Improving Law Enforcement and NGOs’ response to ensure refugees’ inclusion and integration

Refugee crises have been pressingly affecting Europe since 2015. By the end of 2016, over 5 million refugees reached European shores following the critical situation in Middle East countries such as Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2016).

In 2021, crossings increased, mainly from the later, due to the resurgence of the Taliban and the overall picture of a globe embroiled in severe conflicts (UNHCR, 2021). On top of this, 2022 has been posing new challenges to Europe in light of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. According to UNHCR (2022), over 13 million individuals have fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries (e.g., Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Moldova) as of October 7th, although it is still to be seen if these countries will function as transit jurisdictions, temporary settlements, or resettlement countries.

The massive inflows of refugees, especially in 2015, coincided with terrorist attacks on European soil, deepening a mediatised fear of Islamist terrorists being hidden in the refugee flows (Elefheriadou, 2018). Even though research (Schmid, 2016, p. 45) demonstrates that the “short-term likelihood that recent refugees arriving in Western Europe become radicalised is very low”, refugees’ vulnerability to engage in radical/extremist viewpoints and/or activities might increase.

In fact, “if [refugees] are not fully integrated in host societies, they might develop resentment and with some that anger might become so strong that they – or more likely, their children – turn against the host society. That has been one of the reasons why so many of the foreign fighters from Europe were the sons of immigrants” (Schmid, 2016, p. 45).

Hence, while the number of recent refugees involved in radical or violent extremist activities remains very limited, the European Commission’s Radicalisation Awareness Network (2020) defends that these individuals can be affected by certain risk factors at stake in radicalisation processes, therefore putting them at risk of engaging into a radical viewpoint or, eventually, perpetuating violent extremist acts.