PASSER’AILE is coordinated by Futur Au Présent - International (France, Senegal) and its partners are la Fondation Apprentis d’Auteuil (France), Per Esempio (Italy), Caritas Spain (Spain), ADJM (Mali) and the Centre d’Histoire Sociale des mondes contemporains (Paris 1, CNRS - France) 1/ PASSER’AILE : a project to improve the care of West-African unaccompanied minors in Europe 1.1/ Context : The care of West-African unaccompanied minors, a growing phenomena in Europe For several years, there has been an augmentation of the coming in Europe of minors from West Africa that land alone on Mediterranean coasts. These youngs have been through a traumatic journey of several months during which they have been victims of many violences. They arrive in Europe with multiple traumatisms and with an important psychological distress. As unaccompanied minors, they can benefit from the child protection national policies. Those that benefit from it are hosted in care structures where they have a support in their schooling, formation, hobbies. They also have a psychological support there. The social workers of these structures do their best to allow theses youngs to finish their administrative process and have a defined integration path before their majority. However, the social workers face many difficulties with the troubles and traumatisms of these youngs whose dialogue culture and emotional management are really different from those of the other youngs they use to work with. The social workers also affirm having to deal with their own unawareness of the migratory journeys and of the African cultural specificities, that are important daily obstacles. 1.2 The objective : to reinforce the skills of the European social workers in charge of the unaccompanied minors care, in order to fight against their social exclusion in their host countries. To allow it, it's necessary to : - Encourage the collaboration and the sharing of practise between peers thanks to the creation of a transnational network of European and West-African social workers - Reinforce the European social workers’ skills thanks to sharing of practices and collaboration with West-African social workers - Capitalize and spread the experimentations of the network to institutions, professionals of the youngs, and the general public 2/ An innovative method : the reinforcement of the European socials workers’ skills thanks to their West-African peers 2.1/ At the core of PASSER’AILE : the sharing of practices Considering the European social workers difficulties, a broader awareness and intercultural formation are necessary. To do that, the chosen method is to connect the European social workers of transit or host countries of unaccompanied minors (France, Spain and Italy) with their peers of the departure countries, particularly Mali. Thus, the Malian social workers will bring their expertise in the care of this youngs to European social workers that will be reinforced. The project participants are the professionals of the care of young (social workers, educators, socio-educative animators), and the final beneficiaries are the youngs. 2.2/ Activities thought to encourage sharing of practices and formation In order that this network of professionals and this sharing of practices lead to the formation of workers - even informal, 3 kinds of activities will be implemented : - 1-month immersion of a Malian social worker among a French team that take care of unaccompanied minors - 2-week immersion of a Malian social worker among a Spanish or Italian team that take care of unaccompanied minors - Sharing of practices event between European and Malian social workers These 3 activities will be implemented 2 times a year during 3 years. This succession of activities will lead to an innovative and informal formation program for Europeans workers based on the learning by peers thanks to the common daily work, and on reflexion times. These activities will be supplemented by 2 journeys in Mali and virtual mobility activities on a digital platform. 3/ Expected results : to spur new methods at a bigger scale This project offers a complete methodology that is adapted to the social workers needs in order to allow a real reinforcement of their skills. The aspiration is to spread the results and that the public and private actors totally embrace this idea of reinforcement of skills thanks to mutual exchanges between peers, particularly in the care of young migrants. To this end, a rigorous capitalization work will be done with the support and the scientific expertise of the CHS (Paris 1/CNRS).
The implementation of this project had a central objective, which was to strengthen the capacities of social workers caring for West African unaccompanied minors in Europe in order to combat their social exclusion in their host country. To achieve this, three specific objectives were pursued: Specific objective 1: Promote collaboration and the exchange of practices between peers through the creation of a transnational network of European and West African social workers. Specific objective 2: Strengthen the capacities of European social workers caring for unaccompanied minors through the exchange of practices and collaboration with West African social workers. Specific objective 3: Capitalize and disseminate the experiments implemented by the network.
When the project was submitted in March 2020, several needs had been identified, responding to a specific context: - The vast majority of young migrants accompanied in Europe come from West Africa and, due to their background, often present trauma which impacts their inclusion in the countries of settlement. - European social workers are poorly trained in the specificities of this public, and have testified to their difficulties facing the traumas of these children and teenagers whose culture of dialogue and management of emotions differ from those of their traditional public, to which is added the lack of knowledge migratory routes and living conditions in the countries of departure. In this context, greater awareness and training in interculturality seemed necessary. Passer'Aile thus made it possible to draw on the experiences and knowledge of West African and European professionals to enable exchanges of practices and thus strengthen the capacities of European professionals with the aim of promoting the inclusion of young people in European countries.