3 Jahre Europa – Europe: 3 Years

Veronika Bernard

Leaving – Travelling – Arriving:
Why this Book?

Why do I tell you all this? Why do I tell you this at the beginning of a volume discussing key issues in dealing with refugees, in particular, underage refugees? You may guess: Because it’s all there. Leaving; travelling; arriving – and most of the issues to be discussed: basic needs, like housing; basic challenges, like language skills and integration – and the basic obstacles put in your way, like discrimination, by people who see you as not belonging to the place you chose to come to and live in. It’s all there; although we were Austrian citizens, spoke German, were white and Catholic. So, what to expect for people coming who are none of all this?

In summer 2015, when the news started being full of reports and pictures of people leaving, travelling, and hoping to arrive in Europe, somewhere, my own history and that of my family made me anticipate these people’s future. Would they arrive? Would they have a chance to arrive amid the obstacles in their ways? Hoping for a yes, my guts feeling told me that for a huge number of them it unfortunately would be a no. While – my own experiences given – I saw the people’s future empathetically, the remaining members of my family saw these people with feelings of aggression, not to say, of hatred. The standard remarks were, “We also experienced a war, and this was worse; but we would never have left our house and our country. Besides, where should we have gone? There was war all over the continent”; “Those people, they are no refugees; look how well they are dressed, and all of them having smart phones; when you have to flee you have nothing; and if you say so, if you tell the truth, you are seen as a bad person, as a right wing, as a Nazi”; “Why don’t they send them all home again? Do I wish them bad when I say so? No, I don’t. I wish they went home where they belong. That’s nothing bad!” In short: Why should others have it easier, why should others have it better than they – in particular, when those “others” were strangers to the place and had done nothing to deserve to be there; this right had to be earned; best over generations. And what was the divide in my family was the divide in European countries: The divide between those who felt going somewhere else to find a better life was natural, not to say, a human right; and those who saw the ones coming as people looking for the easy way out; as looking for an easy, pampered life supported by a tax funded social welfare system and, thus, for a life at the local population’s expense.

In late 2015 I got into contact with a group of about 20 teenage and young adult refugees from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan when teaching German classes at a school in the Austrian federal province of the Tyrol. When working with them and, thus, being confronted with all the obstacles bureaucracy put in their ways I felt it was necessary to draw public attention to these young people’s lives. So I launched a three years interview film project together with my colleague Erol Yıldız who like me is a member of the University of Innsbruck based research focus Cultural Encounters – Cultural Conflicts. A report of this project, in which four of the young refugees participated, can be found at the end of the second chapter of this book.

From the very start of the interview film project it was part of the plan to also analyse and publish whatever would be the findings of the interviews as far as the young people’s motives and motivations, backgrounds, future plans, problems, and, of course, also individual successes in finding their places in the foreign place they had stranded in were concerned. The original thought, though, was to pack the findings into a single article in an academic journal.

The closer the interview part of the project approached finalizing in 2018, after three years of intense work with the under-age refugees of the migration movements of 2015 (and the years following) the clearer it became that there was a lot more potential to the issue than “just” turning the findings of interviews into a single article; in fact, more than enough potential for a book – this book.

Veronika Bernard/Eugene Sensenig

Leaving – Travelling – Arriving:
What are the Key Issues on this Road?

This article is designed as an introductory essay leading the reader’s way through chapter one of this volume. In doing so it serves both as a structural frame and a thematic overview of the issues discussed.

Der vorliegende Beitrag möchte verstanden werden als ein in das erste Kapitel einführender Essay. Er hat die Funktion den strukturellen und thematischen Rahmen des Kapitels zu skizzieren.