Projet ERC-GRABS

Context

Since 2015, over 5 million people have arrived, or tried to arrive in the European Union seeking refuge. Other refugee receiving countries are faced with similar situations. Many of these refugees are young people. But whilst much has been written about the experiences of adult refugees and to a lesser extent about unaccompanied minors, there is very little research on the experiences of young refugees who are not (or are not recognized as) “unaccompanied”, and specifically about how these experiences impact their pathways to adulthood in or across borders. This in turn leads to an absence of effective policies to protect young people and to ensure their access to services which are essential to their well-being – both as young people and for their future adult lives. The project aims to provide timely new research focusing on various aspects of the experience of these young people growing up in a situation of forced migration, in order to contribute research both on youth, and on migration/mobility. In doing so it will also make recommendations on how to better support rights, agency and resilience of these young people. The research will be carried out in a range of countries in Europe (France, Greece, UK) and outside (Canada, South Africa) to analyse impacts of different social, legal and political contexts. The development of innovative methodologies combining traditional qualitative methods with social media research and digital communication tools, and emphasizing participatory research methods, will enhance the participation and self-expression of young refugees to allow them to “narrate” their lives and experiences. A feminist intersectional approach avoids essentialising young people as « vulnerable » and understands age as interacting with other social categorizations such as gender or race, to determine individual’s risks, vulnerabilities, but also possibilities for agency and resilience.

Objectives

This project aims to bring greater understanding of the experiences of young people who are “growing up” whilst crossing borders in situations of forced migration and mobility. We want to understand better how they may be placed in situations of vulnerability and experience violence and discrimination. But also what are their strategies and ways of resisting? How do they manage relationships with their families and friends? And what does it mean to move from childhood to adulthood whilst on the move?

Methods

We are aiming to use participatory methods, bringing young people in to participate fully in the research. To do this we’ll use a number of different methods, engaging young people in various activities, and giving them opportunities to develop skills and learn, whilst engaging with the project. We hope these young people will shape the project and that we will all learn from each other.

CASE STUDIES

The research will be carried out in three countries in Europe (France, Greece, UK) and in South Africa and Canada. These countries are all countries of destination for people on the move? , but with varying asylum and refugee regimes, different health and social welfare structures, and contrasting economic and political contexts. The choice of case study countries involved in the research has been made on the basis of a background review of the situation with regards to migration in each country, including the numbers of arrivals, migration and asylum laws and policies, public attitudes towards asylum and refugees, and any specific issues regarding young people on the move which may be relevant. The comparison between the different countries will allow us to point the impacts of differing socio-political and socio-economic contexts on the experiences of the young people with whom we work.

France

France, which is a country with a long history of immigration, is also amongst the EU Member States which have seen the largest number of refugee arrivals. But France has put in place increasingly strict border controls leading to “refoulement” of refugees at its borders following the re-establishment of internal European border controls -, and it has also been criticised for the inadequacy of reception conditions for refugees including a severe lack of accommodation.1 In France we will engage with young refugees in attempted mobility across borders at sites on the Franco-Italian, and Franco-Spanish borders, in reception centres and on the streets of major cities such as Paris, and in attempted onwards mobility to the UK in sites around Calais.

Greece

Greece has been at the forefront of the so- called “refugee crisis” with the arrival of over one million refugees since 2015, of whom some have travelled onwards, but many are still “stuck” in Greece (either in one of the ‘hotspots’ on the Greek islands, or on the mainland), leaving the authorities and civil society organisations to deal with questions of support, accommodation and integration within a country which has also suffered from a severe economic crisis.2 The Greek case study will allow us to engage with young people on their arrival, through enforced immobility, and potential onward mobilities. 

United Kingdom

For the UK, the impacts of Brexit have created new conditions for refugee migration. These have reinforced the already restrictive conditions for arrival and for access to protection and services which have been put in place under the UK’s “hostile environment” policy. 3–4 Again, we will focus on young people arriving at border sites and in asylum reception centres. 

Canada

Canada has been held up as an example of good practice in the reception of refugees, and in particular the country’s adoption of private sponsorship programmes for refugees has attracted positive international attention.5 The impacts that these policy choices have had on the experiences of young refugees will thus be an important comparator for our international analysis. Canada is also currently experiencing increasing influxes of asylum seekers across the US border which creates another dynamic to examine.6 

South Africa

South Africa is an interesting contrast, as a middle- income country in the Global South which is a major destination for refugees from a range of countries in the region, and the only country in the region which has an urban refugee policy. Despite a theoretically “favourable” refugee regime in South Africa, which has been recognized for its progressive nature, recent research have pointed to failures in refugee protection and recent policies to restrict refugee arrivals can be seen both as a result and as in turn producing a context in which various incidents of xenophobic violence against refugees have become widespread.7 

  1. Sahraoui, N. and Freedman, J. (2022). Gender Violence as a Continuum in the Lives of Women Seeking
    Asylum: from Resistance to Patriarchy to Patterns of Institutional Violence in France, in J. Freedman,
    N. Sahraoui and E. Tastsoglou (eds). (2022). Gender-based Violence in Migration: Interdisciplinary,
    Feminist and Intersectional Approaches. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Book chapter accessible here. ↩︎
  2. Papataxiarchis, E. (2016). Being There: At the Front Line of the European “Refugee Crisis”.
    Anthropology Today, 32(2): 5-9. Part 1: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12237; Part 2: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12252. ↩︎
  3. Webber, F. (2019). On the creation of the UK’s ‘hostile environment’. Race & Class, 60(4), 76-87. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306396819825788. ↩︎
  4. Bralo, Z. (2022). Migrant and Refugee Women in the Hostile Environment Immigration System: Deliberately Silenced and Preferably Unheard. The Political Quarterly, 93(1), 69-76. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.13077. ↩︎
  5. Hyndman, J., Payne, W., & Jimenez, S. (2017). The state of private refugee sponsorship in Canada:
    Trends, issues, and impacts. Toronto: Centre for Refugee Studies, York University. Report accessible here. ↩︎
  6. Côté-Boucher, K., Vives, L., & Jannard, L. P. (2023). Chronicle of a “crisis” foretold: Asylum seekers
    and the case of Roxham Road on the Canada-US border. Environment and Planning C: Politics and
    Space, 41(2), 408-426. https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544221127614. ↩︎
  7. Crush, J., Chikanda, A. and Skinner, C. (2015). Mean Streets: Migration, Xenophobia and Informality in
    South Africa. Southern African Migration Programme. ↩︎