Refugees and volunteers across borders:
How self-organized volunteers form networks and help advice refugees in their decision to leave Denmark and seek asylum in Germany or Spain.

The Dublin III regulation was made to combat refugees’ secondary movement between EU countries in pursuit of asylum and aims at determining which country is responsible for processing the asylum application and allows member countries to return the applicant to the primary country they applied.

There have been various problems and conflicts with the agreements between the countries, as well as the general efficiency of the regulation, resulting in a system with many flaws and holes. With all this in mind, some refugees try to enter another member state, as they might risk deportation in the country they are in, or, in general, see their opportunities be better in another member country, and therefore want to leave.

The thesis aims to understand how self-organized volunteers use networks to coordinate and offer help to the refugees who decide to leave Denmark in pursuit of gaining residence in another EU country, primarily looking at Spain and Germany. Theoretical literature surrounding self-organized volunteering, networking and motivation is reviewed, as is legal knowledge of the national- and EU-asylum law.

Through an in-depth expert interview, with a prominent person (alias Hanne) in the field of volunteering help to asylum seekers wanting to try to get residence in another country, spending more than 7 years, and working more than 3000 cases. An analysis was made focusing on the areas: volunteer motivation, refugees (legal understanding), network, and volunteering tasks and coordination.

This focus made it possible to have a focus from a personal and individual level as well as group and network level up to a legal, national and EU focus, connecting it all to the same case. The network is helping with various aspects of this process and in either case, Hanne is involved, and in many cases, the help comes in terms of advice on where to go and how to do it. When a case arrives on the desk and it is decided what help is needed, the network will be included, often through Facebook, using both well-known people in the network for people with health or legal knowledge, as well as spontaneous - and/or local volunteers, and refugee contacts in the receiving countries, to best understand the cases and help.

Through the analysis, it was possible to gather an understanding of the motivation of the volunteers being connected to the number of cases and personal relation to the specific refugee or case. The acts can be seen in connection to the idea of an activist citizen, trying to change the system, with the motivation starting as an act of compassion and solidarity, but subsequentially turning into an act of fighting the system through wanting to help. The advice given to the refugees is shown to largely depend on the individual needs, current situation, as well as ethnicity.

The advice to go to Spain is largely for people capable of taking care of themselves, often people without disabilities and/or kids, who are ready to work and enter a sometimes very informal system. On the other hand, the advice to go to Germany and enter, oftentimes, church asylum, is largely recommended especially for people with disabilities or smaller kids, who need more support and help, in that way entering a more formal system. The ultimate difference here being that Spain often is used to gain residence based on work, and Germany to gain asylum.

It shows through the analysis that the volunteer network is benefitting largely from being self-organized and not having to follow a set of procedures and organizational limitations for them to be able to perform the help, as it will go from the vocal point (main volunteer) and out to the different volunteers who are generally fast at responding with help. This also shows a benefit in connection to the member states, as it shows a faster reaction time, suggesting that the volunteers will manage to take advantage of the opportunities they can find a lot faster than the EU can manage to close them. Lastly, the study demonstrates that one of the reasons for this is that the network for the volunteers spans largely across borders and contains both spontaneous-, virtual- and specialist volunteers. This is also connected to the fact that the various cases have different contexts, and therefore need different people