This paper explores processes of change and development within asylum seeker and refugee-led
associations in Glasgow. I argue that adopting a life-cycle approach to association emergence and
continuity (Werbner 1991a: 15) provides a more rounded and sophisticated understanding of not only
the factors giving rise to such groups, but also of processes of change within groups. By
problematising the ‘refugee community organisation’ label, I suggest that the focus on ‘refugeeness’
fails to attend to internal diversity, specifically relating to changing and differentiated immigration
status within such associations. Exploring an externally constructed fictive unity using Werbner’s
framework provides one way to challenge these effects. Rather than see this framework as made up
of linear stages, I argue that groups move through and between stages of associative empowerment,
ideological convergence and mobilisation simultaneously and that features differentiating stages may
be co-present. This paper is relevant for policy-makers, practitioners and third sector organisations
and can aid thinking about how to move beyond labels in approaching broader questions, practices
and experiences of ‘settlement’, integration, belonging and social cohesion
