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Minors under guardianship and ex-guardianship in Spain
27 | 04 | 2018
Minors under guardianship and ex-guardianship in Spain
When the MENA (Unaccompanied Foreign Minors) arrive in Spain, an insecure and precarious future awaits them. But there is an opportunity. Up! Energy wants to take advantage of this opportunity to improve the social integration of this group.
Reports estimate that more than 33,000 children arrived in Europe alone, unaccompanied by an adult, in 2016. Of these, 588 arrived on the Spanish coast by boat. This reality, however, is repeated year after year and it is estimated that it has been increasing since this wave of migrant minors began at European coasts in the 90s. For example in August 2017 1,000 children arrived at our coasts in just one month´s time. Almost twice as much as in the previous entire year.
These migrants are known by the name of MENA (Unaccompanied Foreign Minors), and according to the data provided by the CON RED Project, the main regions of origin are currently the Maghreb with 77.8% (mainly Morocco) , followed by Eastern Europe, (mainly from Romania) with 8.02% and Sub-Saharan Africa with 6.05%.
Article 39 of The Spanish Constitution establishes the obligation of the public authorities to ensure the social, economic and legal protection of the family, and especially of minors, in accordance with international agreements that safeguard their rights. In spite of this, when these young people arrive in Spain, they encounter an institutional response (which has been denounced by different NGOs such as Save the Children) which puts the condition of irregular immigrants above that of being minors.
The operation is as follows: once in Spain, when they are detected by the police or by street educators, they are referred to the legislative apparatus related to the protection of children. The Spanish law marks as a basic requirement for entering the child protection system, that the person must be less than 18 years old, which is verified with a radiological test of the wrist. If the person over 18 years old, he or she is not entitled to enter the child protection circuits. In the case that the person is declared a minor in situation of abandonment the proceeding will lead to the resolution of his guardianship by the competent administration of the autonomous community. Some autonomous communities even wait for the nine months stipulated by law to study the option of repatriation of the minor, which is a priority option according to the law, but leaves the child in an extremely insecure situation.
Catalonia has pioneering legislation in Spain that moderately facilitates the insertion of unaccompanied minors, facilitating their entry into reception centers, the state education system and other public services. The competent body in Catalonia is the DGAIA (Direcció General d'Atenció a la Infància i l'Adolescència).
But what happens when these young people when they reach adulthood at 18 years of age? Then they stop being under the protection of the state and are considered irregular immigrants if they are not studying, working or have their papers in order. In Catalonia there is a law installed in 1995 that protects them, but it was not until 2015 that a state law was installed that pointed out that support should be given beyond 18 years old, although it does not specify until which age or what this support should consist of.
In Catalonia, young people up to the age of 21 can have an assisted flat in which they live with other boys under the supervision of an educator, who visits them periodically. They can also request monthly economic benefits of about 500 euros and help with socio-labor insertion and legal accompaniment, provided they meet a series of conditions. However, we should not forget that in Spain, the average age of emancipation of Spaniards is 29 years old.
But unfortunately these services are not sufficient to respond to the situation in which these young people find themselves when losing the state's protection, since neither the services are sufficient for the volume of cases nor does the labor and economic reality of the country facilitate their insertion in both the labor and academic markets. So the reality is that most enter a state of institutional invisibility, many end up living on the streets and there is also the risk of radicalization.
But there is an opportunity. Because when a MENA turns 18, he or she receives a residence permit for 1 year. To convert this into a work permit you need a full-time 1-year work contract. In a country like Spain, with a level of youth unemployment of almost 50%, you can already imagine that for the MENA that have a low or nonexistent level of education, no work experience, a very small social network and little knowledge of the Spanish language, it is extremely difficult to find a job offer.
Up! Energy was born out of the necessity to change this reality, with the objective of responding to the institutional invisibility and worklessness of this group. The objective is to generate stable jobs that allow them to empower themselves, get ahead and build a life here with their own resources and skills. They are people who really want to work, in fact it is all they want, because it is what they lack to be able to integrate into society as an autonomous and self-sufficient person, with dignity and the power to decide their own future.
At Up! we strongly believe in the potential of these young people and it is for this reason that we ask for your help to move this project forward.
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