Asylum Seekers and Refugees

This manual is drafted in a way that it reflects the main activities of the project. Firstly, we present our own organisations and brief overviews of the situation our countries are dealing with. Secondly, we present the research we conducted in the partner countries. In total, we conducted 4 focus groups with refugees and asylum seekers as participants, who spoke about their satisfaction with the social security systems, the process of getting international protection, but also about what is lacking in order to make the integration system and processes within it better and more accommodating to actual needs. Finally, we present the methods and tools designed during this project that we thought best fit the needs expressed in the focus groups. Therefore, we focus our methods around psychological relief, social cohesion and inclusion, but also around providing insight into tools the youth can use to track or even come up with their own resources in the local community.

This chapter highlights the importance of analysing the inclusion/exclusion of refugee students within the university in relation to the shifting socio-economic and political dynamics of the locality. It argues how a focus on the territorial embeddedness of higher education communities contributes to our understanding of the internal and external borders of universities.

The research involved migrant youth who were recently arrived refugees from the Horn of Africa. Using an appreciative approach, these inspiring young people eagerly shared their understandings of the best of their cultural heritage and together created a community project to celebrate new educational opportunities and mutual love of music and dance as they settled into their community within the multicultural city of Melbourne, Australia.

Hintergrund
Zuständigkeiten und Verfahren der gesundheitlichen Versorgung angesichts des großen Zustroms schutzsuchender Menschen in Deutschland sind weiterhin sehr uneinheitlich.
Fragestellung
In welchem Maße können und sollen Öffentlicher Gesundheitsdienst (ÖGD), Hilfsorganisationen und Ordnungsverwaltung in Deutschland die Erfahrungen sowie die normativen und technischen Standards der internationalen humanitären Not- und Soforthilfe berücksichtigen?
Methoden
Grundlegende Dokumente aus den Bereichen der Medizinethik, des Medizinrechts, des humanitären Völkerrechts und der Katastrophenmedizin werden vergleichend herangezogen und an konkreten Erfahrungen im Öffentlichen Gesundheitsdienst mit Flüchtlingen der Balkankriege ab 1990 sowie in Einsätzen der international tätigen Nothilfeorganisationen geprüft.
Ergebnisse
Normative und technische Standards der internationalen humanitären Not- und Soforthilfe sind angesichts zahlreicher Krisen und Katastrophen entwickelt sowie evaluiert worden und haben sich seit 20 Jahren bewährt.
Diskussion
Die von einer Katastrophe oder einem Konflikt Betroffenen haben weltweit ein verbrieftes Recht auf ein Leben in Würde und daher ein Recht auf Hilfe und gesundheitliche Versorgung auch nach gültigem internationalem Standard. International anerkannte, normative und technische Standards der Flüchtlingshilfe sollten daher neben nationalem Recht auch in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland beachtet werden.

The article explores some strategies of the new internal regime of «frontierization» for the asylum seeker. Indeed, extending from the entry into the Reception System up to the inclusion in the Register of Resident Population, these strategies are increasingly configured as devices of spatial, social and administrative control. In detail, the analysis will illustrate how, through the use of these devices, the exceptionality of the juridical condition of asylum seeker – always reversible «until proven otherwise» – has been transformed once and for all into an «ordinary» condition of suspension of fundamental rights, thus increasing the risks of blackmail and dependence of the migrant from the actors who govern and manage the reception system.

Il contributo propone un dialogo tra le esperienze lavorative ed  etnografiche di due antropologi che hanno lavorato all’interno di alcune attività di monitoraggio e presa in carico del disagio mentale tra i minori stranieri non accompagnati (MSNA). Restituiremo due casi emblematici di quello che noi abbiamo inteso essere l’uso sociale dell’antropologia. Avvalendoci di un approccio comparativo, sottolineeremo le pratiche
cliniche, le definizioni di protocolli medici e procedure operative standard così come l’importanza del coinvolgimento dell’antropologo/a in questi percorsi.
Parole chiave: uso sociale dell’antropologia, Tullio Seppilli, disagio mentale, MSNA,
clinica transculturale

In summary, our research shows that US Border Patrol agents and other CBP officers abuse migrants, physically and verbally, with significant frequency. In addition, many resent immigrants in general, and display racism toward Mexicans and other Latin Americans, as well as prejudice on the basis of sexual orientation. This suggests that the proposal to make Border Patrol agents asylum officers could lead to imbalanced and adversarial decision-makers, the opposite of what is called for in law. There was a widespread tone of anger and little restraint in the use of cursing and yelling. We found that Border Patrol threats of physical abuse — such as killing, shooting, and abandonment in the desert — were common, which raises concern over the safety and the handling of traumatized people in an asylum context. Finally, there were numerous threats to use law as a form of punishment, which indicates a problematic attitude among persons that might be tasked with gathering information and making legal decisions.

This report focuses on experiences, situation, integration and attitudes of Syrian forced migrants in Turkey in 2019. It describes results  RESPOND’s quantitative study of adult migrants from the Syrian Arab Republic who have left their country of origin in 2011 or later, and have sought protection in Turkey no later than 2017. The 789 interviews were conducted in four Turkish cities: Istanbul (234 interviews), Şanliurfa (205 interviews), Izmir (199 interviews) and Batman (151 interviews) between June and October 2019. The study used convenience sampling in each of the selected cities.

Since the Autumn of 2015, Germany has received over one million asylum-seekers from a wide variety of origins. In response to this massive influx of people, the Federal Republic has exceptionally engaged in the task of accommodation (providing housing and sustenance, financial support, healthcare, legal services, and language training). It is widely recognized that the next task – and one of perhaps greatest public and policy concern – is that of facilitating asylum-seekers’ “integration” (albeit a contested term referring to a broad set of social processes). Yet integration – however defined – already begins during the stage of accommodation. It is the nature of specific institutional arrangements – created during the process of accommodation – that is decisive for conditioning and channeling subsequent processes of integration. Further, integration can only proceed successfully if asylum-seekers’ own diverse needs and aspirations are addressed. Accommodation through the creation of institutional arrangements for large numbers of asylum-seekers have necessarily entailed complex organizational measures, requiring a range of actors, perspectives, strategies, and resources at various levels and scales. These intricate measures are further complicated when necessarily considering another complex set of factors: those posed by the sheer socio-cultural diversity of asylum-seekers themselves. Their extensive human diversity presents a manifold range of needs and aspirations beyond the immediate necessities of food and shelter. Recognizing the required interplay of both sets of complexities (institutional arrangements together with diverse needs and aspirations), in February 2016 a one-year pilot project was launched at the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG) (see http://www.mmg.mpg.de/project/asylum-seekers-needs/about/). The project “Addressing the diversity of needs & aspirations of asylum-seekers” has been undertaken through the auspices of a grant from the Volkswagen-Foundation. Within the project, three post-doctoral researchers – a sociologist, an anthropologist and an urban planner – supervised by the Institute’s Director and supported by research and student assistants – have employed a range of social scientific methods. The project was prepared and initiated expediently because of the urgency of the situation and the need to gather quickly and tactically a range of information in order to assess and understand best the significant processes currently unfolding across Germany. The research location, the city of Göttingen (population 116,891), was chosen not only for expediency but because – as a mid-sized German city that has received a substantial number of asylum-seekers since Autumn 2015, and which accordingly set up a wide variety of institutional responses – it represents a highly appropriate context within which to examine the issues at hand. Our approach has been premised on the observation that contemporary asylumseeker diversity – from which individuals’ distinct needs arise – is comprised of variable combinations of categories. These include: nationality, ethnicity, language(s), religion/sub-tradition, age, gender, health condition or disability, education/training, parental status, pre-migration social position (embracing class, political activity, experience of persecution), and migration history (including mode of travel, channel, duration, and institutional handling prior to arriving in a Flüchtlingsunterkunft or refugee accommodation center in Germany). It follows that, what each asylum-seeker immediately requires or requests from local institutions (concerning, for instance, family care, language acquisition, education, job placement, legal processes, health, information, communications and mobility) will vary according to the combination of these categories. The project accordingly examined: (a) how highly dissimilar, local institutional arrangements for accommodating asylum-seekers condition the nature of services and information available to them; and (b) how the variety of needs and aspirations among asylum-seekers (reflecting a range of social traits and cultural/religious backgrounds) are differentially addressed, met or unmet through the variety of institutional arrangements in the city.

Lessons for Social Work: How do social workers negotiate the difficult terrain of an emergent national populism and how do they unravel the ethical and often deeply politicised dilemmas this poses in the face of insurgent far-right movements? The tensions and dilemmas are particularly acute when case working with migrants, refugees and Roma people. Here social workers are often involved in “bordering practices” and as gatekeepers faced with stark ethical dilemmas and politically nuanced tensions. Immigration raises cultural and security concerns as well as fears of economic displacement, and it weakens the legitimacy of transnational institutions This chapter shows how much of the populist hatred and violence towards Roma and migrants - a dehumanising strategy - is conveyed through visceral representations of disgust, filth and dirt. Moreover, social work as negative protection is increasingly securitised and entangled within populist drives for ‘useful’ and ‘economically active’ citizenship which is prejudicially juxtaposed against images of dirty, lazy people with excess fertility rates.

Prof. Dr. Barış ÖZDAL editörlüğünde, Disiplinlerarası Göç Araştırmaları Anabilim Dalında ders veren birçok Hocamızın da katkılarıyla hazırlanan “Uluslararası Göç ve Nüfus Hareketleri Bağlamında Türkiye” başlıklı kitabın Genişletilmiş 2. Baskısı yayınlanmıştır.

Although a traditional migrant-sending country during most part of the 20th century, Greece became a destination country for hundreds of thousands of immigrants, especially from the Balkan countries, following the collapse of the former socialist regimes in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s. More recently, due to its geographical position as the first entry-point into the Schengen Area, Greece received over 1.25 million migrants and refugees from war and poverty-stricken zones in the Middle-East and Afghanistan, on their way to the more prosperous European North. The closure of the European borders in March 2016 (following the EU-Turkey agreement) that stranded tens of thousands of asylum-seekers in the Greek islands and the mainland and the continuous influx of migrants and refugees ever since, have put considerable pressure on the administrative capacity of the Greek authorities and the country’s infrastructure, all the more so as the refugee/humanitarian crisis took the country by surprise and coincided with the prolonged economic crisis, drastic cuts in public spending and social unrest.
The present publication aims to provide an overview and assessment of migrant integration policies in Greece during the crisis period and beyond. In particular, the book investigates, through an extensive desk research and a qualitative analysis, not only the impact of policies and social practices on the social inclusion of migrant populations in Greece, but also how migration policies, smothered by the refugee crisis, have gradually drifted to reception policies for asylum-seekers. The book also identifies the challenges that remain to be addressed, at the national and the EU level, in order to enhance the successful integration of migrants and refugees and to contribute to a better-informed public debate in Greece.