Unaccompanied Minors' disclosure of their life stories

Background and aim

Recently there has been an increase of refugees immigrating to Europe. Among them are unaccompanied refugee minors (URM’s). Based on their reasons for immigrating to Europe, the Immigration Authority decides whether asylum is granted. They decide this during an interview where the child has to tell their life story about their situation. Many URM’s experience difficulties when telling their story due to their traumatic experiences and these difficulties might reduce their chances of obtaining asylum. In the present study, telling a life story is called ‘disclosure’. There are a few known methods that could help facilitate disclosure. These include: a positive and respectful attitude of the interviewer, taking time to build up rapport, giving the child a voice, and using nonverbal communication methods. URM’s also have the opportunity to disclose their story during a diagnostic interview at the Study Centre for Children, Migration and Law. These interviews are conducted by behavioral scientists where it is expected that they apply the above mentioned facilitation methods to a larger extent in comparison to the Immigration Authority. This could aid disclosure for the child. In the present study the difference in application of the methods that facilitate disclosure between behavioral scientists and Immigration Authorities is investigated.

Method

Six URM’s with ages between 16 and 24 participated in the study. Participants older than 18 years were included when their asylum procedure had started before they reached their legal age of 18. Transcripts of interviews with both the behavioral scientists and Immigration Authorities were coded inductively and deductively. The interviews were analyzed on characteristics of disclosure and the aforementioned four methods of facilitation.

Results

During theinterviews, the following characteristics of the facilitation methods were present: A positive and respectful attitude of the interviewer, taking time to build rapport and giving the child a voice. The nonverbal methods are not used during interviews with the Immigration Authority, but these methods are applied during the diagnostic interviews. There was disclosure during two interviews with the Immigration Authority. For four URM’s there was no disclosure registered. Three URM’s disclosed their story during the diagnostic interviews.

Conclusion and recommendations

There seems to be a small difference in disclosure during the diagnostic interview and interview with the Immigration Authority. The facilitation methods seem to aid the URM’s to disclose their story. These methods could be better applied during the (diagnostic) interviews. In addition, URM’s could be given the opportunity to disclose their story in an informal conversation before the official interview with the Immigration Authority commences. Although the results are promising, it is not yet possible to generalize findings from this research project based on the present research design.

Keywords

Unaccompanied refugee minors, disclosure, diagnostic interview, asylum, qualitative research.

Supervised by:Carla van Os and Elianne Zijlstra