‘I just wanted to be safe’: Agency and decision-making among unaccompanied minor asylum seekers
‘I just wanted to be safe’: Agency and decision-making among unaccompanied minor asylum seekers

Author(s): Işık Kulu-Glasgow, Monika Smit, Sanne Noyon
Subject(s): Geography, Regional studies, Family and social welfare, Demography and human biology, Migration Studies
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: minors; migrations; asylum seekers; decision making; UMA; Syrian; Eritrean; Afghan minors;
Summary/Abstract: The year 2015 was characterized by a peak in the number of asylum seekers arriving in the European Union, with over 1.2 million first time asylum seekers applying for protection. Among them were over 96,000 minors who arrived without parents or other adult relatives. Sweden received the highest number of these so-called unaccompanied minor asylum seekers (UMAs), followed by Germany, Hungary, and Austria. The Netherlands, ranked seventh among the destination countries with 3,859 UMAs, representing almost a fourfold increase compared to the year before. An overwhelming majority (85%) of the ‘Dutch’ UMAs came from Syria, Eritrea and Afghanistan (IND, 2015).

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