More and more boys and men
Almost a third of asylum seekers are minors
December 30, 2023, 11:27 a.m
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Asylum seekers in Germany are mostly young and male – so far, so known. New figures from the BAMF now show a more precise picture. Accordingly, minors are the largest group among first-time applicants. It also shows that the proportion of young men in the total volume is increasing again.
Children and young people are the largest group among asylum seekers in Germany, as current figures from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) show. Accordingly, 31.4 percent of all first-time applicants were not yet 18 years old. A good 12 percent were even younger than 4 years. Among young people between the ages of 11 and under 18, there is a strong preponderance of boys and young men. Among the younger children, boys and girls are roughly equal. The applications are usually submitted by parents.
The next largest age group follows directly on: a quarter (25.1 percent) of the applicants were between 18 and 25 years old. The two youngest age groups make up a good half of all initial applications this year. Only about 10 percent were 40 years old or older. According to the BAMF, a total of 304,581 asylum applications were submitted between January and November, 71.4 percent of which were from men and boys. Almost two thirds of the applications came from people from Syria, Turkey and Afghanistan.
Minors cannot apply for asylum themselves. If you came to Germany alone without your parents, a guardian such as the youth welfare office could take care of this. says the BAMF. The BAMF report does not reveal how many of the underage applicants were unaccompanied in the current year. In one Report from the Family and Youth Ministry It is said that on October 31st of the previous year, 17,657 unaccompanied minors were under the jurisdiction of child and youth welfare services.
The figures also show that only in three years since 1953 have more asylum applications been filed in Germany. With follow-up applications, there were a total of almost 326,000 from January to November in 2023. Only in 1992 (438,000), 2015 (477,000) and 2016 (746,000) was the number (including follow-up applications) higher. The refugees from Ukraine in 2022 and 2023 were not included in the statistics – presumably because they did not have to be recorded by the BAMF.
The proportion of young and younger men is increasing
The BAMF figures also show that the proportion of men between the ages of 16 and 40 has risen sharply in the past five years. From January to November 2023, around half of the first-time applicants (50.7 percent) belonged to this group. In 2019 and 2020 it was just over a quarter (26.2 and 26.6 percent).
The proportion of younger male asylum seekers was recently similarly high in 2015 and 2016, when, according to the BAMF, it was 47.4 and 42.9 percent respectively. At that time there was generally a high proportion of men in the applications. This year again, men in particular (71.7 percent) applied for asylum in Germany.
In the years 2018 to 2020, however, the gender ratio was more balanced. There is no single cause for the sharp increase in the proportion of younger male asylum seekers, says migration expert Marcus Engler from the German Center for Integration and Migration Research. “Fundamentally, long and dangerous escape routes are a central explanation for the gender imbalance,” he says.
The BAMF writes that the age or gender of most asylum applicants is influenced by their countries of origin. The composition changes from year to year. Since around 2020, the arrival of refugees from Afghanistan and Syria in Germany has been increasing again, as BAMF figures show. If more people came from countries that require a long and dangerous escape route, more men would often come, explains Engler.
According to the researcher, the situation in Afghanistan after the Taliban came to power could be an explanatory factor for the data. In addition, tougher border policies in Turkey and Greece made escape more dangerous and expensive, which could also lead to more men on the routes.