Situated welcome: Refugees’ inclusion and settlement experiences in Australian neighbourhoods

This post forms part of our series in showcasing abstracts of presentations featured at our annual postgraduate interdisciplinary conference on refugee and forced migration research, hosted in November 2018 at The University of Melbourne.

JOHN VAN KOOY

Australia’s immigration regime is carefully managed to meet the country’s demographic and labour market needs. Refugees occupy a somewhat unique position in this system, having been admitted entry and long-term residence for ostensibly humanitarian reasons. However, refugee policy remains predicated on an expectation that humanitarian entrants—like other migrants—contribute to society through active engagement with the world of work and autonomy from social support. These federal policy settings have influenced public discourse and widely-held expectations for refugees’ contribution to the nation.

However, the lived experiences of refugees are mediated by conditions in local settlement contexts. It is in the neighbourhoods and towns where refugees settle that inclusion or exclusion occurs. The attitudes and actions of stakeholders in receiving communities (such as neighbours, employers, local government, community organisations, and service providers) shape real opportunities for refugees, and can either reproduce or contest broader policy directions and discourse. Indeed, some Australian communities have developed settlement initiatives for refugee arrivals that reflect a more welcoming, socially inclusive disposition to federally-funded, mainstream service offerings. This project will explore how these macro and micro-level dynamics interact to produce settlement outcomes for refugees in Australian neighbourhoods. Using a mixed methods research design, I will examine how neighbourhood characteristics and social exchanges influence refugees’ lived experiences. Overall, I aim to advance plausible explanations for the ways in which place impacts upon settlement outcomes, while reflecting on the significance of refugee status for local inclusion.

John van Kooy is a PhD Candidate in the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre (MMIC) at Monash University. He has spent the last 10 years working as a research and evaluation professional in the international community development and migrant settlement sectors in Australia, Asia and Africa.

Image Credit: Liddy (2016) https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/2016/10/07/supporting-young-people-refugee-and-migrant-backgrounds-national-youth-settlement