Unaccompanied Refugee Minors’ Journey to Greece: Displacement, Protection, and the Impact on Mental Health

This research analyses how varying protection gaps along an unaccompanied refugee minors’ (URMs) journey to Europe can impact their mental health, starting with fleeing their country of origin, through to the transit phase, and concluding with their arrival in Europe. The secondary analysis of existing literature highlights the importance of acknowledging factors at each stage that have the potential to negatively impact the mental health of URMs. My analysis examines one possible route to Europe that a URM may take in seeking asylum: starting with leaving Syria as country of origin, passing through Türkiye as a host state, before continuing onward movement to arrival in Greece. The analysis centres on the key themes of loss, inaccessibility, and restriction present within different stages that impact the mental well-being of URMs throughout their journey. The assessment of how the loss of support systems, accessibility barriers to needs and services, freedom, and autonomy during their journey create vulnerabilities for URMs that current protection frameworks are struggling to address. The analysis of existing protection frameworks, research, and case studies surrounding the topic of mental health of URMs at each stage will be tied together to give a comprehensive assessment of the mental health burdens of URMs as they make their journeys to Europe. The goal is to develop a better understanding of impacts on mental health within each stage of the journey, protection gaps along the way, and to identify ways in which these protection frameworks can be improved to be able to provide more proactive interventions to help mitigate the compounding mental health burden on URMs seeking safety in Europe.