Refugees’ Integration in the Built Environment: The Sweden Case

Mo Hamza

doi:10.3390/su132212812

Abstract

The resettlement and integration of a displaced population into a new society faces a plethora of challenges. These range from lack of national legal frameworks to plan and implement planned relocation, to the absence of a long-term vision, inadequate funds, and poor institutional structures. The 3-year EU Erasmus+ funded REGARD Project (REbuildinG AfteR Displacement) set out to address some of these challenges and develop guidance with a focus on the roles and responsibilities of the host and the resettled community in order to understand the needs of both. This paper focuses on the Swedish experience (one of four case studies in the project) in the aftermath of the mass influx of Syrian refugees in 2015. A needs assessment conceptual framework of both host and displaced communities guided the multi-method approach applied in the Sweden case where data was drawn from a scoped literature review on issues related to integration and social cohesion complimented and validated by in-depth interviews with a number of municipalities and non-governmental organizations all working with asylum seekers resettlement. The results of the research indicate that while the Swedish case was a relative success by comparison to others in Europe, there was still systemic shortcomings that needed attention. First, cooperation and coordination between government and non-governmental actors and at different levels up and down the chain of services provided for resettled refugees is still lacking where the reality on the ground is not fully grasped by centrally driven policy and decision-making. Second, what determines the effectiveness of resettlement and integration efforts is focusing on the individuality of each displacee’s needs and circumstances where one-size does not fit all, and recognizing that integration is a two-way process that has to involve both host and guest community and not simply the absorption of one into the other. Finally, the paper concludes that the pressured and often highly politicized situations both host and guest community are put into usually force rapid responses, while long-term visions and sustainable solutions when adequate time is taken to establish trust and build viable networks between the two communities can lead to far better results.

Highlights

The literature review and the results and discussion above of the Sweden case point to four cross-cutting factors as especially important in the striving for successful integration, namely: the individuality of the integration process; seeing integration as a two-way effort; increasing efforts to collect data in relation to integration matters; and putting integration initiatives in a long-term perspective. These four factors do not present themselves as sector specific but should rather be viewed as underlying prerequisites and conditions for integration initiatives to be able to strive for sustainability and efficiency, regardless of whether these measures are aimed at displacees’ introduction into the labor market, at acquiring language skills, education or training, at tackling health issues, or at other integration related areas
The individuality of each displacee or refugee is central to a meaningful integration
The focus on individualized integration efforts is coupled with an emphasis on the importance of refugees’ involvement themselves in the design of the integration process, for the above mentioned individualization to materialize [36]

Summary

Introduction

In the recent decades, scholars have begun to question the reliability and effectiveness of resettlement activities [2]. Among the challenges identified by the scholars that hamper effectiveness of resettlement are lack of national legal frameworks to plan and implement planned displacement properly; lack of experts, documentation, and systematization of outputs and outcomes; the absence of a long-term vision; inadequate funds; poor 4.0/). Sustainability 2021, 13, 12812 institutional structures and political leadership; and problems in implementation [3]. Shortcomings of this nature have further increased the vulnerability of displaced communities

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion