From informal living places to independent housing. Difficulties of individuals and migrant families in the welcoming process: analyses and proposals for solutions.
At the crossroads of the social sciences and humanitarian action, this research aims both to offer food for thought and to develop practical ways of improving reception practices for migrants, encouraging their active acceptance and making their support less problematic.
Rethinking the organization of the migrant reception system
The aim of this research is to uncover the underlying reasons that lead many migrants to leave the institutional reception system and embark on autonomous but riskier paths. In its conception, the formal organization of the reception system responds to criteria of rationalization and optimization of the number of places available, and aims at the ultimate goal of territorial and social integration of the migrants in its care, and their empowerment. Observation of the realities in which this system operates reveals some rather complex problems that social research can help to elucidate and analyze, so that improvements can then be envisaged.
Gaining the trust of interlocutors
Our fieldwork, participant observations and interviews took place mainly in the Paris region, in informal settlements such as encampments, where migrants settle, as well as in various types of accommodation to which these people are transferred when the reception system is triggered, notably from emergency shelters, reception centers for asylum-seekers, to more permanent types of accommodation/housing. The major difficulties in this field stem from the precarious and uncertain conditions experienced by the people concerned, and require the researcher to constantly readjust his posture in order to gain the trust of his interlocutors.
The effectiveness of social support and the empowerment of migrants
The procedure for obtaining refugee status or other types of protection is long and uncertain. As a result, many prefer to leave the reception system, leading to feelings of powerlessness and frustration, not only among migrants, but also among social workers. A more attentive approach to each individual, based on a dialogical and participatory process involving the periodic organization of workshops, meetings and focus groups led by social workers, volunteers, migrants and researchers, in which each person provides feedback on his or her experience and career path, could be an effective way of improving the operability of social support by making it less vertical. This dynamic could also soften the feelings of the players involved, by promoting self-fulfilment through each other’s words, and by helping migrants find in these regular meetings the elements to become more aware of their constantly evolving condition, towards the horizon of their empowerment.
Experimenting with the collab survey: understanding the factors involved in the acceptance of shelter solutions in order to improve support towards independent housing orative
The study, based on an ethnographic methodology involving the various players involved, has enriched the existing literature in this field, while the collaborative survey experiment has shed light on the operating methods of social intervention, so that social workers can readjust and reshape them to improve their acceptance and effectiveness with migrants. Participatory social action methods to facilitate acceptance of care for migrants are developed during the course of the study. The desired advancement of scientific knowledge is thus based on the articulation of research around three dimensions: the first concerns the political-institutional aspects that normalize and govern the reception of migrants; the second, humanitarian, has to do with the ways in which relations between social workers and migrants are established and carried out; the third, focused on the effects that the first two produce on the recipients.
This research was conducted as part of Bénévo’Lab, the Foundation’s research program initiated by those who carry out French Red Cross actions on a daily basis. Bénévo’Lab offers all volunteers and employees of the French Red Cross the opportunity to benefit from technical and scientific support in answering questions or operational difficulties encountered during Red Cross missions. Not everyone in action always has the time or the necessary distance to reflect alone on their actions and the problems they encounter. The Red Cross Foundation proposes to involve, for one year, a university specialist who is an expert in the question raised, in constant and direct contact with the volunteer or employee and his or her missions. At the end of the call for proposals launched at the beginning of 2021 to all volunteers and employees of the French Red Cross, a project proposed by a volunteer on the theme of “families in informal living spaces: understanding the factors involved in accepting shelter solutions to better support them towards independent housing”. The subsequent call for research grants was therefore based on the initial proposal of a volunteer and his active participation in its drafting alongside the Foundation. To ensure that the men and women working in the field on a daily basis benefit from the experience and results of this research, and that their action in the service of the most vulnerable is strengthened, Chiara Brocco, the winner of this call for proposals, conducted her work in direct collaboration with the volunteer at the origin of the project.
Biography
For the past fifteen years, Chiara Brocco has been conducting academic research on the migration and living conditions of African migrants in contemporary Europe, analyzing the multiple forces, meanings and implications of these human experiences. Her work focuses on the living conditions of mostly exiled Ivorian migrants living in squats in Paris and the Naples region of Italy. Her research led to an anthropology thesis, which she defended in December 2020 at the EHESS in Paris. Her current work follows in the wake of my previous studies.