RESEARCH EXCHANGE
How to address the vulnerabilities faced by migrants when seeking protection
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About
Luc Leboeuf
rights and protection
Addressing vulnerabilities among migrants seeking protection requires a holistic approach that accounts for the context-specific dimensions of migrants’ lived experiences and fully upholds their rights.
Nothing more than a buzzword?
It has become fashionable, in EU and UN policy discourses on asylum and migration, to emphasise the need to address the specific protection needs of ‘vulnerable’ migrants and refugees, such as children.
Yet, much uncertainty remains on how best to identify and address vulnerabilities among migrants seeking protection. Moreover, some stakeholders are concerned that attention to the specific protection needs of the most vulnerable migrants occurs at the expense of other migrants in need of protection, whose vulnerabilities aren’t recognised.
Mapping best practices and gaps in vulnerability assessments
To address these concerns, the VULNER project gathered knowledge on current laws and state practices, which seek to assess and address refugees and migrants’ vulnerabilities in Europe (Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Norway), North America (Canada), the Middle East (Lebanon), and Africa (Uganda).
We first analysed the laws, bureaucratic guidelines, and implementing practices, which establish vulnerability assessment procedures to obtain a residence permit and benefit from welfare services (such as housing, humanitarian aid, etc.) on protection grounds, such as asylum. We then compared these norms and practices with migrants’ experiences of their vulnerabilities. We conducted 216 interviews with decision-makers in charge of assessing vulnerabilities, including social and aid workers, and 657 interviews with migrants seeking protection and other relevant actors, such as civil society organisations.
In this short, we highlight key findings that reveal critical gaps and opportunities for more effective and rights-based approaches.
Key findings
The research results are diverse and vary depending on the context and procedures. They demonstrate the potential of vulnerability assessments in better tailoring migration policies to migrants’ protection needs. Common challenges in identifying and assessing the vulnerabilities of migrants seeking protection could nonetheless be identified.
- 1. Insufficient consideration for the lived experiences of migrants seeking protection. Vulnerabilities are generally assessed based on abstract personal characteristics that are easy to identify (health, age, gender, etc.). In contrast, migrants seeking protection describe their experiences of vulnerability as mainly relational in nature and constantly evolving over time. For example, migrants often mention loneliness, stigmatisation, and lack of support networks among the reasons why they feel vulnerable. Our research shows that the effective assessment of vulnerabilities requires to consider how determinants of vulnerabilities intersect and evolve depending on personal and social factors and circumstances.
- 2. Institutional fragmentation and lack of coordination. The various actors involved in assessing vulnerability each perform their assessment only within their own area of focus. There is a general lack of systematized information sharing between the institutional actors involved, which means that vulnerabilities aren’t addressed comprehensively.
- 3. Structural determinants of vulnerabilities often remain overlooked. Vulnerability assessments often focus on addressing immediate specific needs, thereby failing to address the deeper, structural causes of vulnerabilities among migrants. For example, specific support measures for asylum seekers who suffer from heavy trauma are not sufficient to address their vulnerabilities if they are hosted in large-scale accommodation centres with no private space.
- 4. Conflicts with migrants and refugees’ rights. Vulnerability assessments are sometimes established to mitigate the vulnerabilising effects of some border policies, which fail to comply with the rights of migrants seeking protection. Vulnerabilities among migrants seeking protection can only be addressed effectively if they complement existing protection rights, as established under international refugee law and human rights law. They should not serve to legitimise the downplaying of these rights to those who are most vulnerable.
How to fully realise the potential of vulnerability assessments?
The VULNER project results demonstrate that attention to vulnerabilities has the potential to improve the effectiveness of procedures aimed at addressing protection needs among migrants and refugees. To fulfill this potential, there is a need of adequate understanding and knowledge of the lived experiences of migrants seeking protection. Moreover, their rights should always be upheld.
Three things to remember when addressing vulnerabilities among migrants seeking protection:
- Make sure to conduct regular vulnerability assessments when applying legal protection standards, while paying attention to the vulnerabilities of migrants seeking protection in their context-specific dimensions;
- Address the structural factors that contribute to generating vulnerabilities among migrants seeking protection through durable solutions;
- Effectively enforce existing rights protection frameworks established under international refugee and human rights law for all migrants seeking protection as an essential precondition to address specific vulnerabilities.
Luc Leboeuf is the former coordinator of the VULNER project and Research Group Leader in the Department of Law and Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. He is also Belgian Research Fund (FRS-FNRS) Research Associate, and Scientific Collaborator at the University of Liège.
Learn more:
- Policy Handbook – Better Policies and Laws to Address Migrants’ Vulnerabilities
- Book – Between protection and harm
- Podcast ‘Speaking Refugee’ – ‘Home’
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