Jawad is 17. He arrived in Germany nine months ago after fleeing Afghanistan with his mother and 15-year-old sister. Today he lives with them in a single room in a renovated mental hospital that now shelters 500 refugees on the western outskirts of Berlin.

On a fall night not long ago, Jawad sat on his bed, transfixed by a TV news broadcast. Despite his fast-improving German, he could barely keep up. But the images, of people waiting in long lines outside emergency shelters and of politicians railing against the influx of refugees, spoke for themselves. “These days, lots of people are coming. Does it mean it will continue like that?” he asked. “Will they keep us or send us back to where we came from? We still hope that they give us the opportunity to continue our life like this. To stay here forever.”

Jawad is far from alone in wondering what will happen to the tens of millions of people, many of them minors like him, who are fleeing their homes. (His name, along with those of other young people in this story, has been withheld because of concerns about negative repercussions on their asylum applications). According to the U.N., the number of refugees globally is the highest it’s been in 20 years. More are arriving in Germany than in any other European nation. As of November 2015, an estimated 30 percent of those applying for asylum this year were under 18, according to Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. Another 25 percent were in their late teens or early 20s, many of them making the journey alone. In a speech to her party’s annual congress last week, Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her policy of opening Germany’s borders to refugees and insisted that the country can absorb the influx. “This is a historic test for Europe, and I want — hopefully, I can say that we all want — that Europe passes this test,” she said.