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Integration and Resettlement of Refugees and Forced Migrants Integration and Resettlement of Refugees and Forced Migrants Forced and Refugees of Resettlement and Integration • Karen Jacobsen and Charles Simpson Integration and Resettlement of Refugees and Forced Migrants Edited by Karen Jacobsen and Charles Simpson Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Social Sciences www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci Integration and Resettlement of Refugees and Forced Migrants Integration and Resettlement of Refugees and Forced Migrants Special Issue Editors Karen Jacobsen Charles Simpson MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade Special Issue Editors Karen Jacobsen Charles Simpson Tufts University Tufts University USA USA Editorial Office MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760) in 2019 (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci/ special issues/integration and resettlement of refugees). For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. Article Title. Journal Name Year, Article Number, Page Range. ISBN 978-3-03928-130-5 (Pbk) ISBN 978-3-03928-131-2 (PDF) Cover image courtesy of Charles Simpson. c 2020 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. Contents About the Special Issue Editors ..................................... vii Preface to ”Integration and Resettlement of Refugees and Forced Migrants” ........... ix Martina Blank “Wir Schaffen Das!”? Spatial Pitfalls of Neighborhood-Based Refugee Reception in Germany—A Case Study of Frankfurt-Rodelheim¨ Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 161, doi:10.3390/socsci8050161 ................... 1 Matthias Flug and Jason Hussein Integration in the Shadow of Austerity—Refugees in Newcastle upon Tyne Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 212, doi:10.3390/socsci8070212 ................... 16 Teodora Jovanovi´c Formal Education of Asylum Seeker Children in Belgrade, Serbia: Expanded Meaning of Social Inclusion Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 211, doi:10.3390/socsci8070211 .................. 33 Rafik Arfaoui The Asylum Seekers in Non-Metropolitan Areas in France: Between Temporary Integration and Leading to Autonomy. The Case of the Ambertois Territory Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 210, doi:10.3390/socsci8070210 ................... 44 Rosella Bianco and M´onica Ortiz Cobo The Linguistic Integration of Refugees in Italy Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 284, doi:10.3390/socsci8100284 ................... 58 Annie Taccolini Pannagio and Odessa Gonzalez Benson “And Slowly, the Integration and the Growing and the Learning”: Nuanced Notions of Integration of Bhutanese Refugees in US Cities Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 181, doi:10.3390/socsci8060181 ................... 73 Daniel B. Robinson, Ingrid M. Robinson, Vanessa Currie and Nathan Hall The Syrian Canadian Sports Club: A Community-Based Participatory Action Research Project with/for Syrian Youth Refugees Reprinted from: Soc. Sci. 2019, 8, 163, doi:10.3390/socsci8060163 ................... 84 v About the Special Issue Editors Karen Jacobsen (Henry J. Leir Professor in Global Migration, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University) directs the Refugees in Towns Project at the Feinstein International Center. Professor Jacobsen’s current research explores the impact of urban displacement on cities, and the links between climate change, environmental degradation and migration. In 2013–2014, she led the Joint IDP Profiling Service (JIPS) in Geneva while on leave from Tufts. During 2000–2005, she directed the Alchemy Project, which explored the use of microfinance as a way to support people in refugee camps and other displacement settings. Charles Simpson (Program Administrator, Refugees in Towns Project, Feinstein International Center, Tufts University). For the Refugees in Towns Project, Charles develops the project methodology and case studies in addition to managing relationships with researchers, participants, and experts. Prior to joining the Feinstein International Center, he was Assistant Director of the Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies (BCARS), a Carnegie Corporation project. At BCARS, he managed policy analysis, field research teams, workshops, and conferences on the Syrian refugee crisis in the Middle East, Turkey, the Balkans, the EU, and the US. vii Preface to ”Integration and Resettlement of Refugees and Forced Migrants” In 2017, the United States and Europe—among many other refugee-hosting countries—made significant changes in their refugee policies. New regulations in the form of visa restrictions, travel bans, and other constraints were imposed by national governments. At the local level, towns responded in different ways: some resisted national policy changes by declaring themselves “sanctuary cities”, while others supported exclusionary policies. These different responses affected refugees’ ability to settle and become integrated, as did many other factors in cities and towns. We started the Refugees in Towns (RIT) project—based at Tufts University—with the idea of exploring local urban integration experiences by drawing on the knowledge and perspectives of refugees and citizens living in towns around the world. Since the RIT project began in mid-2017, we have commissioned more than 30 case studies, giving a voice to many refugees and hosts in an effort to deepen our understanding of urban integration. We are building a global database of cases that share local knowledge and perspectives about the factors that enable or obstruct integration, and the ways in which migrants and hosts co-exist, adapt, and struggle with integration. Our goal is to support community leaders, aid organizations, and local governments in shaping policy, practice, and interventions, and to build a theory of integration from the ground up. In this Special Issue, seven articles explore urban integration in the cities and towns of Europe, the US, and Canada. The papers explore how refugees and citizens interact in the authors’ towns; the role of officials and politicians in enabling or obstructing integration; the social, economic, and cultural impact of migration on hosting towns; and the ways—inclusive or exclusive—locals have responded to immigration. The first five articles explore European cities: Frankfurt-Rodelheim,¨ Germany; Newcastle, UK; Ambertois, France; Italy’s cities; and Belgrade, Serbia. The final two articles look at North American cities: Bhutanese refugee-hosting US cities, and the Syrian refugee-hosting town of Antigonish, Canada. Karen Jacobsen, Charles Simpson Special Issue Editors ix social sciences $€ £ ¥ Article “Wir Schaffen Das!”? Spatial Pitfalls of Neighborhood-Based Refugee Reception in Germany—A Case Study of Frankfurt-Rödelheim Martina Blank Department of Human Geography, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 6, D-60629 Frankfurt am Main, Germany; [email protected]; Tel.: +49-69-798-35184 Received: 12 April 2019; Accepted: 21 May 2019; Published: 27 May 2019 Abstract: Refugee reception in Germany is a primarily municipal task that relies heavily on neighborhood-based volunteering. This paper asserts that there are fundamental spatial mismatches between municipal policies and neighborhood-based approaches that place additional burden on all of the stakeholders involved. Drawing from the case of Frankfurt-Rödelheim, which is a socially and ethnically mixed neighborhood in Frankfurt am Main, I show how the way the municipality accommodates refugees disregards the politically embraced work of neighborhood-based volunteers and how the ideal of neighborhood-based inclusion creates a spatial fetish that fails the living reality of the refugees. The findings are based on my ethnographic fieldwork as volunteer in a neighborhood-based welcome initiative. Keywords: forced migration; local refugee reception; refugee accommodation; municipalities; neighborhood activism; Germany; Frankfurt am Main 1. Introduction When more than one million refugees arrived in Europe in 2015, German chancellor Angela Merkel famously responded with “Wir schaffen das!” (“We can do this!”). However, the “we” who “did it” were the local authorities and civil society, rather than the national government. In fact, refugee reception was a primarily municipal task that relied heavily on neighborhood-based volunteering. This paper asserts that there are fundamental mismatches between the municipal policies and neighborhood-based approaches that place additional burden on all of the stakeholders involved. Asylum seekers are required to register with a state organization in order to apply for asylum when they arrive in Germany. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) registered 476,649 asylum applications in 2015, 745,545 in 2016, 222,683 in 2017, and 185,853 in 2018 (BAMF 2019,p.6). Processing the application can take years. In the interim, asylum seekers receive basic housing, food, education, healthcare, and a small stipend to cover their everyday personal needs. The government accommodates the asylum seekers
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