*1.1. Settlement and Social Inclusion of Migrant Youths in Spain*

In recent years, data show that the official number of unaccompanied minors reaching Spain in small boats rose from 588 in 2016 to 7026 in 2018 [1]. This trend is not only present in Spain but also in other countries around the world. Since 2010, the number of unaccompanied minors has increased fivefold in more than eighty countries [2]. In the case of the Barcelona metropolitan area, the Catalan ombudsman reported the deficits in the current system for ensuring the settlement of unaccompanied immigrant minors and to positively favour a smooth transition to adulthood once they have turned 18 [3]. One of the main challenges young immigrants face is getting their legal residence permits processed by the relevant administration in time in order to not become undocumented, bearing in mind that turning 18 involves being left outside of the protective system that they benefitted from as minors (which includes a temporary residence permit, staying in a residential centre, and the socio-legal support of social workers and youth workers) [4]. This situation has severe consequences for their mental health and settlement process as they become invisible, homeless, and excluded from participating in the formal economy [5,6]. For those who have their permits when they are 18, the government applies a strong selection process enrolment in the transition to adulthood programme, where housing and the assistance of youth workers (mentioned by the young people of this study) is provided until they turn

**Citation:** Alarcón, X.; Bobowik, M.; Prieto-Flores, Ò. Mentoring for Improving the Self-Esteem, Resilience, and Hope of Unaccompanied Migrant Youth in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. *Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health* **2021**, *18*, 5210. https:// doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18105210

Academic Editors: Lillian Mwanri, Hailay Gesesew, Nelsensius Klau Fauk and William Mude

Received: 16 April 2021 Accepted: 10 May 2021 Published: 14 May 2021

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

21. For those who arrive as minors, the protection system helps them to reach adulthood with a residence permit that can be renewed if they have a report that positively values their integration, continue studying, or have joined the labour market [7]. Therefore, an issue in the renewal or in the processing of their documentation while they are minors, as well as the fact of them being declared of legal age by the appropriate Spanish authority upon arrival (based on forensic age estimation), makes them completely excluded from the resources that are available to the group.

Youth workers are present in the lives of young people from the moment they access the transition to adulthood programme (and the government-run flats provided) until they leave. The role of these professionals is to foster the youths' autonomy by helping them to achieve their personal, educational, and socio-labour insertion goals. Specifically, they are asked to carry out a work plan with the young person, so that they can accomplish the goals set, and to carry out tutoring sessions in which the young person is monitored [8]. Their role is also to ensure peaceful co-existence in flats where several young people live, and also with the neighbours. However, there seems to be no explicit mention of attending to the emotional distress that their previous experiences and life in this new context might cause during settlement, a lack of intervention with these young people that has already been highlighted in the Spanish context [9].

Settlement was traditionally understood as the final stage of a migration journey, regarded as a stable social and political environment to which migrants need to adapt [10]. However, it has been emphasised that the settlement process is actually in constant flux, becoming unpredictable for migrants and capable of affecting different areas of their lives in different ways (e.g., providing stability in terms of housing and instability in their legal status) [11]. As previous research has clearly shown, the settlement of migrants is conditioned by the inclusion policies and strategies of the host country, the causes of migration, the individual characteristics of the migrant (language skills, education, employment, among others), and also the presence or absence of social support networks [12]. In this study, we have focused on seeing how this latter element can influence the settlement of young migrants, understanding that the experiences of social inclusion lived during this process, such as feeling included in a broader social environment, positively reinforce the sense of feeling socially valued, as well as of belonging and being able to participate in and contribute to the society in which they are settling [13]. This social inclusion, therefore, will also be conditioned by the ability of the young people to build bridges that connect them with the host community, which will make it easier for them feel at home in this new country [14]. Assuming that mentoring can help in the social inclusion of unaccompanied young migrants, we focus throughout this study on assessing the capacity of this intervention methodology to produce short-term effects on the psychological well-being of the youths and on how having mentors can condition their educational aspirations and expectations.

Multiple studies have indicated that the risk of suffering from mental health problems may sharpen or decrease in the new context depending on the existing public health and social policies [13,15]. In this regard, and following the principle of "in the best interest of the child", scholars have highlighted the need to promote political measures that ensure the favourable reception and protection of unaccompanied minors and facilitate a safe transition to adulthood taking into consideration the youth's needs [16,17]. The present study aims to demonstrate how mentoring programmes can condition unaccompanied youths' well-being; future expectations; and, generally, their transition to adulthood in the receiving society.

#### *1.2. Psychological Wellbeing and Educational Futures*

In this study we focus on self-esteem, resilience, hope, and psychological distress in order to evaluate the psychological well-being of unaccompanied youths, since they are elements that can have a positive or negative impact on their mental health. Research has highlighted that a high level of well-being is a valuable resource for negotiating the settlement challenges ahead [13]. In fact, it has been recommended to nurture mentoring relationships through a programme with potential mentors to improve the adaptability of children and young people in the face of adversity [18].

Rosenberg [19] reported that self-esteem is the positive or negative reflection people have of themselves. Therefore, it involves the self-perception that people have about their failures and successes, as well as the emotional management of the negative feelings that arise. The self-esteem of young migrants has been studied because it has been shown that it correlates positively with mental health, since it buffers the negative effects of stress on depression [20,21]. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that social support and strong self-esteem are elements that can reduce the perception of discrimination [22]. In the case of young migrants, it has also been shown that the perceived support of peers from the same age or of responsible adults (such as a teacher or mentor, in the case of our study) has a positive effect on self-esteem [23]. Additionally, it has been suggested that greater participation in a community promotes the development of self-esteem [24]. For these reasons, we consider that the participation of young migrants in a community project with responsible adults who provide them with social support will increase their self-esteem, which will have a positive effect on their settlement and social inclusion.

Resilience is defined as the capacity to access resources that nurture individual, relational, and community assets, as well as the ability to interact with others to improve this capacity through meaningful resources [25]. Therefore, these resources (provided by friends, family, or mentors) make it possible to avoid potential threats in complex situations during development. Research has highlighted the need for actions that encourage young people to be more resilient when facing stressful events that they have to deal with at this stage of their lives (i.e., the transition to adulthood) and help them to establish positive relationships with responsible adults or prosocial organisations in the new environment [26–28]. Masten's resilience model [29] suggests that in order to foster resilience among migrant youths in their new context, they need to be exposed to significant risks and adapt successfully despite stressful life experiences. In this regard, some of the actions that can facilitate resilience are those that foster the quality of parent–child and mentor or teacher–child relationships in order to promote access to resources and social and human capital. However, unaccompanied migrant youths lack most of these supporting relationships once in Europe, and tend to live greater stressful experiences than other migrant youths [30] because of the lower levels of individual resources and family and social support they have. Studies that have focused on resilience have highlighted the importance of the environment in protecting against individual vulnerabilities and environmental adversity, highlighting that fostering resilience facilitates better development and psychological well-being [31]. In addition, resilience in young people has been related to better or worse adaptability to adversity [32]. Assuming that mentoring can promote the acquisition of resources to face adversity, we have considered this variable in the study, bearing in mind that greater resilience would promote better settlement and social inclusion.

Snyder et al. [33] defined hope as a cognitive set that involves the self-perceived capabilities for constructing viable paths to goals and beliefs about beginning and maintaining the route to these goals. It has been conceptualised as a positive emotional state derived from the interaction between agency aimed at achieving goals and the planning of pathways to attain them [34]. Hopeful people are seen as possessing positive thinking that reflects an optimistic and realistic perception [35], together with the belief that they can develop paths towards the desired goals [36]. Studies that have focused on hope have highlighted that it is positively correlated with life satisfaction, serving as a buffer against stressful and negative events [37]. Hopeful people perceive obstacles as a challenge to overcome and tend to show better athletic, academic, occupational, and health outcomes [36]. Additionally, high levels of hope in unaccompanied young migrants are seen to favour greater civic engagement, which is an indicator of successful social inclusion, as well as strengthening school performance and having a feeling of greater stability in their lives [38]. This favours a swift inclusion in the new community, which entails less suffering for the

young person. It is due to these elements and their capacity to protect against stressful life events that multiple youth intervention projects take into account the increase in youth hope as one of the components of their action [39]. In the same vein, we consider that if mentors are able to foster hope in young people, this will translate into a more favourable process of settlement and social inclusion.

Psychological distress is a common mental health problem defined as a state of emotional suffering typically characterised by symptoms of depression and anxiety [40]. Studies that have focused on psychological distress in migrants have highlighted that it can be determined by external stressors, such as traumatic life events or the resettlement process itself [41]. It has been shown that the availability of care and the quality of support in the resettlement country can reduce the psychological distress caused by adversity [42]. However, in the case of unaccompanied youths, post-traumatic stress symptoms have been identified as being associated with reaching the age of 18, due to the revision of their legal status, which makes them more aware of the uncertainty about their right to remain in the country they are resettling in [43]. The type of residence has also been highlighted as affecting the mental health of young migrants, who report more psychological distress when they move to more independent living arrangements [44]. Taking these elements into account, we explore whether participation in the mentoring project can affect the psychological distress of these unaccompanied youths who are also in a moment of transition towards a more independent life.

Another element that is of interest for the analysis of the social inclusion of migrant youths is how they can be enrolled in education and develop educational trajectories as a process of their settlement. Previous studies approaching the incorporation of the children of immigrants in Spain and in the United States have emphasised that educational aspirations and expectations are a key determinant for future achievements in the new context [45,46]. While the educational ambitions of migrant children have been widely studied in many contexts, more research is needed for understanding the views of unaccompanied minors and youths. In this regard, we understand futures in education as "how young people see themselves in regard to the future and why futures are so valuable for them" [47]. Thus, how educational aspirations and expectations change over time and the view and vision of the young people is relevant for fostering paths for inclusion. Bearing in mind that mentoring can affect the academic achievements of young people at risk [48], we have studied whether this mentoring relationship can have any impact on the educational future of unaccompanied youths.
