Editorial – Introduction to the “Special Issue on Adolescent and Young Adult Refugees and Unaccompanied Minors in Residential Care”

In recent years, EU Member States have witnessed an unprecedented influx of asylum applications lodged by unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs). Broadly defined as ‘stateless persons under the age of 18 without a parent or guardian to care for them’ (European Migration Network, 2018), URMs accounted for approximately 190,000 new asylum applications between 2015 and 2017 (Eurostat, 2018). These staggering figures are explained by push factors including violent conflicts, persecution, and economic deprivation occurring in Afghanistan, across the Middle East and North Africa. Strikingly, URM numbers have not only increased in the EU Member States as the United States has also handled hundreds of asylum cases in recent years from children forced to flee drug and gang violence in Central America.

URMs represent a fast-growing and highly vulnerable segment of at-risk children and youth given their history of enduring trauma, poverty, and lack of education in their home countries, along with suffering hardships and dangers on their journeys while in flight (UNHCR, 2016). In addition, they face multiple bureaucratic and institutional hurdles in the arrival countries and risk being subject to discrimination. Residential care settings in the form of emergency shelters, detention centers, small group homes or living groups, and residential treatment play an important role in housing URMs and addressing their varied needs. However, little is known to date about how residential care facilities assure the well-being, adjustment, and integration of URMs, and even less is known about available program concepts and their effectiveness. Instead, media reports have repeatedly drawn attention to the vulnerability of URMs in residential care settings with reports of abuse and of URMs being placed in crowded detention facilities for undetermined times and, on occasion, with adults (e.g., Burke & Mendoza, 2018). While the extent of these problems is unknown across countries, warnings have been issued by professional groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics that basic standards and guidelines for care are not being met in the case of URMs (Linton, Griffin, & Shapiro, 2017). It would seem that URMs are particularly vulnerable to be affected by those aspects of residential care that have long been discussed in the literature as being inherently problematic (e.g., Dozier et al., 2018).

In this special issue, we draw attention to the intersect of URMs and residential care by presenting five articles from four countries that provide a glimpse of the role of residential care facilities in the care of URMs. The first article by Seidel and James addresses how Sweden dealt with the reception of URMs from 2015 onwards when the European Migrant Crisis was at its peak. Estoura and Roberto’s article report on an intervention for URMs – the RAISE model – in the context of residential foster care in Portugal. Muñoz and Venta present the experience of two clinicians in the Southwestern US who provide psychological assessment services to URMs from Central America in a shelter-like setting. Two research articles from the Netherlands close out the Special Issue. The first by Zijlstra et al. is a mixed-method study of 98 URMs in various care facilities, which explores their perceptions regarding their mental health while also examining associations between mental health outcomes and the quality of the rearing environment. And finally, van Es et al.’s ethnographic study examines differences in the perspectives of both minors and their caregivers with regard to the challenges and needs of URMs.

These articles demonstrate the special attention and care that URMs need that will continue to challenge social work practice and policy within the EU Member States and the US. It also draws attention to the need for systematic research at the intersect of residential care and migration. Lastly, it is an urgent call to heed children’s rights and uphold standards and best practice guidelines for residential care and other care arrangements even in circumstances of crisis and under conditions that may not be welcoming.