The topic for 2018 “Humanitarian Access: Pathways for Refugees from Transit to Safe Havens” deals with current efforts of the EU related to migration management. These shall include the asylum procedures to take place extraterritorial which would shift the borders or border controls as well as the refugee regime towards transit countries. It harbours the risk of aggravating the situation in transit countries, which are already acting as “catch basins” for international migration, and new challenges for refugee protection in transit countries and beyond. As a compensation, legal and safe humanitarian access ways from the countries of origin and transit countries into the EU are discussed.

The project aims at initiating an international dialogue from a social work perspective. This dialogue is about the consequences of this kind of policies on refugee protection in the countries involved, the situation of Arabic transit countries and their societies, their – denominational – composition and political systems, but also about the relations between those countries and the EU target states.

Outcomes:

As part of their master's thesis or project work, the students worked on sub-topics of the project theme "Humanitarian Access: Pathways for Refugees from Transit to Safe Havens". The research deals with the impact of refugee movements and current migration policies.