Programme Erasmus + Europe on the move : Migration Biographies Theses
2.2.3 . Escape route of the family
After having sold their possessions and deciding to leave their old life behind , they said goodbye to Nesrin ’ s parents . The decision to flee had not been thoroughly planned , and many of their choices had to be made quickly . Although their decision to flee was a quick one , seeking refuge in a different country was something they discussed at length . In these discussions the family would discuss potential routes they might take . As a result of this their escape was significantly simplified as they did not have to think twice about the route they eventually took .
The family began by fleeing to a refugee camp in Turkey in November 2012 . They chose this place because of Al-Hasaka ’ s geographical closeness to the Turkish border , making it quite easy to reach . An equally important reason for the decision was their hope that the terrorism would soon end , and they could return home . The civil war and terrorism did not stop , and this dashed their hope of returning home .
After remaining in the refugee camp for more than a year the family decided that they would need to move on . There was no hope of being able to go back and the inhumane conditions in the refugee camp were unbearable for them . The children were not allowed to go to school in Turkey which reinforced their decision to move on from Turkey and eventually to Germany .
They wanted to take the Balkan route through Bulgaria but because of the price of 9,000 euros per person to use the service of smugglers they could not afford this trip for every family member , although the father would take jobs when he could . They decided that the father would go to Germany first and the family would follow him after he got to Germany . He reached Germany through a human smuggler . While the mother and her three children stayed in the refugee camp the father continued to Germany . He travelled to
Figure 1 : Refuge route of the father
Bulgaria as an asylum seeker as a short stop before passing through the Balkan route . After his arrival in Bulgaria he was registered like all other refugees . The policemen noted all of Arman ’ s identification data down and registered his fingerprints into Eurodac , a system that saves and stores all scanned fingerprints in the EU . Users using this system can compare fingerprints through it to see whether a refugee has been registered before in another country . 124 Since Bulgaria was the first country he entered in the EU , he was supposed to stay there until his asylum application was either accepted or rejected , according to the Dublin Regulation . 125 This complicated things as his intention was to reach Germany . Arman did not want to wait for his application to be accepted before moving on to Germany , or Austria . Austria would have been the family ’ s second choice . His attempt to flee the country failed and he was caught by the police . After the second attempt , he was arrested and imprisoned by the Bulgarian police . His prison term was originally a year and two months . After only a year of imprisonment he was able to leave the prison two months earlier than originally decided because of his good behaviour . After being released he took a plane from Bulgaria to Paris , France . ( fig . 1 ) Arman took a bus from France to Germany and finally arrived , a few years after his family initially fled Syria . 126
124 ( Risk analysis for 2019 2019 )
125 ( The Dublin Regulation n . d .)
126 ( Haddad 2019 , 2 )
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