The defiant volunteer: Motivations for volunteering after the ‘2015 European Refugee Crisis’

In 2015 and 2016, nearly a million asylum seekers, mainly from Syria, walked to Europe via the Balkans, or climbed onto small vessels to cross the Mediterranean and seek sanctuary on Europe’s shores. This phenomenon was defined as the ‘European Refugee Crisis’ of 2015.

Europe’s response to the ‘refugee crisis’

The movement uncovered astonishing generosity, as well as emotions of empathy, fear, xenophobia, and discrimination along the way. The response of European governments varied hugely. Hungary’s Prime Minister, Victor Orban described the Syrians as “Muslim hordes and economic migrants unwelcome in the country.” Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, announced “Wir schaffen das” (We can do this). This torrent of support came to be known as Willkommenskultur (Welcome Culture). France’s response was initially slow and cautious but it pledged to receive 24,000 refugees over two years. Greece received more than 850,000 by sea leading to chaotic conditions on the islands of Lesvos, Kos, Chios, and Samos. Italy, in 2015, launched large scale ‘search and rescue’ maritime operations saving more than 153,000 from the sea (Operation Triton and Operation Sophia).

This mass influx of people was front page news for weeks. Overall, the Swedish press was the most sympathetic and empathetic towards the refugees and migrants, while media coverage in the UK was the most negative and the most polarised. In 2015, Sweden saw the arrival of 162,877 asylum seekers, twice as many as in 2014. On the other hand, the United Kingdom only received a few hundred Syrian refugees in 2014, with David Cameron, the then Prime Minister, promising that between 2015 and 2020 the United Kingdom would take in up to 20,000 Syrians under a Vulnerable Peoples Resettlement Scheme.

Volunteering to support refugees in different contexts – Sweden and the UK

In both Sweden and the UK local and community associations sprang up under the label ‘Refugees Welcome.’ With such a different popular press and political positioning, I wanted to understand the impulses which led so many to volunteer their time and energy to welcome and make Syrians feel ‘at home’ upon arrival in the United Kingdom and in Sweden.

This led to a British Academy funded study with research teams at the University of Oxford (myself and Audra Morris) and the University of Stockholm, Sweden (Annika Rabo and Emma Larsen). We organized a small exploratory study of about twenty-five interviewees in each country. What we did not initially account for was that the UK with a ‘closed-door’ policy, only received Syrians who had already been granted ‘vulnerable’ refugee status by the UN Agency for Refugees, largely from Jordan and Lebanon. Sweden, on the other hand, with its initial ‘open-border’ in 2015 received more than 160,000 asylum seekers in that year out of a total country population of about ten million, all of whom needed their asylum requests to be processed in the country.      

In the United Kingdom we interviewed individuals who had stepped forward as volunteers to assist Syrians who had already achieved ‘Refugee Status’ and were brought to the United Kingdom ‘legally’. This was juxtaposed with the situation of Swedish citizens and residents who largely spontaneous stepped up and hurried to train stations and ports of entry in Sweden to assist in any way they could those Syrians and other displaced people – mainly unaccompanied youth from Afghanistan and Iran – who were arriving in the country to claim asylum. Their crossings were irregular and did not at that time have formal state support. Yet in both countries ‘Refugees Welcome’ type of associations sprang up spontaneously organised by local folk.

Was motivation different among the volunteers in the United Kingdom and in Sweden?

 Prior to conducting our semi-formal interviews, we wondered whether several key concepts might emerge as common among our interlocutors both in the UK and Sweden: a history of migration or dispossession; experience living abroad and thus experience of the ‘Other’ and a form of curiosity, tolerance, or local cosmopolitanism; and a reaction to the overall national media on their attitudes. We assumed that the different political policies, and media slants, would lead us to find significantly different motivations. Surprisingly, this did not appear to be the case. Motivations were much as we had anticipated, with only some differences in intensity of feelings about the ‘Other’ and the extent to which volunteer experience of living abroad was manifested in each country. 

We had anticipated that volunteering in the United Kingdom would be driven by a sense of social duty to be hospitable and generous to those in need. The Syrians arriving were all legal, but they needed help in integrating into the communities they were assigned to. So ‘befriending’ was an important motivation for coming forward to help. This proved to be largely relevant. Not surprisingly many also expressed anger at the government for permitting so few of the nearly one million Syrians seeking sanctuary to enter the UK. The expression ‘not in my name’ was often heard. That is, I am not going to prevent these people from coming; I am going to welcome them.’

In Sweden, with a country that opened its borders to Syrians, volunteers were numerous, helping with basics like providing water, food, and mattresses to sleep on, as the government had no forward plan. To our surprise, many Swedes also expressed anger and frustration.  Anger was directed at the government’s lack of planning which was often expressed as a reason to step forward and plan correctly.

Two different government policies and two diametrically opposed national medias but a similar response, anger at the government for either not letting enough in or not doing enough for those who were arriving. One could say that a fundamental motivation in both the United Kingdom and Sweden was defiance of state policy and practice.

In terms of long-term outcomes relevant to local and national governments, understanding the impulse to ‘do good’ within civil society from an empirical perspective may be a key to future successes in mobilisation at the national, regional, and local level in providing refuge to those in need. Furthermore, recognizing that citizens and residents in both countries were angry at either the government’s limited quota (the UK) or lack of planning (Sweden) should alert government policy planners that a sense of outrage, or belief that things should be managed better, could influence how these people vote in local and national elections.