Increasingly since 2015, media confront us with horrible images of refugee children drowning in the Mediterranean, surviving in appalling conditions in camps or walking across Europe. Importantly, little scientific work explored the impact these flight experiences have on refugee children’s emotional wellbeing.
Based on innovative methodological approaches, ChildMove addressed these gaps through a longitudinal follow-up study of a large group of unaccompanied refugees moving across different countries and international borders. Accordingly, we documented the psychological impact that flight experiences have on URMs, and analysed how care and reception structures can contribute in reducing this mental health impact.
Our study showed how the trajectories of the unaccompanied minors we followed are very long and complex, also on the European continent. How these trajectories evolve over time is impacted by diverse and changing migration motives and critical events, such as residence documents, educational opportunities, living situation in the reception centre or familial decisions.
Throughout these complex and often long trajectories, unaccompanied refugee minors experience many and very difficult traumatic events on their way to and in Europe. The living situation in Libya, especially in the detention centres where these minors are incarcerated, is extremely hard. But also on their way to Europe and in Europe, these young refugees and migrants keep on experience multiple and diverse adverse situations, such as physical abuse, sexual violence, detention, repeated experiences of stigma, extremely long waiting periods and uncertainty, and harsh living conditions, creating ‘loops of violence’. These experiences strongly impact minors’ mental wellbeing, leading to high levels of psychological problems, also on the longer term, both impacted by past traumatic experiences and current daily stressors.
Minors feel supported by a diverse social network that changes over time. Specific support is felt by other migrants and refugees they learn to know while being on the move and by volunteers that give them different types of support along their trajectories. Minors use different coping strategies, which also change in response to diverse challenges and stressors. Reception structures set up for these young refugees can be very supportive, but can also fail to meet their needs and expectations.
Based on these findings, important recommendations are put forward for policy-makers and practitioners to consider when realizing the care and reception structures for these young refugees and migrants.
