Group music-therapy with unaccompanied minor migrants and refugees

Abstract

Europe is experiencing a vast immigration crisis. People are fleeing from countries seeking a safer ground for themselves and/or their families. 50% of them are children and 25% of these children are entering without being escorted by any guardian. The term “unaccompanied minor migrants/refugees” describes those children who are totally alone in a new country without though taking into consideration the cause of leaving their country of origin. These children have suffered the loss of their home and/or family and they may have experienced violence either in the country of origin, on their actual journey and/or in the hosting country. This thesis proposes music therapy as the most appropriate solution when dealing with unaccompanied minors. Trauma is the term mostly used to describe their situation and although verbal psychotherapy has been applicable, in this thesis I demonstrate that music therapy is more appropriate mostly because of the differences in culture and language. Furthermore, I propose group music therapy as the most appropriate solution for unaccompanied migrants/refugees because, through groups, minors can develop the basic social skills that they will need in order to adapt to the new social environment. Lastly, I suggest that the best approach regarding the direction taken would be to combine elements from psychodynamic, creative and existential therapy. The literature regarding this issue has proven to be very poor so this thesis provides a necessary proposal on dealing with unaccompanied minor migrants/refugees which contributes to future researches that need to be done.