or literacy to 1,000 refugees and subsidiary protection status holders between 15 and 21 years of age. The programme helps them obtain school-leaving certificates and access secondary schools, vocational training or a job. Basic education and language training are also available to those who have completed compulsory schooling in their home country. The programme also allows persons beyond compulsory school age to get a certificate of school completion. It also provides an assessment of abilities.
Source: Education authority expert, Vienna, and the City of Vienna’s Youth College programme
In France, UPE2A classes are offered to pupils who have previously been enrolled in school but do not speak French.* Their purpose is language acquisition. Students who have not been enrolled in school before follow UPE2A-NSA (Unité Pédagogique pour Élèves Allophones Arrivants) and MLDS (Mission de Lutte contre le décrochage Scolaire) classes. Some schools offer MoDAc (Module d’Accueil et d’Accompagnement) classes.** The objective of these classes is the acquisition of the French language as well as the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, to allow students to join an ordinary class thereafter. These separate classes are integrated into French state schools.
Sources: France, Ministry of National Education, Circular 12/141 (Circulaire No. 2013– 141), 2 October 2012, and Circular No. 2012-143 (Circulaire No. 2012-143), 2 October 2012. France, focus groups and individual interviews with educational experts.
In France, experts described an ad hoc solution adopted to deal with lack of places for newly arrived students in regular French schools: schooling through NGO support. For example, in Marseille, the local education authority in cooperation with two NGOs, called Pep13 and Centre d’Innovation pour l’Emploi et le Reclassement Social (Innovation Centre for Employment and Social Rehabilitation), runs two non-governmental schools that can enrol newly arrived foreign children who arrive during the school year. In Lille, the NGO Centre de la Réconciliation has been operating a ‘solidarity school’ (école solidaire) since September 2017 with 20 volunteer teachers. Not only did experts assess that the quality of education is the same as in state schools, but they highlighted that such schools have the flexibility to adapt to the needs of pupils, which especially benefits students with limited or no previous schooling.
Although these schools are a good way to enable the schooling of more children than the existing capacity of state schools allows, they have fewer training opportunities than state schools.
Sources: Education experts, Marseille
In Sweden, in 2015, the government initiated an integration programme called “fast tracks” (Snabbspåret) to support newly arrived protection status holders who have professional skills and education needed on the Swedish labour market. The “fast tracks” include language training, early assessment of each person’s skills and education, faster validation of non-Swedish education and degrees, special language training focused on the professional language of different professions, trainee jobs in combination with language training, job matching and supplementary education if needed. There are fast tracks for many professions, for example teachers, doctors, nurses, and electrical and mechanical engineers.
Sources: Sweden, Ministry of Employment, 'Fast track – a quicker introduction of newly arrived immigrants’; and Labour-INT, ‘From arrival to work – fast tracks – a quicker introduction of newly arrived refugees and migrant’
The Hébergement, Orientation, Parcours vers l’emploi des réfugiés (HOPE) programme was set up in 2017 as a pilot programme for 200 beneficiaries, by the National Agency for Adult Vocational Training (Agence nationale pour la formation professionnelle des adultes – AFPA), the state and approved operators (opérateurs de compétence). It provides international protection beneficiaries and asylum applicants with (work-related) language training and professional training through a work-study scheme (professional training contract). The programme provides accommodation and food throughout the course as well as administrative, social, professional, medical and other support. In 2018, 1,500 trainees followed the programme and almost all had signed a professional training contract.
Sources: AFPA ‘L'insertion professionnelle au coeur de l'intégration des réfugiés: le livre blanc’ and ‘Hope: l'essentiel en chiffres’
JUST Integration, a foundation set up by Austrian Economic Chambers (Wirtschaftskammer Österreich – WKO) and the Austrian Trade Union Federation (Österreichischer Gewerkschaftsbund – ÖGB), supports and advises young adult beneficiaries of international protection. Advisors map the young adults’ previous knowledge and interests, develop an education programme for them and support their integration into internships.
Source: JUST Integration
The entry qualification measure (Einstiegsqualifizierung), enables individuals who are no longer subject to general compulsory schooling to pursue a 6- to 12-month internship with an employer with the purpose of transferring into vocational training at the end of the programme. The measure is open to adolescents and young adults more generally; individuals with a protection status have unrestricted access; asylum applicants can participate after three months of stay and if approval is granted by the immigration authority. Participants receive a small remuneration, for which employers can be (partially) refunded by the employment agency or job centre responsible. The programme encourages the participants’ attendance at vocational school. Participants may also be granted vocational training support (Ausbildungsbegleitende Hilfen), such as tutoring in German or other subjects.
Source: Bundesagentur für Arbeit (2017), Germany, Sozialgesetzbuch III, Section 54a. Ibid., Section 75.
In Upper Austria, the police initiated the Competence and Situation Centre Migration (Kompetenz- und Lagezentrum Migration) in cooperation with NGOs that operated reception centres, and trained 180 police officers to be ‘refugee contact officers’. They regularly visit reception centres, educate the staff on safety awareness and provide asylum seekers with information about the criminal justice system and criminal law and victim protection.* Similar initiatives have been implemented in Viennaand in Västra Götaland in Sweden.
Sources: Interviews with law enforcement experts in Austria and Sweden
The Therapy Center for Dependent Individuals (KETHEA) in Athens, Greece, runs a programme aimed specifically at providing information, counselling, psychological support and relapse prevention services to immigrants and refugees with addictions. This can also have a crime prevention effect. The KETHEA Mosaic programme also provides psychological support and other preventative activities for children, to reduce the factors that lead to addiction and impede social integration. Experts also train professionals working with migrants. In cooperation with the International Organization for Migration, the programme runs intervention and prevention programmes in reception facilities.
Source: Kethea
Law enforcement experts in Bremen, Germany highlighted the practice of organising cross-departmental meetings on cases of children in conflict with the law, to consider at an early stage whether or not to provide tailored support measures. Such measures are usually pedagogical, but may also, depending on the case, involve change of accommodation or drug rehabilitation. The conferences bring together the case manager, youth welfare authority, police and, where appropriate, teachers or migration authorities.
Source: Law enforcement authority, Bremen, Germany
