Abstract:

Socio-political and health alterations throughout the world combined with massive technological progress, have led in recent years to a rapid digitalization of services and processes. At the same time, Greece is considered an entry point to the European continent and traditionally receives large streams of refugee flows from third countries that seek asylum. The services related to the legal status of this population fall under the category of services that have been digitalized, without, however, considering the specific characteristics and needs of the people to whom they are addressed.

In this context, a search was carried out in the Greek and foreign language bibliography on refugee status and the digitalization of services provided. The study revealed that individual initiatives can be identified that are mainly connected to the preparation of integration plans, the assessment of professional training needs and the provision of information on access to integration services and administrative procedures, which in some cases were temporary while in others a multilingual character was lacking. Digital access remains difficult due to language barriers and lack of internet connection, technological resources, e-ID, digital skills. To guide and develop digital skills for the effective and autonomous access of the target group to the digitalized asylum services, a digital learning tool has been developed. It is structured as a network of interconnected nodes, where each node corresponds to a specific application of the digital platform and comprises a multimodal information module or a learning object. As for its cognitive structure, it includes organized sets of information related to the type of applications of the asylum services, the data necessary to complete each application and the process of submitting them from the first to the last stage. The information sets are presented in a way that follows the hypermedia nature of the tool, while the available application procedures are presented to the learners mainly through two types of learning objects: guided teaching software (tutorial) and simulation. The tool has been published in Greek. The English version is about to be launched soon, while the French one is in progress. The availability of the digital tool in these languages as well as in the ones that are chosen based on the profile of the refugee population (Arabic, Farsi, Urdu), will lead to an extended use.

The tool has been evaluated as a targeted and effective intervention by the Hellenic Red Cross, which on the one hand has integrated it into its services for the support and social inclusion of the refugee population, and on the other it enhances its further development. This initiative is aligned to the overall strategy of the Red Cross Movement regarding the creation of new technologies to facilitate the social inclusion of the refugee population. The tool is also in agreement with the National Strategy of the Ministry of Migration and Asylum for the integration of refugees, which emphasizes the utilization of Information and Communication Technologies and the development of digital skills for the integration process of refugees by ensuring their access to public services and comprehensive and accurate information on their rights and obligations.

Keywords:

Information and Communication Technologies, Digital skills, Social inclusion, refugees.