Newton RCUK-TUBITAK Integration and Well-Being of Syrian Youth in Turkey

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The project aims to assess the needs of Syrian refugee youth in Turkey and to provide concrete policy recommendations for their integration. All recent studies of the Syrian population in Turkey indicate that their status is gradually shifting from refugee to immigrant as a result of the prolonged conflict. While the Turkish government has maintained an 'open door' policy regarding refugees from their neighbouring country, they also were not prepared for the scale of the exodus or the length of the war. As a result, the Turkish government is currently struggling to formulate effective policies to deal with a crisis that threatens to impact both Turkey's future development and regional stability. Our project focuses on one of the most vulnerable groups within the refugee population: youth whose futures are being put on hold. Youth between 15 and 30 years of age would have attended university or entered the job market, but many are finding that their plans of education and training, or marrying and building a family, must be deferred. The project will assess their background, including educational level and skills; their educational, work, and health needs; and their visions of the future. We aim to develop concrete organisational and policy suggestions for social and economic integration show how Syrian youth in Turkey may be viewed not as burdensome 'guests' but as human capital that can contribute to the country's development. The project will assess delivery and access to services such as education and healthcare, and will employ a comparative and historical approach that takes lessons from other states' and from Turkey's own past responses to mass refugee emergencies. Moreover, we will map the various local, regional, national and international governmental, voluntary, and humanitarian organisations currently working in Turkey in order to understand how and why refugees use these organisations to access services. This will allow us to evaluate the government response and gaps left by that response. Two of our particular concerns are access to education and transition into the labour market, especially critical for the age group under study. The ability of refugee youth to access education will play a critical role in Turkey's immediate future, as it will determine whether or not Turkey will be able fully to make use of the human capital represented by this large, young population. Assuming that refugees are likely to remain in Turkey at least in the medium term, then, the project aims to improve access of refugee youth to education, health services, and the labour market in order to insure that this young population will contribute to Turkey's growth rather than become an impediment to its development.This research is urgent, because the future of hundreds of thousands of Syrian youth is currently in danger. While a number of studies have attempted to assess integration problems and have warned of the immanent dangers of leaving them unaddressed, no study to date has systematically examined the critical age group that is transitioning from childhood to adulthood and currently making decisions that will shape their futures. This will also be the group that will play a critical role in decisions about return to the home country in future years. The project responds to a research gap regarding this humanitarian crisis, because the urgency and lack of data has so far dictated quick responses regarding populations that are constantly changing and whose needs are shifting. The thirty-month period of the RCUK-TUBITAK grant will provide research teams from two leading universities the opportunity systematically to collect and analyse data on the crisis and examine how those results may change over time, hence providing a base of reliable research data.