S1 – Public support, judicial interactions, and the impact of migration on children

Papers

(Listed in order of presenters above)

• To hear or not to hear? The judicial shaping of the right to be heard of asylum seekers and irregular migrants

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  This chapter analyses the role played by the EU Charter in asylum-, return- and visa-related hearing procedures through the lens of judicial interactions. The chapter analyses how several types of judicial interaction have helped domestic courts in, first, identifying which of the various EU legal sources of the right to be heard are applicable to asylum seekers, returnees and visa applicants at the domestic level (section II). It continues by investigating how judicial interactions have contributed to the development of concrete standards for the conduct of administrative hearings (section III). The chapter proceeds with an analysis of how judicial interactions have empowered domestic courts to shape new remedies for violation of the right to be heard outside the confines of EU secondary legislation and domestic procedural law directly on the basis of the EU law general principle of the right to defence and Article 47(2) EU Charter (section IV). It concludes by identifying the outcomes and shortcomings of judicial interaction for the uniform application of the EU fundamental right to be heard of asylum seekers returness and immigrants across the Member States.

• International cooperation on migration: what do domestic publics want?

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  What preferences do people have for cooperation between high and lower-income countries on irregular migration and refugee protection? Despite the increase in the number and breadth of cross-country cooperation agreements in this policy area, we know little about people’s preferences for such policies. This paper addresses this question in the context of the EU-Turkey 'migration deal' agreed in 2016. We conduct cross-country conjoint experiments in Germany, Greece, and Turkey to shed light on the types of policies that generate public support for cross-country cooperation on irregular migration and refugee protection. Our respondents are favorable to several core features of the current EU-Turkey migration deal regarding the return of irregular migrants, financial aid to refugees in Turkey, and the intensity of Turkish border controls. We also find evidence of public support for cooperation on resettlement and EU support to Greece to deal with migration. In certain aspects of cooperation, public preferences seem to respond to interactions between policy dimensions. For example, German public support for relocating refugees from Greece is enhanced if there are stepped-up border controls in Turkey. These findings have important implications for research on public attitudes to asylum and migration policies, 'migration diplomacy' in international relations, and public backlash against international cooperation more generally.

• Unaccompanied minors in contemporary migration. A transatlantic perspective

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  In late May 2021, the media reported about a group of 8,000 to 10,000 people who left Morocco and managed to reach Ceuta without authorization. According to Spanish authorities, around 1,500 to 2,000 migrants were children. At the same time, the USA was dealing with the rising number of minors encountered at the Mexican-American border. Only in March 2021, among a total number of around 170,000 apprehended unauthorized migrants, the U.S. Border Patrol reported more than 18,500 who were unaccompanied minors. Exact numbers are usually difficult to provide because many of the already deported migrants usually try to cross the border many times. Today, the UN estimates that 1 in every 8 migrants worldwide is a child. Migration of children and particularly unaccompanied minors is an issue of high international concern because, at all stages of the migration process, migrant children are disproportionately vulnerable to violence, abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and detention. Many of them experience the trauma of perilous journeys and face a national immigration system they know nothing about. The awareness of their rights is limited by their age and/or the lack of easily accessible legal counsel. Therefore, the presence of unaccompanied minors at the borders brings a wide variety of matters to be solved by receiving states worldwide including logistic, legal, political, or ethical issues. The presented speech analyzes the problem of unaccompanied minors migration in the USA and EU. It discusses the range of the issue, shows the legal framework and focuses on challenges experienced both in Europe and America.

• Childhood memories of belonging among young Romanian migrants in Italy: a qualitative life-course approach

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  This article uses a life-course approach to investigate how and why migrants’ feelings of belonging change between childhood and young adulthood. This paper looks at belonging as a temporal process by exploring how the question of migrants’ belonging arises and is continuously constructed and reconstructed over time from childhood to the transition to adulthood. By considering belonging as a result of the interaction between personal and family stories in specific socio-cultural contexts (Al-Rebholz 2006; Rosenthal and Köttig 2009), this article contributes to the literature by examining two key research questions: (i) How does belonging change throughout migrants’ life course from childhood to the transition to adulthood?; and (ii) What factors induce change in migrants’ sense of belonging from childhood to young adulthood? Drawing on 24 in-depth retrospective interviews with young Romanian migrants who moved to Italy as children, the paper shows how young migrants’ belonging is shaped by the nature of social relations and by the level of acceptance or exclusion expressed by others in the receiving and origin countries, under specific institutional and socioeconomic contexts. Overall, the study demonstrates how life-course methodologies are an essential tool to capture the dynamic, changing nature of belonging.

• ‘Sometimes all you need is a peer’ - impact assessment of a mentoring programme for children affected by migration in Central and Eastern Europe

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  Migration policy responses in countries from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) tend to be rather slow, as they are not facing a “refugee crisis”. However, people affected by migration, and especially children and youth, are still extremely vulnerable to social exclusion in such destination areas. In this context, the NGO-led “MINT project”3 , aimed at empowering refugee and migrant children as well as European youth from the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Slovenia, by engaging them in a new and innovative mentoring programme for social integration. The programme was structured as a pilot project, with two distinct cycles of implementation (July 2019-March 2020 and April 2020-February 2021). In each cycle, approximately 15 migrant children in the four countries were paired with 15 youth mentors from the host country. Based on a peer-to-peer approach, the mentoring programme was aimed at increasing the social integration, educational achievement and mastery of local language for the migrant children. The mentees also participated in weekly one-on-one sessions with their mentors (focusing on educational support and improving their language skills), as well as in various group level activities aimed at familiarising them with the host societies: visiting museums, playing team sports, implementing small-scale projects in their community etc. In this article we discuss the positive effects that participating in the MINT mentoring programme brings to migrant children. By using pre-test and post-test surveys with mentees for both cycles of implementation (N≃100), the research design follows the logic of an impact assessment. Our measurements include several sub-dimensions of social integration (frequency of social interaction with family members, migrant community and host community, enrolment in local schools, fairness of treatment in local schools and self-esteem), as well as self-reported indicators on educational achievements and the mastery of local language (reading, speaking and writing skills). The level of engagement in the programme and the subjective assessment of the relationship with the mentor are used as mediating factors. In order to triangulate the results, additional data was collected through a pre & post survey with mentors, but also through separate Focus Group Discussions (FGD) conducted in each country with the mentees, their parents and the mentors, at the end of both cycles. Preliminary results suggest that participating in the mentoring programme is associated with several statistically significant improvements in skills and behaviours for migrant children. These positive outcomes are corroborated by the findings from the FGD with parents and mentors. In addition, the experience of implementing the MINT project during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the severe lack of educational and social support for migrant children and youth provided by local public authorities.