Frontline Politics: Street-Level Organizations, Family Unification and the Right to Asylum in Germany

Abstract

The Syrian refugee crisis posed enormous challenges for the child welfare system and immigration authorities in Germany. Based on qualitative interviews and publicly available data, this paper explores the responses of frontline workers to the surge in unaccompanied refugee minors (UAMs) during the crisis and how their actions were experienced by UAMs. Results illustrate how frontline coping strategies created effective barriers to UAMs being united with their families. The findings raise questions about the relationship between ambiguous policy goals, frontline practice and formal legislation in the context of the right to asylum and the best interests of the child.

Keywords:

• policy implementation
• unaccompanied refugee minors
• comparative migration policy
• children’s rights
• street-level organizations
• administrative exclusion
• administrative burden
• Germany

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the editors of this special issue as well as two anonymous reviewers for their feedback and comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The author would like to express his gratitude to the respondents in this study, who generously agreed to share their experiences during the 2015 refugee crisis.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See the introduction to this Special Issue for discussion of the street-level approach to comparative analysis of migration and asylum (Breidahl et al. 2024, this issue).

2. The larger study was designed to explore the adaptation of Syrian refugee youth in Nuremberg (Germany) and compare their experiences to those of Syrian refugee youth in St. Louis (USA). Additional information on the larger study is available upon request.

3. Because new arrivals had started to decline at the time most interviews were conducted, they capture respondents’ retrospective view and process of making sense of past experiences (Manning and Kunkel 2014).

4. For January to September of that year.

5. Respondent quotes illustrate key analytic themes.

6. Respondents were able to choose their own pseudonym in order to protect their identity.

7. Mr. A. paraphrased the dramatic resource shortage during this period as follows: “If the table cloth is too short, it doesn’t matter which way you pull it [it won’t cover the table].” This depiction offers a telling image of the severity of the conditions bureaucratic systems to which tried to respond.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a University of Missouri Research Board Grant and a University of Missouri - St. Louis International Studies Program Fellowship.

Notes on contributors

Florian Sichling

Florian Sichling is a social worker from Germany and currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Missouri - St. Louis. His research examines the adaptation and transition to adulthood of immigrant and refugee youth in Germany and the United States.