Multi-country Partnership to Enhance the Education of Refugee and Asylum-seeking Youth in Europe

The recent drastic rise in asylum applicants has placed increased pressure on Member States to develop strategies for effectively integrating new arrivals into society. Research has shown that education is one of the most important paths to the structural integration of young asylum seekers and refugees because they have particular social and emotional needs that quality education can help them overcome. Despite this need, there is currently insufficient understanding of the challenges that these youth face and inadequate transnational sharing of knowledge regarding potential solutions.

The project Multi-country Partnership to Enhance the Education of Refugee and Asylum-seeking Youth in Europe will contribute to filling these three gaps in the participating countries in three main phases. In the first stage, each project partner will conduct desk research and field work within their country. The field work will consist of interviews with and participatory observations in reception classes and schools of three groups of refugee and asylum seeking youth inside and outside of education: (1) those who arrived less than two months prior to the start of the project, (2) those who arrived two to twelve months prior, and (3) those who arrived at least twelve months prior. Field work will also consist of interviews/focus groups with stakeholders such as government agencies, NGOs, school administrators, teachers, social workers and parents. The resulting analysis will identify challenges that youth face, find good practices in addressing those challenges and provide an overview of the interaction between the profile of each education system (with a focus on primary and secondary education) and the migrants within it. In the second stage, each partner will hold a stakeholder meeting in their country, which will enable a wide variety of stakeholders of each participating country to exchange knowledge and experience regarding refugee education. These meetings will contribute to the development of policy and practice recommendations and indicators to track the adoption and implementation of the recommendations. In the final stage, partners will develop a final report and conduct transnational dissemination and good practice exchange meetings.

Time frame: January 2016 – June 2017
Partners: european forum for migration studies – leading partner (Germany), Centre for Migration and Intercultural Studies at the University of Antwerp (Belgium), Fryshuset (Sweden), Leeds Beckett University (United Kingdom), Verikom (Germany), Risbo at Erasmus University Rotterdam (the Netherlands), University of Western Macedonia (Greece), Multi Kulti Collective (Bulgaria)
Funding: Mercator Foundation