Community Sponsorship Research Articles

Educational Pathways in Italy: Emanuel’s Perspective—Reflective Essay for the Special Issue: “Community Sponsorship and Complementary Pathways: Global Movements for Resettling Refugees Driven by Local Actors”

Educational Pathways in Italy: Emanuel’s Perspective—Reflective Essay for the Special Issue: “Community Sponsorship and Complementary Pathways: Global Movements for Resettling Refugees Driven by Local Actors”

You Are Safe Here: Community Sponsorship Policy and Refugee Integration in the UK

Abstract Globally, resettlement is considered one of the most durable solutions for refugees. The UK has introduced a Community Sponsorship Scheme that enables communities to resettle refugee families providing them with enhanced integration support aided by volunteers. This paper investigates the nature of integration support that sponsored refugees receive utilising the analytical framework of UK’s Indicators of Integration (IoI). Data was collected from interviews with refugee adults resettled in diverse and less diverse areas. Our findings illustrate the importance of support given by volunteer groups to enable access to resources and connections. We establish that there is much potential for sponsorship programmes to add value to refugee support suggesting that the current expansion of sponsorship from its Canadian roots may help facilitate refugee integration. However, further research is needed to uncover the long-term experiences of sponsored refugees and to compare their outcomes to those of forced migrants arriving via different mechanisms.

It’s About the Power of Little People’: the UK Community Sponsorship Scheme, a New Space for Solidarity, Civic Engagement and Activism

The Community Sponsorship Scheme (CSS) was introduced in 2016 by the UK Government to enable members of civil society to be directly involved in helping refugees settle in the UK. The CSS is intense and time-consuming, and a lot of effort is directed at helping one family to rebuild their lives in safety. Since the introduction of the scheme, nearly 1000 refugees have been resettled across the UK. The data used in this paper was collected as part of a three-year study intended to provide an independent formative evaluation of the CSS. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 145 volunteers and 33 individuals from the wider community at five locations where refugees have been placed, this article examines how acts of solidarity, community networks and civic engagement have mobilised ordinary citizens who advocate in favour of the refugee cause. The findings support the argument that motivations to volunteer are both altruistic and egocentric, predominantly delivered by older female volunteers. The article demonstrates that volunteers involved in the CSS have played a fundamental role in bridging social capital with wider members of the host communities. It concludes that the CSS is an innovative model of refugee resettlement that is breeding a new type of volunteering that empowers British civil society.

A Meso-Level Analysis of the Revitalization of the WUSC Student Refugee Program at St. Francis Xavier University

Although millions of community members have come together in various ways to sponsor and resettle refugees for decades, scholars are just now beginning to study why people get involved and how they organize themselves to accomplish the practical, organizational, and emotional tasks community sponsorship requires. This article contributes to this emerging literature with a meso-level analysis of actions taken by one student-led local committee (LC) to revitalize the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) Student Refugee Program (SRP) nested at its university. Over 2,200 refugee youth have been sponsored through the WUSC SRP to study and settle in Canada since 1978, yet little is known about how campus LCs navigate their responsibilities or evaluate and sustain their program. Analysis of in-depth interviews with executive members was guided by and informs research on community sponsorship and theories of group action, community of practice, and stewardship.

Reforming the Reception and Inclusion of Refugees in the European Union: Utopian or Dystopian Changes?

The provision of high‐quality reception conditions and the effective inclusion of refugees are permanent challenges in the implementation of the European asylum agenda. The EU legal framework for the reception of refugees has evolved over time through various legislative reforms, notably including those launched in 2016 and the New Pact on Migration and Asylum proposed in 2020. The European Union has also tried to reinforce its non‐binding integration policy with the adoption of the Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion 2021–2027. While this plan is intended to promote an alternative “social resilient” integration model for refugees that emulates community sponsorship in Europe, it also generates great bottom‐up expectations to provide better integration. These legislative reform proposals and their programmatic framework are theoretically intended to consolidate the European reception and integration system, but in practice have increased the dichotomous tension between utopia and dystopia. Drawing on a political interpretation of both concepts, this article critically analyses the real nature of the changes proposed in the legislative CEAS reforms and in the action plans. Both visions are useful to evaluate the desirability, viability, and achievability of these transformative changes in the future asylum system.

Examining the Impact of Community Sponsorship on Early Refugee Labor Market Outcomes in the United States

As the number of refugees in need of resettlement continues to climb worldwide, advocates and policy makers are searching for ways to leverage new support from private individuals, faith groups, and community organizations to complement and extend the capacity of traditional government resettlement programs. The United States is one of many countries considering the possibility of a “private sponsorship” model, which would allow private individuals and community groups to resettle refugees independent of traditional government resettlement agencies. While this particular resettlement model has not been implemented in the United States in more than four decades, the country has a long history of community involvement in refugee resettlement. Many resettlement agencies operate vibrant community sponsorship (or co-sponsorship) programs, 1 in which community groups partner with resettlement agencies in delivering services and material support to refugees. However, due to a lack of publicly available data, the impact of this co-sponsorship model has been woefully understudied. This paper offers a preliminary exploration of community sponsorship and its impact on early refugee labor market outcomes. Using administrative data from the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), this paper finds that: Refugees with community sponsors have higher English language enrollment rates 90 days after arrival than refugees without sponsors. Refugees with community sponsors who are enrolled in an early employment program known as Matching Grant have higher rates of employment and of full-time employment 180 days after arrival than those enrolled in Matching Grant who do not have sponsors. Community sponsorship is especially beneficial for refugees with low levels of English language proficiency and lack of family ties in their location of resettlement, as well as refugees resettling in areas with higher unemployment. This paper also identifies and recommends several areas for further study, including: The variation of existing community sponsorship models in use across the United States and their impacts on refugee integration outcomes locally. The impact of community sponsorship on integration indicators, in addition to early labor market outcomes.

Framing Community Sponsorship in the context of the UK’s hostile environment

The launch of the private sponsorship scheme, Community Sponsorship (CS), allowing individuals to resettle refugees in the UK, seems to be in contrast with the government’s approach towards immigration aimed to implement the hostile environment policy. Using frame analysis, this research looks at the diagnostic, prognostic and motivational framings used by policymakers in parliamentary debates related to CS to understand how the scheme and the hostile environment coexist. The findings show how the used frames allow the government to manage refugee resettlement more as a tool of migration management rather than exclusively as a tool of international protection, and how this strategy implements the UK’s hostile environment.

Economic self-reliance or social relations? What works in refugee integration? Learning from resettlement programmes in Japan and the UK

There is an urgent need to expand the scale and scope of refugee resettlement schemes, and yet country approaches to resettlement vary markedly and there is little cross-country learning from approaches and refugee experiences. In Japan, resettlement focuses on economic self-sufficiency through employment; whereas the UK, through Community Sponsorship volunteers, on providing social connections to facilitate integration. This paper explores the strengths and short-comings of each approach and examines the ways in which refugee resettlement programmes prioritising different integration domains might influence refugee experiences of integration more widely. Drawing on principles and domains set out in the Indicators of Integration Framework (Ndofor-Tah, C. Strang, A. Phillimore, J. Morrice, L., Michael, L., Wood, P., Simmons, J. (2019) Home Office Indicators of Integration framework 2019), insight is provided into the multi-dimensionality of integration and new understandings about the nature of social connections are offered. The findings highlight the context specific nature of integration policy and practice and underline the importance of a holistic approach. We conclude that resettlement initiatives might incorporate both employers and local communities working in collaboration to support newly arrived refugees but with some state involvement.

Community Sponsorship in Europe: Taking Stock, Policy Transfer and What the Future Might Hold

This article explores the recent emergence of community sponsorship of refugees in Europe, an approach which shares responsibility between civil society and the state for the admission and/or integration of refugees. Originally a Canadian model developed to support the resettlement of Indochinese refugees, the model has gained momentum in Europe, with a number of states piloting or establishing community sponsorship schemes. This proliferation, while generally seen as positive for international protection of refugees, has led to conceptual confusion and a significant range of approaches under the “umbrella” concept of community sponsorship. As a result, community sponsorship today may be understood both as a form of resettlement and a complementary pathway to protection. While interest and momentum around community sponsorship is high, little work currently exists mapping and analysing how jurisdictions adopt the community sponsorship model. With reference to existing work on policy transfer, this contribution takes stock of community sponsorship models in Europe; analyses how community sponsorship may become a viable policy option in European states as a form of transnational policy transfer; and sets out a number of challenges for the future development of community sponsorship in Europe.

“I have Felt so Much Joy”: The Role of Emotions in Community Sponsorship of Refugees

Resettlement programmes are considered one solution to displacement following the so-called refugee crisis. Private or community-based sponsorship models enable volunteer groups to take responsibility resettling refugees. The UK Community Sponsorship scheme (CS) allows volunteer groups to support refugee families in their community. This paper explores the role of emotions in CS using Jaspers three-stage social action life cycle (1998) drawing upon Doidge and Sandri’s (Br J Sociol 70: 463–480, 2018) positive and negative emotions, Jaspers (Sociol Forum 13: 397–424, 1998) reactive and affective continuum and Hoggett and Miller’s (Community Dev J 35: 352–364, 2000) individual/group features to explore the role of emotions in CS work. Using interview data collected from 123 interviews with 22 sponsorship groups, we find across the life cycle that there is a shift from negative reactive emotions during group initiation to positive affective emotions during consolidation and finally a mix of negative and positive affective emotions as groups become sustained. Understanding the role of emotions in motivating and sustaining volunteers is essential to the success of the CS, to encourage group formation and reduce burnout.

Community Sponsorship in Europe: Taking Stock, Policy Transfer and What the Future Might Hold

This article explores the recent emergence of community sponsorship of refugees in Europe, an approach which shares responsibility between civil society and the state for the admission and/or integration of refugees. Originally a Canadian model developed to support the resettlement of Indochinese refugees, the model has gained momentum in Europe, with a number of states piloting or establishing community sponsorship schemes. This proliferation, while generally seen as positive for international protection of refugees, has led to conceptual confusion and a significant range of approaches under the ‘umbrella’ concept of community sponsorship. As a result, community sponsorship today may be understood both as a form of resettlement and a complementary pathway to protection. While interest and momentum around community sponsorship is high, little work currently exists mapping and analysing how jurisdictions adopt community sponsorship model. With reference to existing work on policy transfer, this contribution takes stock of community sponsorship models in Europe; analyses how community sponsorship may become a viable policy option in European states as a form of transnational policy transfer; and sets out a number of challenges for the future development of community sponsorship in Europe.

Community Sponsorship of Refugees and COVID-19’s Challenges

Community Sponsorship of Refugees and COVID-19’s Challenges

Refugee Sponsorship and Family Reunification

AbstractThis article examines the choice made by resettled refugees and their sponsors to use the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program (PSRP) in Canada to reunite families and the benefits and challenges of doing so. The timing of our study is deliberate. Global efforts are underway to encourage other states to adopt private or community sponsorship schemes, and this spread renders examination of the benefits and burdens of this form of refugee resettlement urgent. Using data we have collected via interviews of resettled refugees and sponsors in Canada, we show that family separation has a marked impact on the ability of refugees to integrate into their new home. This conclusion highlights the possibility that there are host-state imperatives that can be better served by facilitating family reunification. Furthermore, we suggest that the successful deployment of the PSRP as a tool of family reunification depends too much on the preferences and perspectives of sponsors, who may not agree that reunification is valuable, or who may not have the capacity to facilitate such reunifications. They also may struggle with the thought that they are being forced to choose among which refugees are most in need of highly scarce resettlement spots. Together, these results generate additional support for the view, which we endorse, that states should be focused on doing more to protect family unity, especially for refugee families, outside of a private sponsorship scheme.

Sponsorship in focus: a typology of sponsorship contexts and research agenda

PurposeSponsorship has become an important marketing activity. However, research on the topic treats the sponsorship context, characterized according to the type of sponsored property and the social role of these properties, as a stable characteristic or as a dichotomous characteristic within empirical studies. Therefore, the authors outline a multi-level typology of the different types of sponsorship contexts to account for traditional types of sponsorship as well as emerging themes such as online sponsorship. The authors then propose an agenda for future research.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conduct a general review of the sponsorship literature to synthesize established sponsorship types with newly emerging themes to develop a multi-level typology of sponsorship contexts and a research agenda.FindingsThe authors’ conceptual analysis revealed a typology of sponsorship contexts that captures both general and specific types of sports sponsorship, prosocial cause sponsorship, culture and community sponsorship, and media and programming content sponsorship.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors’ typology provides an organizing framework for future research focussing on different sponsorship contexts. However, the emergent categories still require further empirical testing. Therefore, the authors develop a set of questions to guide future research on the topic.Practical implicationsThe authors’ typology outlines the different sponsorship contexts that should be considered by organizations that engage in sponsorship-linked marketing.Originality/valueThis paper provides a multi-level categorization of sponsorship contexts that integrates both traditional categories and newly emerging categories to better inform future research on situational differences in sponsorship.

Refuge under austerity: the UK’s refugee settlement schemes and the multiplying practices of bordering

ABSTRACT This paper draws on two current UK refugee resettlement schemes, the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) and Community Sponsorship, to consider the ways in which they borrow technologies from austerity and innovate “border-work”. On the global level, the paper considers how VPRS outsources the UK’s border management to UNHCR. On the national level, the paper considers how Community Sponsorship shifts the responsibility for the support of refugees from the state to local communities. Finally, on the local level, the paper discusses how the borrowed technologies between austerity and migration control (outsourcing, categorising, and individualizing responsibility) shape the experiences of social workers and migrants in a northern London borough. The paper contributes to understanding how the governmentalities of austerity and migration engage in shaping and re-shaping public space through the differential regulation of subjects who come to experience shared space in fundamentally different ways.

Splendor, Decline, and Rediscovery of Yiddish in Latin America ed. by Malena Chinski and Alan Astro

Reviewed by: Splendor, Decline, and Rediscovery of Yiddish in Latin America ed. by Malena Chinski and Alan Astro Dalia Wassner (bio) Splendor, Decline, and Rediscovery of Yiddish in Latin America. Edited by Malena Chinski and Alan Astro. Leiden: Brill, 2018. ix + 253 pp. Splendor, Decline, and Rediscovery of Yiddish in Latin America, edited by Malena Chinski and Alan Astro, is a scholarly labor of love. The contributors comprise an international group of historians, archivists, literary scholars, and journalists, who in some cases are also descendants of their very subjects. The current volume provides a different perspective than Alan Astro's 2003 anthology of selections from Yiddish works translated for an English-speaking audience, who might not have considered that there are Jews in [name the Latin American or Caribbean country], or Eliahu Toker's El ídish es también Latinoamérica, published the same year for a Spanish-speaking public. Transnational in scope and authorship, spanning Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, and Cuba, the volume illustrates the fruits of a new generation of scholarship on Yiddish culture in Latin America. Of course, Ashkenazi immigration comprises but one piece of Jewish transatlantic migration at the turn of the twentieth century. However, the present volume provides an important [End Page 145] contribution not only to Ashkenazi Jewish studies, but also to the fields of diaspora studies, migration studies, history, and literature. As a cultural historian, I appreciate the book's organization into three sections: historical, literary, and biographical, with the latter focused on key cultural figures. Of special interest was the opening chapter on Brazil, itself a refreshing presentation whereby the Portuguese-speaking country is not relegated to an afterthought in an often Spanish-centered view of the continent. Written by Roney Cytrynowicz, who served as the director of document collections at the Brazilian Jewish Historical Archive for over fifteen years, the chapter provides a study of the presence of Yiddish within the country that received 10% of Eastern European Jewish migrants in the 1920s. While the chapter notes the lesser productivity and vibrancy of Yiddish in Brazil in comparison to its neighboring Argentina, its placement reflects the country's importance within the region in receiving Jewish immigrants and offers a reflection on diversity and assimilation through the lens of Yiddish proliferation. At the same time, the chapter connects the individuals who left Poland for Brazil in the interwar period to those who remained, including the relationship between immigrant Meir Kucinski and Emmanuel Ringelblum, storied leader of the clandestine Oyneg Shabes archive in the Warsaw ghetto. Notable also in Cytrynowicz's chapter is the prominence of a woman, Rosa Palantik, who was celebrated as much in her native Brazil as in Montreal and Israel. Gender diversity is generally absent topically in the rest of the volume, either within historical accounts, literary subjects or cultural figures, notwithstanding the matter of sex trafficking. While this broader deficit may be partly due to a historic gender bias, as Cytrynowicz demonstrates, it should have been addressed critically by the editors and contributors alike. Committed to unveiling less-known aspects of Yiddish life in the region, Tamara Gleason Freidberg shows through a close study of José Winiecki's Baginen that sex trafficking and Jewish agricultural settlements were significant—if less renowned—features of Jewish immigrant life in Mexico. Malena Chinski provides an insightful study that questions narrative versus reality in the preservation of a vibrant Yiddish culture in Argentina, assessing the case of community sponsorship of a group of Yiddish Polish figures who are revealed to be more war-torn refugees than the celebrated luminary cultural ambassadors so presented. Among the overall collection's many strengths is a nuanced understanding of the evolution and institutionalization of Yiddish within Latin America in relation to evolving transnational historical contexts. For example, Israel Lotersztain's chapter on the ICUF (Idisher Cultur Farband), a socialist Argentine Yiddish institution, positions the evolution of Yiddish [End Page 146] in Buenos Aires within the context of local Jewish institutional politics and relative to an evolving relationship with Israel and the Soviet Union at pivotal times in these states' own histories. The historical contributions dovetail nicely with literary studies that consider language in terms of a...

Resettling Refugees through Community Sponsorship: A Revolutionary Operational Approach Built on Traditional Legal Infrastructure

More than a dozen states are exploring the potential of introducing community sponsorship programs as a way of contributing to the global refugee protection regime. This article provides a comparative analysis of the legal and administrative frameworks that have underpinned the introduction of community sponsorship in four diverse countries: Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Argentina. We also briefly examine the introduction of co-sponsorship in the United States, a country without any formal national program. We conclude that while community sponsorship programs have the potential to revolutionize refugee resettlement, their operationalization is not contingent on revolutionary legal infrastructure.

Australia’s Private Refugee Sponsorship Program: Creating Complementary Pathways Or Privatising Humanitarianism?

This article provides the first history and critique of Australia’s private refugee sponsorship program, the Community Support Program (CSP). As more countries turn to community sponsorship of refugees as a means to fill the “resettlement gap,” Australia’s model provides a cautionary tale. The CSP, introduced in 2017, does not expand Australia’s overall resettlement commitment but instead takes places from within the existing humanitarian resettlement program. The Australian program charges sponsors exorbitant application fees, while simultaneously prioritizing refugees who are “job ready,” with English-language skills and ability to integrate quickly, undermining the principle of resettling the most vulnerable. As such, we argue that the CSP hijacks places from within Australia’s humanitarian program and represents a market-driven outsourcing and privatization of Australia’s refugee resettlement priorities and commitments.

Analysis of Settlement Experiences of Syrian Families in the Canadian Context

This presentation will provide an overview of the movement of Syrian Refugees into Rural and Small-Town Ontario. It will identify specific challenges that refugees face and it will identify some of the positives and negatives associated with community sponsorship. The profile of Syrian refugees shows that they will face barriers to resettlement and integration in host communities. Literature suggests that refugees experience a difficult time entering the labor market upon arrival to Canada (Government of Canada, 2016; Lamba, 2003; Yu, Oulette & Warmington, 2007). In addition, most Syrian women also lack the proper education in their first language and also lack work experience. Changes in immigration policy have reduced government funds to settlement supports, and this negatively affects refugee settlement (Bauder & Shields, 2015). Objectives: What are the impacts of Syrian family size, age of children, and gender relations on the outcomes of Syrian refugee families. What are the key factors that determine the capacity of a community to attract and retain refugees, what service supports need to be in place for all members of refugee families.

Introducing Digital Media to Automotive Industry: The Role of Corporate Blogging and Economic Context in Full-Funnel Digital Marketing

Introducing Digital Media to Automotive Industry: The Role of Corporate Blogging and Economic Context in Full-Funnel Digital Marketing