Somali Report Cover Nov 07 21/11/07 1:49 pm Page 1 Identities on the Move: the integration experiences of Somali refugee and asylum seeker young people Deborah Sporton • Gill Valentine © cover photograph copyright of Chris Clune Identities on the Move: the integration experiences of Somali refugee and asylum seeker young people Deborah Sporton, Department of Geography, University of Sheffield Gill Valentine, School of Geography, University of Leeds Notes i Definitions: an asylum seeker is someone who has applied for asylum and is awaiting a decision on the outcomes: they do not have the right to work or to benefits and have only limited access to further and higher education; a refugee is someone who has been granted leave to remain in the UK as a refugee. ii The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 does not apply to children arriving under the age of 18 who are granted leave to remain under the Children’s Act (1989) under which they are placed into the care of a Local Authority until their asylum claim is assessed at 18. iii When the integration policy was tightened in 2002 the number of successful applications for Danish citizenship fell by 72% (Danish Refugee Council, 2004). • Young people are wary of Identities on the Move: claiming a British identity the integration because ‘British’ is implicitly still experiences of Somali imagined as a white identity. refugee and asylum • Community space for migrant groups, such as the Somalis, to seeker young people define their own identities is important in giving these groups Most research about the the security to feel they belong to experiences of refugee and asylum the nation. seekers has addressed the experiences of adults. Little is • Integration policies which stress known about the experiences of national identity have the young asylum seekersi, yet they potential effect of legitimising constituted 23% of all asylum negative attitudes by the majority applications in 2005. population towards migrants and their cultures. This two year study by the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds • Somali children (and their focused on the lives of young parents) receive very limited Somalis aged 11-18 in Sheffield, support at school to learn English UK. Using quantitative and and to integrate into the British qualitative methods it explored the educational system. ways in which young Somalis’ identities and affiliations are shaped • Funding is needed to develop the by: their histories of mobility, their educational support that Somali experiences of home, school and community homework clubs community life in the UK; and the provide for Somali young people implications of these experiences for and to link this more strongly their social integration. The research with the British school found that: curriculum. • Intercultural differences are emerging between the generations within the Somali Findings: community. Young people commonly feel their parents do • Somali children have limited not understand their experiences memories or direct experiences of trying to integrate in the UK. of Somali and gain their understanding of what it means • A general crisis of masculinity to be Somali from their families and lack of male mentors is and communities. contributing to a high incidence of youth offending. • Experiences of forced mobility and loss of attachment to place • There is an emerging — but mean the identity ‘Muslim’ hidden — culture of smoking and becomes for many young Somali drinking amongst Somali young people the most important and people which has implications for consistent way that they have of the development of health defining who they are. education initaitives. Identities on the Move: the integration experiences of Somali refugee and asylum seeker young people 1 internal and international migration About the Project as well as the limitations of how The study employed a multi-method data is collected and categorised. It research design combining is estimated however, that about quantitative and qualitative 5,000 Somalis are thought to be elements. The quantitative research living in Sheffield, compared to involved an in-depth survey of young approximately 4,000 in Aarhus. people in schools. This was Given the nature of the diaspora administered within class time, to there are close links between all pupils in years 7, 9 and 11 in Somalis living in Sheffield and eight Sheffield secondary schools Aarhus. This close contact was, for and one further education college. example, experienced in the This provided a database (3313 recruitment of research participants. responses) which allowed the Some Somali families in Sheffield researchers to compare the Somali have either lived in Aarhus respondents’ affiliations and identity themselves prior to undertaking a practices with those of children secondary migration to Sheffield, or from other minority ethnic groups have extended family members and white majority children. currently living in Aarhus. The qualitative stage of the research The interviews were conducted in included work with Somali English, Danish or with a Somali communities and families in interpreter. Quotations from the Sheffield UK, as well as additional interviews that are used in this work in Aarhus, Denmark. report are verbatim, spoken or grammatical errors have not been • participant observation in Somali corrected. All names of specific community spaces, such as people or places have been removed homework clubs; in order to protect the anonymity of the informants. • in-depth interviews with Somali children and their parent(s) exploring their particular histories of mobility, senses of attachment, and understandings Background of their own identities; Asylum seeker children entering the • in-depth interviews with key UK (either as dependents or stakeholders (such as unaccompanied) have until recently representatives from the local received scant attention in authority, schools and immigration and asylum debates. community) about the broader However, in 2006, the UK received contextual issues that shape over 23,000 applications for asylum, young people’s identities; over one-third of these were made by those aged 20 years or under and of • an online exercise in which, these 3,245 were unaccompanied children from Somali homework children (Home Office Asylum clubs were given user names and Statistics 2006). Indeed since 2000 invited to participate in an on- an estimated 24,000 line WebCT forum; unaccompanied children have entered the UK without • and art workshops conducted by identification, documentation or professional therapists. guardians. In particular, those fleeing from conflict in Somalia have figured The numbers of Somalis in Sheffield among the top five groups of asylum and Aarhus respectively are difficult seekers entering the UK in recent to estimate because of the complex years (Henderson 2005). These histories of forced and voluntary, figures mask important differences, 2 Deborah Sporton • Gill Valentine however, both in the journeys and regions. For those who are asylum seeking strategies, embarked subsequently granted refugee status on by young Somalis on route to the or exceptional leave to remain, UK that have implications for the NASS support is terminated and shaping of their identities. It is replaced by Local Authority and known that a large number of Social Services support. For this Somalis arriving in the UK have first group, new initiatives have been set spent time in refugee camps in in place through the Government’s neighbouring Kenya, Ethiopia and Full and Equal Citizens strategy Djibouti. Other unaccompanied (2001) to assist their integration as young children have, according to ‘equal members of society’ across a the United Nations, been smuggled number of spheres including to the UK and other European employment, education, housing etc. countries, dumped at ports where they are able to seek asylum as More recently the plight of asylum unaccompanied minors (IRIN 2003). seeker children has been at the As the law stands, unaccompanied forefront of public debate with the children are automatically granted piloting of changes in policy temporary leave to remain in the UK targeted at so-called ‘failed asylum until a decision is made on their seekers’ who are being ‘encouraged’ status at the age of 18ii. Given that to return home through removal of many of those arriving have no all forms of support. This policy has papers, the assessment of age is however revealed a lack of both open to abuse with those over understanding of the circumstances the age of 18 strategically claiming of children who are subject to to be younger and subject to error as different legislation under the 1989 witnessed by cases of children Children’s Act. As support is detained as adults. An increasing, removed Local Authorities are but undocumented, number of young obligated to take destitute children Somalis are arriving in the UK from away from their parents into care other countries in Europe, in until the age of 18. particular from Scandinavia and the Netherlands where they have already Despite these initiatives, the been granted refugee status. This integration experiences of asylum secondary movement following seeker and refugee children in the several years of residence in Europe UK are poorly understood yet it is is motivated by the desire to reunify particularly pertinent to develop families separated during the conflict policies to support their integration. and has also been associated with an Firstly, because if young people are increase in discrimination and equipped with appropriate skills this unemployment in Europe. will help minimise their risk of social exclusion in adulthood. This increase in the number of Secondly, childhood is perhaps the asylum seekers, including children, best time to intervene to address arriving in the UK over the last integration difficulties because decade have prompted changes in young people are more open to UK government policy embodied in learning and change than adults. the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Thirdly, young people who are not Act and more recently the integrated into society are at risk of Nationality, Immigration and Asylum social harms that can further Act, 2002.