The Guardian has teamed up with other European newspapers Der Spiegel , Le Monde and El País to follow the fortunes of refugees in their new homes

Like the people it covers, the migration story itself is on the move. In 2014 and 2015 it was all about the odyssey, the journey made by hundreds of thousands, haphazardly, perilously, up into Europe. In 2016, it was about Europe’s hesitant response, the political backlash.

In 2017, the focus is turning to the people who are suddenly in our midst. How are they adapting to their new lives? What do they miss? What’s it like to swap Homs for Hamburg, Kabul for Croydon – or Mosul for the Mosel, for that matter? Which European countries are best at helping refugees settle? And what do they make of the rising tide of resentment that they encounter in this populist age?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Members of the Syrian Abu Rashed family in Lüneburg, Germany. Photograph: Maria Feck/Maria Feck / Der Spiegel

It is these questions that we take on as the Guardian teams up with Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El País to get inside newly arrived communities in four of Europe’s biggest countries and assess whether promises are being kept, whether European society is changing the new arrivals – and vice versa.

Over the coming 18 months, we plan to follow four groups of people, one in each country. In Britain, the Guardian will be charting the fortunes of a nine-year-old Afghan boy, who fled the Taliban with his parents and six siblings, but became separated from all but his father on the way. The two now eke out an uncertain existence in Derby, knowing nothing of their missing relatives, their adopted country and their future here.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Said Ghullam Norzai and his son Wali Khan Norzai, asylum seekers from Afghanistan now living in Derby. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

In Germany, Der Spiegel will follow a large Syrian family who left Damascus in dribs and drabs and have now regrouped in a flat in Lüneburg in the Saxon north. It is hard to think of two places more different. Some are coping well, planning further education and careers even, but the older generation is finding it harder to adapt.



France’s Le Monde is tracking a Sudanese family who are to be resettled in the vacant French interior, highlighting a hitherto unnoticed trend: that European countries are tending to direct new refugees to far-flung places, not big population centres.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The village of Bugeat in Corrèze, France, where a Sudanese family are to be resettled. Photograph: Sandra Mehl for Le Monde

In Spain the journalists of El País will be highlighting the ups and downs of a group of Africans who have found each other through a local football team in the southern city of Jerez de la Frontera. Alma de Africa is their new family, a focal point during a bewildering time.

We will work closely with our partner newspapers, translating updates about their families, collaborating on news developments and reporting regularly on how Europe looks through immigrant eyes. We will produce a series of films about our subjects in an attempt to find out what is the best way to handle refugees, what these uprooted people value in their new homes, and whether their new neighbourhoods welcome or reject them.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Alma de Africa football team formed of migrants in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. Photograph: Juan Carlos Toro/El Pais

Refugees are almost as old as humanity itself. The story of displaced people is the story of our history. It doesn’t end, but repeats, for better and worse. Over the next 18 months we will get under the skin of this story, try to understand it better, for the sake of this generation, and those to come.