Empowering refugees and asylum seekers in the Italian agriculture sector by linking social cooperative entrepreneurship and social work practices

The present study investigated the potential of social cooperative activities and social work practices in the Italian agriculture sector in promoting sustainable integration forms for refugees and asylum seekers. The study adopted a qualitative approach using case study as the main research method. As the results show, the complexity and diversity of needs of refugees and asylum seekers make collaboration between formal and informal actors increasingly necessary for generating a common knowledge and support networks. The article argues that integrated approaches to refugees’ socio‐economic integration are needed to free them from the need for assistance and thereby help them regain their autonomy. The case study presented gives insight into the potential of small‐step experiences towards sustainable development and, linked to this, the integration of refugees and asylum seekers based on self‐organisation and cooperation, considering the well‐being of all citizens in the broader context.     

‘They Cry,Cry, They Want to go to School’: the Micro‐Politics of Asylum‐Seeking Children's Articulated Emotions and Belonging in Relation to the Swedish School

This study illustrates how asylum‐seeking children, through articulated emotions, respond to being affected by experiences that enhance or restrict their sense of belonging. The findings show that, owing to power structures and relations, the children's sense of belonging was made uncertain by temporal, situational and relational boundaries of belonging. However, through their articulations, the children also contested these boundaries. The study argues that the children were moved by their structural situatedness and that their articulated emotions demonstrated their micro‐politics. The study also visualises how children may be affected when their rights are not realised in their lived forms.     

Analysis of care and education pathways of refugee and asylum‐seeking children in care in England: Implications for social work

There are currently 4,560 refugee and asylum‐seeking children in care in England, but little is known about their care histories and educational outcomes. This study analysed the educational outcomes of unaccompanied refugee and asylum‐seeking children in care at age 16 (n = 167) in 2013, using secondary data analysis. It compared their care histories and educational experiences with other children in care and those in the general population. Secondly, it used linear regression to determine what factors predict educational outcomes. Refugee and asylum‐seeking young people in care faced fewer difficulties than their peers in care or those in need, but they lagged behind children in the general population. Age at entry, placement type, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire scores, school type and mobility predicted attainment. Special educational needs (SEN), number of placements and absences did not. Better care planning and a greater understanding of SEN are required to enhance the well‐being of this population.     

QUESTIONS AND HINDSIGHT: WORK WITH ZARA,AN ASYLUM SEEKING CARE LEAVER

Psychodynamic ideas are used to think about social work with an asylum‐seeking young woman with mental health problems. Questions are raised about her needs and our response to them in relation to her individual history, the organisation and the wider socio‐economic context. These lead to reflections on adolescence and the leaving care task, non‐dependence, loss of home and homelessness, fear of madness, attitudes to difference and asylum seekers and institutional racism. Failure and learning from it is also a theme.     

Digital Storytelling: putting young asylum seekers at the heart of the story

Abstract

As new stories from asylum seekers and refugees permeate the reality of European societies today, a whole new set of challenges and opportunities arise for building a common sense of belonging. Spaces for intercultural dialogue become crucial in connecting us all in a way that allows us to discover ‘the other’ through our own process of self-reflection and self-discovery. This paper presents our experience in working with a method of digital storytelling with a group of young asylum seekers and refugees living in Belgium and Sweden. It explores the need for adopting an intercultural perspective to our diverse societies by offering opportunities to get to know each other through our personal stories, going beyond the surface, and thus puts the focus on the potential of ‘the other’ in being an active part of the development of our common society.     

The universal acts

Drawing on official acts of Western multicultural democracies – predominantly the UK Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act (2002) and its accompanying documents and actions – this article investigates, via an engagement with Judith Butler, the constitution of ‘the biopolitics of immigration’. It also argues that the biopolitics of immigration both presupposes – in the form of an injunction – and produces a certain ethics: what the author calls, drawing on Butler's work, ‘an ethics of bodies that matter’. This ‘ethics of bodies that matter’ will be seen as a source of political hope; it will guarantee the possibility of enacting differently the political acts that regulate the issues of asylum, immigration and nationality.     

Home sweet home? Professionals' understanding of ‘home’ within residential care for unaccompanied youths in Sweden

The number of unaccompanied minors arriving in Sweden continues to rise. The majority are placed in residential care units. This qualitative study aims to increase the understanding given by the professionals to the concept of ‘home’ within the framework of residential care for unaccompanied young people. Data are based on participatory observations at two residential care units, followed up by individual interviews with staff. The findings confirm that the concept of home has a complex meaning involving both objective aspects such as physical buildings, and more subjective components that can be seen as state of mind. The staff's desire to offer an ‘ordinary home’ fails because of the surveillance, their dominant positions and especially due to the legal restrictions that were not initially meant for this target group. Unaccompanied young people have to be considered based on their own specific needs in order to make it possible for society to offer the most suitable care.     

社会交换理论框架下的村落信仰与秩序

社会交换理论认为人类的一切行为都受到某种或明或暗的、能够带来奖励和报酬的交换意识的支配。民间信仰亦是如此,具有朴素的人神交换观念和鲜明的世俗性。这种主客体间相互交换的观念是构成我国传统熟人村落社会庇护秩序的基础要素之一。因此,通过对公民责任和公民品德的积极实施来改变村民消极的公民权利意识,消解交换观念下的庇护关系原则,培养村民公共规则下的利益诉求与获取方式,是改变传统村落治理秩序的重要途径之一。     

Asylum‐seeking minors in interpreter‐mediated interviews: what do they say and what happens to their responses?

This study explored how asylum‐seeking minors report information when formally interviewed. Twenty‐six Russian‐speaking minors (mean = 16.0 years of age) were individually interviewed by officials assisted by one of 18 interpreters. A qualitative analysis of the responses was used to develop categories that were then analysed quantitatively to elucidate characteristics of the questions asked by the officials, the minors' responses to them and the accuracy with which the minors' responses were rendered. The asylum‐seeking minors distinguished themselves as active participants. They appeared eager to disclose relevant information despite being asked many potentially contaminating questions. Most of the children's responses were accurately rendered, but mistranslations can affect the fact‐finding process substantially. Both the minors and the officials involved in the asylum‐seeking process need to recognize that both the questions asked and the responses given may be influenced by the third parties involved, i.e. the interpreters.     

Containment through mobility: migrants’ spatial disobediences and the reshaping of control through the hotspot system

ABSTRACT

This article deals with the modes of (contested) control that are at play at the Mediterranean frontier for containing, dividing and discipling unruly mobility. Building on ethnographic research conducted on the island of Lesvos and of Lampedusa, it focuses on the implementation and the functioning of the Hotspot System in Greece and in Italy, analysing beyond the fences of detention centres and by looking at the broader logistics of channels, infrastructures and governmental measures deployed for regaining control over migration movements. The article argues that more than control in terms of surveillance and tracking, the Hotspot System contributes to enforce forms of containment through mobility that consists in controlling migration by obstructing, decelerating and troubling migrants’ geographies – more than in fully blocking them. The article takes into account migrants’ refusals of being fingerprinted, showing how migrants radically unsettle the association between seeking refuge and lack of choice, enacting their right to choose where to go and claim asylum.