After the Flight: The Dynamics of Refugee Settlement and Integration

Editor(s): Morgan Poteet, Shiva Nourpanah

ISBN-13: 978-1-4438-9074-8
ISBN-10: 1-4438-9074-X

Knowledge of the integration process for refugees is often subsumed under the broader category of “immigrants”. This book focuses on this process for refugees, including the structural and systemic challenges they face as they integrate in their new host societies, and how they respond to such challenges. The book provides a critical analysis of Canada’s approach to integrating refugees with additional chapters focused on refugee integration in Australia, Northern Ireland, and the United States. This collection of work critically addresses a range of topics and employs a variety of qualitative approaches to gain a better understanding of the lived experience of integration for refugees, including the ways in which refugees view integration and the attendant challenges and opportunities encountered during the integration process. Departing from viewing refugees as a “burden” that must be shared by the international community, the contributors to this collection explore the complex dynamics of race, class, gender, ethnicity, age, generation and legal status for refugees in a selection of local contexts of reception. The work begins a dialogue about the long-term dynamics of refugee settlement and integration with implications for the viability of future resettlement programs and practices. [read more…]

Biography

Morgan Poteet has conducted research on belonging for Central American youth in Toronto and international students in the Atlantic region of Canada, youth-police relations in New Brunswick, and refugee integration in Scotland and Atlantic Canada. Poteet teaches courses on Immigration and Settlement in the Department of Sociology at Mt. Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada. He is Past President of the Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (CARFMS), and currently Director at Large on the CARFMS Executive.

Shiva Nourpanah is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, where she previously completed an MA in International Development Studies, on the resettlement of Afghan refugees in Halifax. Her current research focuses on temporary foreign workers employed in healthcare in Nova Scotia. She has worked in Iran as a staff-member of the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Halifax Refugee Clinic (HRC) in Atlantic Canada.