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Unaccompanied minor refugees (UMR) are defined as being in Switzerland without custodians and having filed an asylum application. After registration in Switzerland, the adolescents are places in so-called federal asylum centers in which they go through the asylum process. Depending on the canton, there are different placement and care settings for those that are regarded as UMR following the federal asylum centers: UMR institutions, foster families, institutions with other different groups of inhabitants (e.g. with other adolescents without flight migration experiences or with adult refugees).
What happens then with UMR in institutional placement? In regard to professional care work, Brinks and Dittman observe that even if flight migration has not constituted a completely new topic for children’s and youth aid since 2015 there are “no technical routines within the conceptual process” (cf. 2018, 140). Within the context of my dissertation, I am interested in the care settings in institutional placement contexts as a form of public education under special conditions. Among those conditions are that neither the adolescents nor the caregivers are able to decide on the beginning or end of care as a sentence, that the adolescents are confronted with different (integration) requests because of their flight migration experiences, that their parents with different positions/roles are not present, or that asylum and aliens law applies to adolescents and that thereby uncertainty and restrictions are connected to this within the context of the stay. For the institutional context of UMR care, a small care ratio is specific in contrast to a foster family setting as well as that the caregivers work in the place of residence of the adolescents and also that they leave this place regularly.
The main thesis can be formulated as follows: How are care relations in institutions between UMR and caregivers interpreted and developed by these actors? In a first step, I respond to the question of positioning UMR as addressees of care work by the caregivers and vice versa. In a nest step, I analyze to what extent the modes of action of the UMR are opened up or restricted, which dealings they choose, and with which subjective interpretations they face alien positioning, e.g. as child, adult, or refugee.
In order to answer these questions, I work with a corpus of data that has been developed in the project “Unaccompanied Minor Refugees in Institutional Care: Chances and Challenges” (2018–2022), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Apart from ethnographic field protocols, interviews with adolescents, caregivers, and other involved actors are available. The evaluation will be done according to the procedure of the situational analysis (Clarke et al. 2012). My dissertation should offer analyses regarding care settings in Swiss UMR institutions and look at these with reference to the scope of action of UMR during arrival in a critical manner. The results should prove to be compatible with debates on professional caregiving as well as everyday practices of young people with flight history.
Brinks, Sabrina/Dittman, Eva (2018): Unbegleitete minderjährige Flüchtlinge. Herausforderung und Chance der Kinder- und Jugendhilfe. In: Johanna Bröse/Stefan Faas/Barbara Stauber (Hrsg.): Flucht. Herausforderungen für soziale Arbeit. 1. Auflage. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, S. 139–156.
Clarke, Adele E./Juliane Sarnes/Reiner Keller (2012): Situationsanalyse. Grounded Theory nach dem Postmodern Turn. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
