The BBZ is a counseling and support center for young refugees and migrants and their families. The BBZ advises on everyday and social issues with a special focus and inclusion of asylum and residence-specific matters. Our advice ranges from advice on asylum procedures, educational and career advice, to advice and support for child and youth welfare-related topics.
The work at the BBZ is based on certain principles within a wide range of projects and employees with a wide variety of academic, geographical and biographical backgrounds. Since many employees bring their own experience with flight/migration, which can serve as an opportunity for identification, we see ourselves as a migrant self-organization.

Based on the principles of participatory youth work with a focus on asylum and residence law, advice and solidarity support for refugees and migrants is intended to promote equal access to social resources such as education, work, political and personal self-empowerment and participation. The needs of refugees should also be covered as extensively as possible in the conscious combination of social and psychotherapeutic work. The employees of the counseling center see social work in this context as a human rights profession.
Through political advocacy work through the participation and organization of committees, working groups, etc., we actively and externally campaign for human rights.
The practiced interdisciplinary social, psychological counseling and educational work has a socio-political approach. Our aim is to practice psycho-social counseling and care within our work, which tries to meet the refugees on an equal footing and takes into account the structural and social power relations. Racism is understood as a structural and societal problem that not only exists on the “right fringe” but also in the middle of society. This is expressed through the normalization and justification of massive interventions and violations of human rights and human dignity for refugees, in the form of deportations, social distinctions based on residence status, restricted access to education and work, residence requirements and much more.
This state of social discrimination against refugees and people affected by racism should not be taken for granted, which is why there is a need to combine social work with anti-racist and anti-fascist practice. For us as a counseling center, this means thinking ahead about the possibilities and not accepting social or legal exclusion and granting every person, regardless of their legal status, the right to support, solidarity and help.
A professional proximity to the addressees of our work is important. We see ourselves as partisan and stand in solidarity behind, alongside and in front of our clients. Despite the structural discrimination that young people/refugees are affected by, we do not see them with a victim-deficit view, but rather as active, mature, with a lot of resilience and strength. Therefore we understand the support of self-organization as part of our work.