Sexuality and Migration – Focus on Flight

What do young people who have had to flee their native country know about sexuality, contraception and family planning? Do they need information and how do they want to be addressed?

The Federal Center for Health Education (BZgA) has the legal mandate to develop sex education concepts for different target groups. It provides information on sexuality, contraception and family planning free of charge. The aim is to prevent pregnancy conflicts. To fulfill this mission, strategies for addressing target groups must be developed in addition to providing scientifically validated information materials.

In recent years, for example, many people have fled to Germany from war and crisis zones, including almost 60,000 teenagers aged 14 to 17 who arrived in the first 9 months of 2016 alone. In order to design information concepts for these young people also, it’s  crucial to know more about their life worlds, attitudes, norms, values and behavioral intentions, especially with regard to sexuality, partnership and family planning.

The present study aims to help close this gap by directly interviewing young refugees and thus giving them a voice. For this purpose, the SINUS-Institut conducted 80 individual qualitative interviews with refugees aged 14 to 17 who have come to Germany since 2015.

It is the first empirically robust study in the German-speaking world to map the diversity of different attitudes, attitudes and perspectives (mindsets) among refugees in the form of a value-based typology. One thing becomes clear: young refugees are not a homogeneous group. Even within the various ethnic groups, young people sometimes differ significantly in their values and life plans. In other words, there is no such thing as the refugee or refugees.