Refugee Resettlement and Integration in Germany: Analysis of Media Discourse

Refugees are among the most discussed and debated topics worldwide; the massive movement of refugees and asylum seekers facing the world today is the largest since the end of the second world war. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates the total number of refugees in the world to be almost twenty-six million people, while asylum seekers account for around three million. The concept of a refugee is formally defined by the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, which creates a legal status, and states that a refugee is a person who “faces well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. The issues surrounding refugees are vast and complex, with wide-reaching and long lasting effects. As the world continues to face massive human displacement as a result of fragile states, civil wars, and countless other factors, refugees and related issues will continue to be of vital importance. One key element to the issue of refugees is the question of resettlement and even further the issue of integration

Political and Media Discourses about Integrating Refugees in the UK

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This article addresses political and media discourses about integrating refugees in the UK in the context of the “refugee crisis”. A discursive psychological approach is presented as the best way to understand what talk about the concept is used to accomplish in these debates. A large corpus of political discussions (13 hours of debate featuring 146 politicians) and 960 newspaper articles from the UK were discourse analysed. The analysis identified five dilemmas about integration: Integration is positive and necessary, but challenging; Host communities are presented as welcoming, but there are limits to their capacity; Refugees are responsible for integration, but host communities need to provide support; Good refugees integrate, bad ones don't; Refugees are vulnerable and are skilled. All are used to warrant the inclusion or exclusion of refugees. The responsibility of western nations to support refugees is therefore contingent on the refugees behaving in specific ways

Ethnic enclaves and immigrant labour market outcomes: quasi-experimental evidence

This study investigates empirically how residence in ethnic enclaves affects labour market outcomes of refugees. Self-selection into ethnic enclaves in terms of unobservable characteristics is taken into account by exploitation of a Danish spatial dispersal policy which randomly disperses new refugees across locations conditional on six individual-specific characteristics. The results show that refugees with unfavourable unobserved characteristics are found to self-select into ethnic enclaves. Furthermore, taking account of negative self-selection, a relative standard deviation increase in ethnic group size on average increases the employment probability of refugees by 4 percentage points and earnings by 21 percent. I argue that in case of heterogenous treatment effects, the estimated effects are local average treatment effects

Measuring the health impact of human rights violations related to Australian asylum policies and practices: A mixed methods study

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund - Copyright @ 2009 Johnston et al.BACKGROUND: Human rights violations have adverse consequences for health. However, to date, there remains little empirical evidence documenting this association, beyond the obvious physical and psychological effects of torture. The primary aim of this study was to investigate whether Australian asylum policies and practices, which arguably violate human rights, are associated with adverse health outcomes. METHODS: We designed a mixed methods study to address the study aim. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 71 Iraqi Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) refugees and 60 Iraqi Permanent Humanitarian Visa (PHV) refugees, residing in Melbourne, Australia. Prior to a recent policy amendment, TPV refugees were only given temporary residency status and had restricted access to a range of government funded benefits and services that permanent refugees are automatically entitled to. The quantitative results were triangulated with semi-structured interviews with TPV refugees and service providers. The main outcome measures were self-reported physical and psychological health. Standardised self-report instruments, validated in an Arabic population, were used to measure health and wellbeing outcomes. RESULTS: Forty-six percent of TPV refugees compared with 25% of PHV refugees reported symptoms consistent with a diagnosis of clinical depression (p = 0.003). After controlling for the effects of age, gender and marital status, TPV status made a statistically significant contribution to psychological distress (B = 0.5, 95% CI 0.3 to 0.71, p </= 0.001) amongst Iraqi refugees. Qualitative data revealed that TPV refugees generally felt socially isolated and lacking in control over their life circumstances, because of their experiences in detention and on a temporary visa. This sense of powerlessness and, for some, an implicit awareness they were being denied basic human rights, culminated in a strong sense of injustice. CONCLUSION: Government asylum policies and practices violating human rights norms are associated with demonstrable psychological health impacts. This link between policy, rights violations and health outcomes offers a framework for addressing the impact of socio-political structures on health.This research was supported by an Australian National and Medical Research Council PhD Scholarship (N. 251782) and a Victorian Health Promotion Foundation research grant (No. 2002-0280)

The Role of Language in the Media in Influencing Public Perceptions of Refugees

The refugee crisis has become a worldwide epidemic in recent years. As refugee entrance into host countries is debated, media outlets are covering the issue regularly. These media outlets use various types of language when portraying refugees. Many publications have been found to convey hostile and divisive themes as well as use specific linguistic tools, which contribute to negative portrayals of refugees. Media outlets have the potential to influence public perceptions of refugees because the general public in a host country receives its information primarily from the media. Overt and subtle language used to describe refugees has been previously found to influence public opinions. This study of 101 students at a conservative Christian university in the mid-Atlantic United States was designed to examine whether manipulated language in news articles impacted perceptions of refugees. Participants were randomly assigned to the positive or negative language condition and then asked to complete a survey assessing four facets of perception. None of the results were significant, indicating the language in the article did not impact perceptions of refugees. This study was limited by lack of diversity in the sample, the use of self-report data, potential personal confounds, and a small sample size. The results implied a need for balance when calling for media ethics and a need for many more empirical studies in this area

Hannah Ingraham: Loyalist Refugee

Every war produces refugees. Some flee a few hundred metres out of the path of an advancing army, others cross oceans and continents in search of safety. From the Huron survivors of Iroquois attacks in the seventeenth century to African and Asian victims of war in the twenty-first, generation after generation of refugees have built new lives in Canada. During the American Revolution (1775-1783) many Americans, known as Loyalists, supported the British government. When the war ended in an American victory, about 40,000 Loyalists became refugees and made their way to Canada. One of these refugees was Hannah Ingraham

The Reality of the Refugee Crisis in Italy: A Look into the Lives of Illegitimate Refugees and the Unofficial Organizations That Support Them

The words written on the United States of America’s famous Statue of Liberty, written by poet Emma Lazarus over a century ago: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. . . . America and Europe alike have forgotten the sacred words that gave hope to so many 100 years ago. Many use phrases like “floods of people” or “swarms” to describe those who leave their countries for a life in the Western world. Which of the refugees welcomed into the most powerful country in the world were considered “real” refugees? Were they refugees or just “migrants”? It did not matter, as there was no need for a distinction under the policies of unlimited immigration. A refugee was once described as “someone who has been compelled to abandon his home” (Zolberg et al. 1989). This could have included victims of natural disasters, war, and political or religious persecution. Today, there is a narrower definition of what it means to be a refugee. As defined United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), a refugee is a “person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country” (“Figures at a Glance”, 2017). This definition, the universally accepted definition of a refugee, is not satisfactory. It does not include victims of natural disaster, famine, or other events in which an individual cannot be held responsible for. For instance, on the UNHCR website there are 65.6 million displaced peoples who have been forced from their homes, while only 22.5 million are refugees known by the UNHCR, with only 189,300 resettled in 2016. What is difference between the 22.5 million and the other 43.1 million? The answer is simply a difference in labelling. 22.5 million are considered real, while the other 43.1 million are left behind. Those who have obtained official refugee status receive privileges that those without it do not have access to, such as quick admission to other countries, legal protections, and even extra financial or tangible benefits from the public sector. The UN’s definition of refugees is narrow, and many are denied official refugee status because they do not fall under it. This definition needs to be changed, and this paper will discuss both refugees recognized under UNHCR’s definition and international law, the “legal refugees” compared to those who do not fit the definition, the “false” refugees. Under the UNHCR definition, 55% of the world’s refugees come from South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Syria (2017). These are the highest levels of displaced peoples on record, and much higher off the record. This research is an honest look into the European Refugee Crisis, examining how illegitimate refugees are disproportionately advantaged compared to those we deem officially recognized refugees, and how policies, public sentiment, and the very definition of refugee must be changed to more positively affect refugees. The following questions will be discussed: How is Italy, and the entirety of the European Union, handling the greatest refugee crisis of our time? How can Italy prevail against these overwhelming odds? Why are only some refugees “legal” and much more considered “false”? Does the definition of a refugee need to be changed? How does the EU need to adapt to this crisis, and how can they assist Italy and other southern states further? This research will focus on refugees’ journeys both to the country of Italy and attempts to go throughout Europe. There is a marked difference between these two processes, and the research will briefly look at the “clean” resettlement process through the UNHCR, and then look at the reality of the refugee crisis for countries geographically closer to the source, specifically Italy and the rest of Europe. Then economic benefits of refugees will be presented, as well as the crisis in Italy of the “migration business”. A large portion of this research project will be grounded in primary research, with secondary sources to supplement my first-hand experiences. Europe has left the Mediterranean states behind, abandoning them with heavy refugee flows and incredibly limited methods of assisting refugees. The southern states have the bulk of the burden, and the rest of the European Union must assist these countries or they will crumble

Syrian refugees in Palestinian refugee camps and informal settlements in Beirut, Lebanon

Informal spaces often develop on the periphery of cities as a result of the arrival of rural migrants, national and international workers, refugees and others. In Lebanon during the 1950s, Palestinian refugees arrived and settledin tent camps, which were originally created in 1948 for temporary use. 69 years later, they are still considered refugees and still in these “temporary camps”, which have transformed into informal concrete slums. The number of Palestinians exceeds 500,000 in a Lebanese population of less than 4.5 million. The Syrian conflict has added a further one million Syrian refugees who, for security, as well as political and economic reasons, found themselves searching for shelter; they had no choice but to go to the existing overcrowded Palestinian camps or other dense poor neighborhoods, mostly in Beirut City, the capital city of Lebanon. This paper analyzes the transitional settlement of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, examining two distinct elements in the Beiruti urban fabric: the Burj El-Barajne Palestinian refugee camp and Nabaa Neighborhood, one of the informal urban areas. The cross comparison highlights the typology of housing, the use of space, the health situation and the challenges faced by new arrivals. It also evaluates the population transformation, the integration of refugees in the wider social structure of the host community and their incorporation in the labor market and local economy. Based on existing studies and first-hand materials gathered through interviewing residents while visiting both case-studies, this paper highlights current living conditions and provides recommendations for healthier and more sustainable urban environments. We also consider urban integration strategies to ensure refugee social and economic participation. The paper contributes towards improving outcomes for refugees and providing practical knowledge for humanitarian organizations, in Beirut or in similar urban refugee contexts

Duelling identities in refugees learning through open,online higher education

This paper reports on a qualitative study of the transition experiences of refugees studying through open and online higher education. Online, open education programmes have considerable potential to provide flexible access to education for refugees, who are not well represented within higher education. As part of a wider University of Sanctuary initiative, interview data from six Ireland-based refugees was analysed using a data-led, qualitative methodological framework grounded in discursive psychology. Findings indicate that participants’ transition narratives are typical in many ways as they form student identities while managing their existing identities and begin to feel, or not, that they belong. Participants constructed a stark divide between two duelling identities, between their identity as a refugee and their new identity as an online learner. Identification with the university was emphasised in contrast to disidentification with the ‘asylum world’. These findings indicate that a strategically connected approach to supporting refugees transition into higher education can impact positively on these students