ReliefWeb

Executive Summary

Since March 2016, more than 260,000 refugees and migrants have arrived on Italian shores. The majority of them are young people, with unaccompanied and separated children (UASC) accounting for up to 15% of all arrivals. In order to strengthen policymakers’ and humanitarian actors’ responses in countries of transit and destination, this study was designed to shed light on young people’s decisionmaking and preparedness levels, the mechanisms shaping their migration trajectories, and their expectations on the way to Europe. The assessment used purposive sampling to identify and interview 81 respondents originating from West Africa, East Africa and the Middle East, between the ages of 15 and 24 years, who arrived in Italy after March 2016. Political and security issues, which often intertwined with economic concerns, were reported as the most common reasons inducing young people to consider migration. Deciding to migrate can take many years. Most respondents reported that they started thinking about migrating around one year before their departures. Specific events such as personal or household issues and human rights violations were reported as key migration triggers.

Unless the choice to migrate was triggered by abrupt events, respondents tended to leave before turning 18 to pursue their aspirations, as part of a transition to adulthood. The age breakdown uncovered that, while children’s migration is typically associated with vulnerability, passivity or forced dynamics, respondents who leave before the age of 18 have a set of interests and aspirations they wish to pursue through migration.8 Our findings show that young people’s levels of preparedness before the journey were mixed. While most people tried to gather enough information and the economic resources to cover at least the first part of the journey, information, mostly provided by interpersonal networks, could be inaccurate and even misleading. Most young people intending to move chose their destinations after gathering information about the place and the means to reach it. Generally, the young people interviewed for this study did not struggle to find information about the migration process. However, the information received often proved to be general and not always fully representative of the difficulties they could meet along the way. Word of mouth, the experiences of returnees and family members on the move or abroad, social media channels such as Facebook and YouTube, traditional media such as radio and TV, and dedicated websites and documentaries were reported as the most common sources of information used by young people to acquire information about the journey. In a large number of reported cases, the decision to move to Italy was secondary, and was undertaken months, or even years, after the first decision to leave a country of origin. Young people on the move to Italy often experienced long and fragmented journeys. A lack of economic capital, security concerns in Libya, and, on a smaller scale, migration policy barriers, were reported as the key factors affecting the length of the journey.

The amount of economic and social resources secured at the moment of departure influences the possible fragmentation of the journey and the vulnerability of young people to risks along the way. The majority of young people from East Africa and the Middle East generally possessed more economic and social capital from the start of their journey compared to people from West Africa. For young people from West Africa a lack of economic resources implied higher vulnerability to job exploitation along the journey. For young East Africans, this translated into increased risk of suffering from long periods of detention, characterised by episodes of violence and torture in Libya. Respondents from the Middle East presented overall higher economic resources during their journeys compared to respondents from the other two regions.

Social capital often reportedly compensated for the limited economic resources available to respondents regardless of their region of origin, and reduced their vulnerability to torture and detention. When re-defining trajectories along the migration route, expected access to services was never reported as a key factor shaping young people’s decisions along the journey. The actors of the migration “industry” were often described as the main service providers, facilitating young people’s mobility. The migration “industry” differs greatly across the various regions of origin. In West Africa, a greater number of stakeholders play roles in the migration process. Drivers, labour recruiters, housing providers, smugglers and other intermediaries offer a variety of services within specific locations.

Compared to West Africans, the journey of young people from East Africa seemed to be more organised, with smugglers taking care of transportation, accommodation - usually in warehouses - and providing food to their clients. Almost all children and youth originating from East Africa reported having been asked to pay only once they arrived in Libya. Smugglers defer the payment in order to (i) increase the price, (ii) encourage people who declare not being able to afford the cost of the service to agree on their services, and (iii) increase their negotiation power. Once in Libya, people who initially acted as smugglers, through detention, violence and torture force their victims to hand over all their savings and to mobilise their network of friends and family to pay the ransom. On the West African routes, drivers working at the border between Niger and Libya have reportedly started to employ the same practice of deferring payment until Libya in collusion with armed groups and Libyan-based smugglers. The line between smuggling and trafficking is often blurred. In the shift from the former to the latter, the person becomes a traded commodity rather than a client.

Awareness of being trafficked varied across respondents, with the variation largely due to differing perceptions of individual freedom. As such, respondents subjected to the same limitations in terms of freedom of movement demonstrated very different levels of awareness about their risk of being trafficked. Similarly, they described their counterparts as facilitators even when several elements usually linked to trafficking could be identified in the respondent’s story.