The area of policy which the project addresses is the social integration of Syrian refugees in UK society. It is a crucial topic for investigation: strong social integration reduces the social distance between groups, enables everyone to enjoy equal opportunities and promotes consistent values and practices.
Community Sponsorship Groups have welcomed many Syrian refugees since 2016 and have helped them to settle into society. They support refugees’ English language needs, find accommodation and build refugees’ skills to adapt to life in the UK. Nonetheless, many challenges to Syrian refugees’ social integration remain. A lack of access to English language support makes integration challenging. Living in a different country means adapting to cultural differences. Syrian refugees may lack high-quality social connections. Given their gender, women refugees often experience resettlement differently to male refugees.
Since March 2022, a team of researchers at Westminster (Lilian Miles, Maria Granados, Christina Flora) and Middlesex Universities (Tim Freeman) have been researching the experience of community sponsorship groups in London in supporting Syrian refugees. Our research question was: In what ways can resettlement planning for Syrian refugees in London be improved?
Our research resulted in a set of practices considered crucial to take into account when seeking to improve resettlement planning for Syrian refugees in London. Some of the issues we explored are:
- providing an enabling framework to reduce dependency
- avoiding cultural assumptions, treating families as specific individuals
- working with both men and women in the household
- coordinating CS volunteers within subgroups and
- engaging expertise external to CS groups to mediate between SC and families
For more information about this project please contact:
- Professor Lilian Miles ([email protected])
- Professor Tim Freeman ([email protected])
- Dr Maria Granados ([email protected])
We thank our PhD Research Assistant Christina Flora for her valuable support. ([email protected])
UN Sustainable Development Goals alignment
Goal 5: Gender Equality
Goal 10: Reduced Inequality
Goal 11: Sustainable cities and communities