Young Migrants in Pandemic Times: What is Happening in Cities?
Since the coronavirus first swept across the globe, few people have seen their lives unaltered by the pandemic. In some ways, coming to terms with an oft-dubbed “new reality” has been a shared experience—and yet, the exacerbation of pre-pandemic structural inequalities has borne vast disparities in opportunities to cope, recover, and survive.
For millions of young people living in forced displacement, the pandemic has intensified the extant vulnerabilities and instabilities that so often accompany irregular migration. Both the migration route and host country characteristically present extreme difficulties for teenagers and young adults, including threats of trafficking, violent pushbacks by border authorities, and unsafe or unstable accommodation. From these challenges arise not only frustration but also severe distress and setbacks. What is more, their impact is often layered on top of unaddressed psychosocial need borne from trauma incurred in one’s home country. Navigating national migration and asylum frameworks, the implementation of which may manifest quite differently from one country to the next, can add further challenges. This is particularly pertinent to teenagers seeking out international protection in Convention of the Rights of the Child-ratifying countries where the age of majority is 18—as they age out of protected minor status, novel legal categorization as adults may conflict with their needs and best interests.
Hence, the sweeping shutdowns have forced upon teenagers and young adults in displacement even more significant barriers to advocating for, and meeting, their basic needs. This is not confined to asylum seekers, refugees, or migrants within a certain age group. Across the board, migration and international protection procedures have been severely disrupted amid the abrupt and prolonged halting of services affecting nearly every sector and state. And yet, the pandemic has affected the lives of adolescent and young adult migrants in a unique manner.
Many of the disadvantages with which young people in displacement have wrestled during and after lockdowns, mirror and magnify the pre-pandemic circumstances highlighted above. For example, the pandemic has proven no exception to the reality that the vulnerability of children and young peoples to abuse or exploitation increases during crises. This is even more so if they spend any time as unaccompanied minors. Organizations in the fields of healthcare and human rights have also identified the latter as being at particularly high risk for sexual exploitation, including gender-based violence, in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. For adolescent girls on the move, lockdowns have meant a marked increase in child marriages.
The pandemic combined with under-resourced public administrations has also further affected young migrants’ ability to access the most basic and vital resources in host countries and communities. For example, by mid-2020, significant numbers of unaccompanied minors in Marseille for whom the government could not secure accommodation were forced to sleep rough, as public child protection services were stopped. In London, unaccompanied young people in unregulated housing or supported accommodation were unable to contact their social workers regularly during lockdown. As a result, threats of violence from “abusers and drug gangs” heightened throughout the pandemic. Across the south and southwest in the United States, deplorable federal detention facility conditions for unaccompanied minors worsened during the pandemic. Makeshift tent facilities housing unaccompanied migrant children have been found to be unsafe and unhygienic, with children exposed to the elements and sexual abuse. Migrant children in some instances have been under suicide watch given their rapidly declining mental health.
Severe educational disruptions have also become a burden for many young, displaced students. In Greece, nationwide efforts to digitize classes have caused prolonged learning disruptions for many children and young people living in refugee camps, where Wi-Fi access can be extremely unreliable. In some cases, displaced students have been unable to attend class for months. In a number of Danish cities, teachers who run preparatory courses for 12–19-year-old migrants and refugees have reported concern over their now inability to help students access municipal offices and integrative measures, as was the practice before 2020.
Where public health and sanitation services are concerned, contemporary barriers again reflect long-persistent problems. Upon surveying 14–24-year-olds in migration around the globe, one 2018 UNICEF report found that roughly half had not sought medical care since beginning their journeys, even when such attention was needed. Even in countries with advanced and well-resourced medical systems, young migrants have been more susceptible to falling severely ill during the pandemic than have native-born groups of the same age. From April to June 2020, excess mortality among immigrants in France (also common in many countries in Europe and North America), for example, was observed across even the youngest age cohorts. It was also two-to-four times higher than that of the native-born population.
Young people in displacement have also continued to be the target of xenophobic and hostile discourse in their host countries, the ramifications of which can include further isolation and ostracization. In Madrid, for example, the far-right party Vox posted electoral signs “falsely claim[ing] that unaccompanied underage migrants receive ten times as much state aid as pensioners.” While news outlets and Spanish politicians have decried Vox’s campaign, the party’s anti-migrant platform and use of misinformation to stoke fear remain prominent, and consistent, tactics. So much so that for geopolitical reasons, Morocco has leveraged this fear by creating a crisis in Ceuta, using many unaccompanied minors, some of which were even brought by bus from their schools and allowed to cross the border to pressure and overwhelm authorities on the other side. In the United States, a number of Republican politicians have similarly politicized unaccompanied minors arriving at the country’s border with Mexico. In response to the Biden administration’s request for states to take children into their foster care systems, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem tweeted that the state “won’t be taking any illegal immigrants.” A number of Republican governors have similarly refused.
In spite—or, in some instances, because—of the pandemic, local communities and governments have found ways to support displaced young people for whom their municipalities, for at least the time being, are also home. While some initiatives reach young people through outreach to the general population, others employ a specific youth focus. In response to housing needs for unaccompanied children and teenagers at the border, California cities such as San Diego and Long Beach have volunteered to accommodate hundreds of migrant minors in their respective convention centers. While this is only a short-term solution, many officials and residents view it as a much safer alternative to crowded border facilities. In Italy, Milan is working with non-profits to provide COVID-19 monitoring to unaccompanied minors and homeless individuals living in local shelters.
In New York City, young immigrants—regardless of status—are able to receive three free meals a day at designated locations if they are students; those not enrolled in school have access to community-wide distribution of one free meal daily. Boston is similarly offering free meals to migrant children without stable housing, along with medical and childcare, Internet access, and educational assistance. In the United Kingdom, Leeds City Council’s Migrant Access Project offers weekly virtual drop-ins via Facebook, with targeted information for young migrants and others about the coronavirus.
Other cities have provided resources for young people in search of employment or relevant training. In Buffalo, the municipality contributes funding to the Northland Workforce Training Center, a career development hub that offers services such as free English classes to refugee and immigrant youth. The municipality of Marcianise, in Italy’s Campania region, is also planning to launch a program to assist job seekers—including migrants, refugees, and young people who have left school—with finding employment. In the Tuscan town of Montalcino, 24 young asylum seekers and recipients are receiving training in wine production, via an initiative called Icare. The program, which operates under joint support from the EU and a Siena-based social agricultural cooperative, aims at transitioning the young participants into employment in the region’s thriving agricultural sector. Local Government Denmark, the Danish organization for municipalities, recently published its plans to integrate a number of groups—including migrant youth—into the labor market.
It is promising that leaders and residents alike are investing in community programs with young asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants in mind. As the desire to plan for post-pandemic life grows (particularly in North America and Europe), however, isolated initiatives will not be an adequate mechanism by which to prioritize recovery inclusive of displaced youth. Proactive consideration of their needs is particularly crucial as these young people find themselves in a critical period of psychosocial development. Furthermore, as adolescents and young adults, they fall within the age group considered by mental health experts to be suffering the most from the effects of isolation.
To call for inclusive support is not to detract from the resilience demonstrated by asylum-seeking, refugee and migrant young people. It is rather to echo what has been said many times previously: In the context of a virus so communicable, a response that is exclusive of anybody is ultimately detrimental to everybody.
Natalia de Gravelles was a graduate intern with the GMF Cities program and focused on the Cities Managing Migration project.