Migrant minors: "Who would risk their lives only to end up sleeping on the streets?"
Catalonia has welcomed 20,000 foreign children without any role models in sixteen years.
BarcelonaIn the first two months of the year, 437 unaccompanied migrant minors arrived in Catalonia, joining the approximately 9,000 under the guardianship of the Directorate General for Children and Adolescents (DGAIA), of whom 2,400 are foreigners. These are young people who, like Ibrahima Bah and Bilal Sighaoui years ago, have risked their lives to emigrate, driven largely by the desire to help their families. "Facing the sea, I said to myself: 'death or life,'" Bah explained on Thursday, at the 25th anniversary celebration of the SDI (Detection and Intervention Service), a Barcelona City Council service that detects and supports children, adolescents, and young people over 21.to try to replace the advice or company of parents or siblings. The Barcelona City Council, like the Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan Government), has been allocating funds to care for these young people for decades, creating places in centers and apartments and including them in benefits (the same as national minors in care) to give them a hand when they turn 18. With a lot of luck, these young people can continue to receive institutional support until they are 23. seven years before the age of emancipation.
This week, migrant minors have once again become a weapon of contention between politicians over the distribution agreed upon between Junts and the PSOE. In 16 years, 20,285 arrivals have been recorded, in a period of constant growth, especially since 2017, when many minors from North Africa arrived and the reception system had to be resized. Currently, around 200 unaccompanied minors arrive each month, most of them on their own and not through the failed relocation system from the Canary Islands or Ceuta. Furthermore, Catalonia has around 3,000 apartments for those who have already reached the age of majority and provides 4,000 more young people. Is that many or few? The Community of Madrid, for example, has 155 apartments to care for those who have left care.
25 Years of the SDI
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the SDI, the students helped make a first-person documentary about their migration experiences, the expectations they had upon boarding the boat, and the difficulties they encountered along the way. They also wrote it down in a manifesto, which Sighaoui and Bah read with enviable aplomb: "Who would risk their life crossing the sea in search of a better life? "To then end up as a scrap metal dealer on the streets or end up sleeping under a bridge or in a park?" The rhetorical question was followed by an exhaustive enumeration of the obstacles they must face in order to try to survive in a society that often makes them "invisible" and burdens them with collective frustrations."We live isolated, rejected and besieged "because of a constant feeling of fear of being nobody... No, it's not that society isn't aware of it, it's clear that the whole world sees us, but the circumstances of our difficult lives are unknown," the text continues.
Young people complain that society, the public, judges them solely on their "physical appearance," without pausing to think or showing any empathy for their life stories and suffering.We have life, we have not started from scratch here", due to the documentary.
Bah somia to fer-se ric to return to the seva mare all that she has donated because more than that she has to return to work. Contrary to the one that the collective imagination has constructed of these creatures. The mare, with also the family, many cops It is present bad the distance and those who pass sense return to embrace her. The mother with the reference to cherish, care and agrair-li-ho tot. times to steal the feina of no one because we have to survive", and in this sense he is certain that he needs tranquil·litat. "If heu nascut here and dieu that I don't find feina, I might not have looked for it", he affirms and replies to the audience's applause.
Ara, Sighaoui and Bah have the great illusion of professionalizing themselves com to mentors of young people who will have to go through the same thing as them, "the light at the end of the tunnel", in the latter's words. The advice they give them is to maintain "discipline and commitment" and continue with "the hunger of when they left home."