How do you ask a minor who has been supporting his family for years to become a child again? How do you convince yourself that you cannot work in years when your family has spent everything on your trip? How do you deal with the frustration that follows the fear of the boat? The centers for minor immigrants in the Spanish islands of the Canary Islands (Atlantic Ocean) deal with it every day and sparks sometimes fly.
Morocco’s decision to ask for an explanation from the Spanish ambassador in Rabat, Ricardo Díez-Hochleitner, for a video widely distributed by police WhatsApp rapidly intervening at a center for unaccompanied minor immigrants in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the capital of the island of Gran Canaria, where their presence was claimed due to a violent incident involving a resident, has once again drawn attention to these young people.
The Canary Islands government currently monitors 2,700 foreign children claiming to be minors across a network of 27 shelters, the majority of which were set up in 2020 due to the massive arrival of boats. In at least 600 cases, the Directorate-General for Child Protection has serious doubts as to whether they really are minors.
One of the things being called into question is precisely that of the protagonist of the video incident, a young man who threatened an educator with scissors, the general manager of that department, Iratxe Serrano, tells Efe.
“Our centers, our educators, are perfectly prepared to face the situation with children, with children up to the age of 18. Such conflicts are almost always caused by adults posing as minors,” explains Serrano. The problem is that the arrival of immigrants in the past year has been so great that there is a huge backlog in determining bone age: 2016 are pending.
Serrano is deeply concerned about cases where she suspects the alleged minor is even over 30 years of age, as she feels he should not be in their centers under any circumstances, including because his influence is not good for actual adolescents. But removing the assumptions in which these people play the leading role, he points out that the incidents that occur in the centers usually go no further than “fights and fights,” which is normal in any group of coexistence.
THE CENTERS FOR MINORS
“There have always been conflicts in the centers for minors. Those who come to shelters, not only foreign children, but also nationals, come for personal, economic and even very important mental health conditions. They are under protection,” assures judge Efe. the Menores Reyes Martel.
This magistrate tries to express normalcy in her words, because she remembers that in families there are also conflicts between siblings. And in this case we are talking about children from different countries, all arriving with their reality and all seeing themselves living in the same house, with educators who are not their mothers or fathers, but strangers they have to go to. get used to it. It is a much more complex reality than it is being talked about. “
“In youth centers this is normal, there are usually fights, quarrels,” agrees the president of the Federation of African Associations of the Canary Islands (FAAC), Mame Cheikh Mbaye. “Now they are making it visible in the media for other reasons, but it’s normal. The professionals who work in the centers know that sometimes there are problems because they don’t let a minor out. And the minors who have just arrived or have had time recently. that they are frustrated and don’t accept it. It’s nothing new. “
This 31-year-old Senegalese man knows what he is talking about. To his status as spokesperson for the African community on the islands, he adds his three years of experience as director of a center for underage immigrants in Gran Canaria, his university research on this issue and the fact that several households still rely on his mediation, to. because African guys trust and respect him.
Mbaye points to a first problem: Spain has a project to care for minors in need of protection, but it is not adapted to foreign minors. And a 12-year-old boy from Morocco, Senegal or Mali, he emphasizes, has little to do with a Spanish child.
“In Senegal and many other countries, minors start working very early, they participate in the family economy, while here you are protected by your parents until you are 18. African minors are more mature in that sense, they have lived through more difficult circumstances. And also, the boat is a super super difficult experience that makes them more mature, ”he explains.
THE IDEA OF WORKS
Most of these guys do not want to continue in the Canary Islands, they plan to continue their trip to other European countries, usually France, because of their affinity with the language. And they come up with a fixed idea: work.
“They can’t do it here because they are underage. That makes everything complicated, because here, when they arrive, they are instructed to study, they have to follow rules, rules, regulations … And it’s not what they searched, ”explains. Much conflict, he adds, comes from that frustration, that sense of privacy.
The most serious cases reach offices like Reyes Martel’s. “Most of them experience this as a prison, they want to go to Europe. They told me: Mrs. Judge, I don’t want to be here.”
It takes time, the magistrate says, to convince them of the benefits of adaptation, that it is worthwhile to invest in training, that they can better help their families that way, if it is expected of them.
Reyes Martel has several examples that it pays to give them a chance, of which he cites one: a boy from Guinea Conakry who ended up in court through several conflicts, a nearly illiterate who turned out to be a gifted ‘who took the courses of two. at two, nowadays he is a marine engineer and devotes his spare time to helping out in the dining rooms of Cáritas. He returns what he has received. “
“These guys have incredible strength, they are the future. Let’s be selfish, they are the ones who can help us as a country,” he adds.
CONSTANT SUPPORT
It is often difficult. The sociologist Teodoro Bondyale, secretary of the FAAC, has just interceded with a teenager who was involved in a destruction in the north of Gran Canaria and was shocked by what he said: “I left Morocco because they did not want me there. that they don’t want me here either. “
“A minor who has been taking care of his family since he was 8 years old rebels when he is treated like a child here,” said Bondyale, who is deeply concerned about “the stigma” currently being placed on Moroccan minors in the Canary Islands. .
The key, his partner Mbaye insists, is not to give up on the boys no matter how much they defy the rules, no matter how much they abuse their knowledge that ‘in Spain they can’t be beat, they can’t yell at them, they can’t be fired as minors. ”The problem, he says, is that educators sometimes throw in the towel and see no other way out to correct them than to file complaints with the police or the prosecution service.
And that, he warns, complicates everything, because they could be accused of a criminal past. Judge Martel agrees, albeit with nuances: “It is true that we are pursuing protection concerns, but we have measures to correct these situations and ensure that they continue their normal life without any prior data.