The Importance of Informal Interactions in the UK Syrian Refugee Resettlement

Syrian refugees in the UK have differing experiences of the Syrian Vulnerable Person’s Resettlement Scheme (SVPRS), depending on the locality of placement. As one participant to research on community integration put it, ‘Other Syrian people feel more comfortable, more confident, they’re living a different life.’ Contrasting his experience with that in other localities points to the importance of informal interactions, or social infrastructures in the scheme’s governance and refugees’ lives.

The UK’s Syrian Vulnerable Person’s Resettlement Scheme (SPVRS) exemplifies an increasingly restrictionist top-down trend observed in Western Europe’s refugee regime and an enduring liberal British bottom-up approach to migrant incorporation. In combination, refugees’ experience of and hope for ‘community integration’ were down to luck of a locality draw; whether the locality in which they had been placed without choice, had ‘informal social infrastructures.’ Such were the findings from a qualitative ‘community integration needs assessment’ carried out in 2018 for an English administrative region or ‘County’ participating in the scheme (Blunt, 2018). This research points less to the need for more top-down or formal elements, but the importance of bottom-up informal ones to reverse the trend and provide positive experiences of resettlement.

Top-Down and Bottom-Up Governance

‘Settlement’ has been associated with top-down social engineering (Castles et al., 2002) and the UK’s SVPRS would appear to support that for its measured acceptance of 20,000 refugees over a 5-year period.  Localities volunteer to resettle small groups of refugees and the availability of low-cost housing is a significant factor despite national guidance regarding the importance of existing relevant support services (Hough, 2018).   Refugees have no choice as to their resettlement locality and where the SVPRS funds ‘Local Providers’ (usually voluntary sector organizations) to provide casework support,  tapered over 5 years, to retain this support, refugees must remain in the locality. The County’s scheme coordinator told me, ‘it’s probably the most segregationist project that the Government has ever made because there is no choice for the refugee.’ At the same time, the scheme’s approach to social or ‘community integration’ was described as ‘bottom-up’, ‘community-led’ as opposed to a centralized corporate model, reflecting a historic British liberal-utilitarian conception of individual-state relations for social order (Favell, 1998).

Differing Realities of Resettlement

The research found that refugees’ experience of the SVPRS depended primarily on the locality in which they had been placed. In 2018, over 300 refugees (of whom 138 were adults) had been resettled in this English administrative region and focus groups included 52 men and 42 women across the 7 localities in which they had been placed with their families. Evaluations of up to 2 years of experience of resettlement ranged from positive to extremely negative: ‘like zero. Is there anything less than zero?’, ‘We could stay here for 100 years and they [the locality] would still not want us …’ It depended largely on the locality, as one man remarked, ‘Other Syrian people feel more comfortable, more confident, they’re living a different life.’ In some localities, refugees found themselves with welcoming places to go, visitors and things to do.  In others, domestic existence was dominant, leading to a participant’s exasperation: ‘Integration is about more than having a house!’

Informal Social Infrastructures

A banal observation of the socio-geographical uniqueness of each locality could be offset by noticing similarities and/or differences in terms of social, cultural, political, economic features and capacities. These I came to call ‘informal social infrastructures’ and accordingly, the seven localities could be distinguished as three high-resourced localities and four low-resourced localities.

These high-resourced localities included: a settled minority ethnic and religious population (e.g. 20%); active voluntary and faith sector organizations (VFSO); a resident population available and inclined to voluntary community activity; private and public institutions (libraries, education, sports clubs) taking on community-building and a leading role in tackling marginalization; a local authority vocal in support of refugees and expressing pride in SVPRS participation; and SVPRS casework outsourced to a VFSO with extensive experience in and familiarity with global and migration issues.

The low-resourced localities included: few active VFSOs and none with a specific migrant/refugee focused remit; a low presence of ethnic and religious minorities (less than 2%); local authority disinclined to attract attention to their participation in the SVPRS; casework taken on by personnel/ VFSO with no experience of working with refugees, ethnic or religious minorities. 

Reflective Conclusions

The SVPRS was formally dependent upon informal bottom-up capacity. For refugees in high-resource localities, this meant a quality of sociality productive of a sense of existence as well as a viable and possible life. Their absence in low-resource localities led to observations of being uncared for or that despite legal security, ‘life’ was absent.

The findings of this study are lent additional poignancy considering top-down COVID-19 restrictions on informal interactions for all. As Boccagni (2020) remarked, ‘Stay home’ has perhaps meant little day-to-day change for some migrants for whom ‘forced domesticity’ has been the norm. With the ‘democratized’ experience of this social deprivation over the last year, perhaps policymakers and individuals will become astute to the importance of informal social interactions. Whilst they cannot be prescribed, top-down, they can be revalued and proactively supported.

Caroline Blunt is an independent researcher and Affiliate Member of the Migration, Diaspora and Exile (MIDEX) research Centre at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). The research from which this blog and article stem was carried out whilst Caroline was a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), commissioned and funded by an English County Council.

References:

– Blunt, C. (2018b). Community Integration Assessment. Story of, Window on, Tool Kit for Community Integration. October 2018. University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). Executive Summary.

– Blunt, C. (2021). ‘Are we an experiment?’ Informality as indispensable for Syrians’ resettlement in the UK, Migration Letters 18 (2), 215-228.

– Boccagni, P. (2020). #StayHome, forced domesticity, the kids playing in my condominium garden, and some unsettling parallels between insider and outsiders. 

– Castles, S., Korac, M., Vasta, E. and Vertovec, S. (2001). Integration: Mapping the Field. Centre for Migration and Policy Research and Refugee Studies Centre for the Home Office.

– Favell, A. (1998). Philosophies of integration: immigration and the idea of citizenship in France and Britain. Second Edition. Basingstoke: Macmillan in association with Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick.

– Hough, C. (2018) The UK Government’s Approach to Evaluating the Vulnerable Person’s and Vulnerable Children’s Resettlement Schemes. Home Office Research Report 106.