The Social Integration of Asylum Seekers and Refugees: An Interactional Perspective

Abstract

This article demonstrates a social interactional perspective on social integration. Analyses of an audio-recorded, reoccurring interactional scenario are presented from a weekly meeting at a grassroots initiative that aims to improve the everyday lives of asylum seekers/refugees. By employing membership categorization analysis (Sacks 1992), the extracts show how volunteers seek commonalities with the asylum seekers/refugees. This occurs when a particular membership category difference among participants is brought up in the course of an interaction. The findings suggest that despite seemingly meaningful exchanges, the inherent transience of these encounters could make social integration challenging to achieve.