| Description |
Within the refugee population, unaccompanied minors constitute the most vulnerable group, for which European and international standards offer care and protection. However, when these minors reach the age of adulthood (+18), they are no longer able to benefit from subsidized shelter, enrollment in reception classes, customized trainings, and the support from a legal guardian. The CURANT consortium (OCMW Antwerpen, CeMIS (UA), Atlas Inburgering en Integratie Antwerpen, Solentra, Vormingplus, Jes vzw) radically wants to break with this reality, by means of two innovations to be 'tested' on a selection of minimum 75 and maximum 135 unaccompanied young adult refugees between 2016 and 2019: 1) Co-housing with volunteer buddies (not only for reasons of shelter, but as a means to sustainable 1-on-1 integration) 2) Circular integrated individual trajectories (focused on activation, education, independent living, language, leisure, social integration and psychological counseling), with intensive follow-up by means of individual case management. As the academic stakeholder, CeMIS is in charge of the evaluation study of this social intervention.The framework for evalution is 'theory-driven evaluation' (TDE, Cheng 2015). The researchers will assess the impact of co-housing schemes and the circular approach on the integration of the target group by using a multi-method research design, including in-depth interviews, observation and survey.
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