Humanitarian Migrants Research Articles

The importance of information acquisition to settlement services literacy for humanitarian migrants in Australia.

Due to the diversity and range of services provided to humanitarian migrants during the settlement phase of migration, acquiring information across multiple service domains is intrinsic to the effective utilisation of settlement services. There are research gaps investigating how humanitarian migrants experience and navigate unfamiliar, multiple, and often complex information and service systems of host countries. This study seeks to understand the impediments to humanitarian migrants' effective utilisation of information about settlement services and to identify strategies that can be implemented to overcome these barriers. Service providers were purposively recruited from organisations funded by the Australian Government to deliver settlement programs. The study applied an inductive thematic analysis approach to identify key themes that emerged from the data. From the perspective of service providers, the themed findings identified how humanitarian migrants gain knowledge about services, their information needs, information seeking practices and skills, and information specific to service domains. The findings illustrate the importance of acquiring information, knowledge, and skills across multiple information platforms and service domains as being integral to the effective utilisation of settlement services for humanitarian migrants. The study identifies systemic barriers to information and service access and suggests different strategies and approaches to improve access to context specific key information. The study identifies factors that inhibit the effectiveness of the Australian settlement service provision model and emphasises the need for targeted training of mainstream referral services. The study highlights the important role that settlement service providers play as mediators of information, adept at tailoring information to humanitarian migrants' individual and community information needs. The findings provide important insights that highlight the different roles that policymakers, researchers, and service providers can play to inform new approaches that improve the effectiveness of information and settlement service provision, as part of contributing to optimum settlement outcomes for humanitarian migrants.

Departing or Being Deported? Poland’s Approach towards Humanitarian Migrants

Abstract Referring to the theoretical reflection on securitization in the area of forced migration and applying Barak Kalir’s concept of Departheid, we investigate policies and practices deployed by the Polish authorities to deal with humanitarian migrants. In particular between 2015 and 2021, in the Polish context, humanitarian migrants were usually equated with ‘bogus’ asylum seekers, ‘undeserving’ of protection or even the right to apply for it. With the increasing presence of Belarusian and, more recently, Ukrainian asylum seekers in Poland, two completely different state attitudes towards asylum seekers reaching Poland’s borders became visible. People directly fleeing Belarus and Ukraine were seen as deserving protection and support, and faced no obstacles in entering Poland through its eastern border. At the same time, non-White people forced to leave Asian or African regions in crisis, attempting to cross the border and to enter Poland remained ‘unwanted’—to be deterred or deported, and thus illegalized at some stage of their mobility, usually already at the point of entrance. Based on the analysis of empirical data gathered between 2018 and 2021, we look for durable solutions for the latter category of migrants and investigate the reasons for the selectivity observed in the Polish practices towards asylum seekers. We conclude that the governmental approach perpetuated towards keeping humanitarian migrants away from Polish territory, especially in the post-2015 context, builds on xenophobic sentiments, making the concept of Departheid applicable to the realities of forced migration management in Poland.

Sex, Sexuality, and Intimate Relationships Among Afghan Women and Men of Refugee Background Living in Melbourne, Australia: Experiences, Opportunities, and Transcultural Tensions

Over the last two decades, Afghanistan has been a leading country of origin for asylum seekers and refugees arriving in Australia. It is widely recognized that humanitarian migrants experience poorer sexual and reproductive health than the broader population. In turn, a body of research has emerged exploring the sexual and reproductive health of the local Afghan community. However, this has predominantly focused on youth or perinatal experiences, and less attention has been given to the broader relational and social dimensions of sexuality. Accordingly, this research aimed to explore the perspectives and experiences of married Afghan women and men as they navigate and negotiate sex, sexuality, and intimate relationships following settlement in Melbourne, Australia. A total of 57 Afghan women and men participated in six focus group discussions and 20 semi-structured interviews. Male participants described the ways that having increased access to sex and sexually explicit materials in Australia is creating opportunities for them to establish more fulfilling sex lives. Many women also described a growing awareness of sexuality, although often expressed difficulty prioritizing and claiming more pleasurable sexual encounters for themselves. However, concerns about sexual freedom are also creating new challenges for the Afghan community living in Australia in relation to sex and relationships. For example, men expressed fears about women exercising sexual liberties outside of the home, and this appeared to place women’s everyday behavior under increased scrutiny. Women also voiced concerns about how easily men can access sex outside of marriage within Australia, and described how this amplified their sense of obligation to be sexually compliant and meet their husband’s desires. This study provides new insights into the ways that Afghan community members are moving between societies, and how their understandings of sexual participation, pleasure, desire, health, consent, and capacity for self-determination are being challenged, reshaped, and reconstructed throughout this process.

Understanding the relationship between social support and mental health of humanitarian migrants resettled in Australia

BackgroundForced migration can lead to loss of social support and increased vulnerability to psychological distress of displaced individuals. The aims were to ascertain the associations of sociodemographic characteristics and social support received by resettled adult humanitarian migrants in Australia; determine the relationship between social support and mental health at different intervals following humanitarian migration; and examine the modification effects of gender, age and migration pathway on that relationship.MethodsA secondary analysis was conducted of data generated in Waves One (three to six months after resettlement), Three (three years after resettlement) and Five (five years after resettlement) of the Building a New Life in Australia prospective cohort study. The association between sociodemographic characteristics and mental health were examined at each timepoint using a multivariate regression model. Exploratory factor analysis was used to develop a two-factor social support scale (emotional/instrumental and informational support) from a larger set of items collected in the BNLA. Psychological distress was measured by the Kessler-6 scale. Path analysis was used to analyse the relationships between social support and psychological distress among the three time points considering socio-demographic characteristics simultaneously.ResultsA total of 2264 participants were included in the analyses. Age, gender, birth region, migration pathway, education level and English proficiency were significantly associated with both social support types. Main source of income was only significantly associated with informational support. Remoteness area was only significantly associated with emotional/instrumental support. As emotional/instrumental support increased by one standard deviation (SD) at Wave One, psychological distress at Wave Three decreased by 0.34 score [95% CI (− 0.61; − 0.08)]. As informational support at Wave Three increased by one SD, psychological distress at Wave Five decreased by 0.35 score [95% CI (− 0.69; − 0.01)]. The relationships between social support and psychological distress varied between genders, age groups and migration pathways.ConclusionFindings demonstrate the importance of emotional/instrumental support and informational support for the medium and long-term mental health of humanitarian migrants. This study also highlights the important of extending current social support provisions and tailoring programs to enhance support received by humanitarian migrant subgroups years after resettlement to improve mental health.

Trends and Impact Factors of Mental Health Service Utilization among Resettled Humanitarian Migrants in Australia: Findings from the BNLA Cohort Study.

Resettled humanitarian migrants (HMs) have high levels of mental disorders, but factors associated with the utilization of mental health services (MHS) are poorly understood. We aimed to explore trends and impact factors of MHS utilization among HMs in the process of resettlement in Australia. A total of 2311 HMs from the 1st (2013), 3rd, and 5th (2018) waves of a national cohort study were included. MHS utilization in the past year was assessed by two indicators: having MHS contacts and the frequency of MHS contacts. Trends were identified by Cochran–Armitage tests, and generalized linear mixed models and ordered logistic models were fitted to explore impact factors of MHS utilization. The proportion of having MHS contacts significantly rose from 13.0% to 29.4% over the five years. MHS utilization was mainly driven by perceived needs, such as post-traumatic stress disorders and the degree of post-migration stress. Unemployment and strong belongingness to the local community were also associated with having MHS contacts. No significant gender difference was found in having MHS contacts but females tended to contact MHS more frequently. Resettled HMs have a persistent dilemma of high mental illness prevalence and MHS underutilization. Sustainable mental health education and long-term resettlement services targeted at social integration that consider gender difference are urgently needed in host countries.

Between liminality and a new life in Australia: What is the effect of precarious housing on the mental health of humanitarian migrants?

Humanitarian migrants face a range of challenges during the resettlement process. Foremost among these is finding affordable, secure and suitable housing. Applying a liminality lens, we use two longitudinal surveys, one specific to humanitarian migrants (Building a New Life in Australia [BNLA]) and one representative of the Australian population (Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia [HILDA]), to examine the effect of precarious housing on humanitarian migrants' mental health; and compare this to the greater Australian population using fixed effects regression models. Such an approach controls for participants' previous experiences and isolates, as much as possible, the causal effect of precarious housing on mental health.Modelling of 21,462 HILDA and 2399 BLNA respondents over five years revealed a negative mental health effect attributed to unaffordable and unsuitable housing for both humanitarian migrants and the Australian population, with humanitarian migrants at greater risk of poor mental health due to unsuitable housing. Humanitarian migrants were 60 % more likely to suffer from worse mental health when they experience unaffordable housing compared to their counterparts in affordable housing, with a 2.4-fold increased risk those in unsuitable housing. Such findings suggest housing precarity can extend the process of liminality for humanitarian migrants, and future policies should facilitate greater access to affordable housing.

A whole university approach to humanitarian migrant and refugee students’ integration: Reflections on the practical implementation of education policies and programmes at Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR), in Brazil

Nous analysons comment l’arrivée de migrants avec des visas humanitaires et de réfugiés au Brésil a poussé une université à développer des pratiques de base d’accueil des étudiants et de leurs communautés. Après une première reconnaissance des besoins linguistiques de ce public nouvellement arrivé, l’université, à l’initiative du département de droit, a développé ce que l’on pourrait appeler une approche universitaire holistique d’intégration, basée sur les principes du travail multidisciplinaire et de la recherche-éducation-action. Dans le cadre de cette approche, elle a développé et intégré plusieurs actions visant le développement de diverses littératies, le maintien de la santé et du bien-être émotionnel et l’apport de soutien juridique, grâce à des équipes de travail multidisciplinaires et à la participation d’étudiants et d’éducateurs bénévoles. Dans cette compréhension humaniste du rôle des établissements d’enseignement supérieur dans l’accueil et l’intégration des étudiants migrants et réfugiés, nous discutons des objectifs atteints et des points que nous continuons à considérer comme essentiels pour une meilleure intégration des initiatives multidisciplinaires et pour une offre mieux articulée d’initiatives destinées aux publics universitaire et extra-universitaire.

Key characteristics of the refugee journey for Iraqi and Syrian family members who support their children or siblings with disability

Refugees with disability and their families are increasingly resettled in Australia but remain an under-researched group. As such, this study aimed to understand experiences of disability for humanitarian migrants who support a family member with a disability. Interviews took place with 10 family members from Iraqi and Syrian refugee backgrounds living in Australia, whose children or siblings had disability. BenEzer and Zetter’s conceptualisation of the refugee journey was used to analyse four themes of these families’ experience: (1) Temporal Characteristics: (2) Drivers and Destinations; (3) Process/Content of the Journey; and (4) Characteristics of People. Supporting a person or persons with disability was a defining feature of the participants’ journeys across all themes, with stigma and difficulties in accessing disability support being consistent throughout. The journeys were multifaceted and ongoing, particularly in response to gaps in Australian disability support, and demonstrated the agency and advocacy that families utilised to support the best lives of those they love. Points of interest Few researchers have tried to understand what the refugee journey is like for families where one or more member has a disability. We interviewed Iraqi and Syrian people who came to Australia as refugees. Each of them supported at least one family member with disability. Disability was very important at every part of their refugee journey. As well as the physical journey of coming to Australia as refugees, participants spoke about how they gained new knowledge and skills in Australia to become better advocates for their family members. The participants highlighted gaps in Australian disability support services, which future research should study.

Understanding settlement services literacy and the provision of settlement services for humanitarian migrants in Australia—A service provider perspective

Over the past 40 years, successive Australian Governments have developed a comprehensive programme of settlement services (SS) designed to improve settlement outcomes for humanitarian migrants. Many humanitarian migrants do not arrive with the appropriate skills and abilities to fully benefit from available SS. “Settlement services literacy” (SSL) has been proposed as a framework to contextualise factors that may enable or constrain humanitarian migrants' utilisation of SS. The aim of this study was to investigate the provision of SS in relation to SSL, that is humanitarian migrants' ability to effectively access information and services, to critically assess services, and to politically mobilise and effect change. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 26 service providers representing 19 organisations in Greater Western Sydney (n = 8) and Melbourne (n = 11). The study found that SS programmes address many of the indicators that promote SSL acquisition. However, this is not achieved systematically, nor do the programmes reflect all indicators across the three SSL levels. This study provides new insights into various factors impacting the effectiveness of SS provision and SSL acquisition. These insights can inform future programme policy reforms and contribute to more effective and responsive service systems that meet the diverse and complex needs of humanitarian migrants.

The role of visa class in the location choices of immigrants in Australia at the regional and neighbourhood scales

Australia’s pro-immigration policies have played a vital role in national population growth, serving to address what would otherwise be chronic labour shortages and population ageing. While migrants to Australian have shown a clear preference for cities and tend to locate with co-ethnics, variations by visa class—employment, family reunification, and asylum—have yet to be fully explored. This paper aims to identify variations in settlement patterns of immigrants in Australia by visa types and the factors underpinning these choices, paying particular attention to ethnic networks and employment opportunities. We apply a series of negative binomial regressions to aggregate census data linked to visa status. At the suburb level, our results show the importance of the presence of compatriots in shaping the location choices of family migrants, with the exception of skilled and humanitarian immigrants from China, Malaysia and Thailand. At the regional level, skilled migrants, including skilled regional migrants, respond to employment opportunities to a greater extent than family and humanitarian migrants.

Advancing a programme theory for community-level oral health promotion programmes for humanitarian migrants: a realist review protocol

IntroductionHumanitarian migrants often suffer from poor health, including oral health. Reasons for their oral health conditions include difficult migration trajectories, poor nutrition and limited financial resources. Oral health promotion is...

“It will kill your dreams, your goals, your everything”—Humanitarian migrants, governance through containment and the Italian accommodation system

While asylum seekers await the outcome of their claims to protection in Italy, they are dispersed to accommodation centers administered by subcontracted non-governmental agencies where they receive reception and integration services. In addition, in line with guidelines from the regional government, social operators regulate migrant behavior and mobility through the use of the use of behavioral regulation, deployed temporalities, and various forms of surveillance. Using the lens of migration governmentality and specifically, containment (Tazzioli and Garelli, 2018), this research explores the impact of these forms of governance on migrant settlement outcomes. I do so through a case study of accommodation centers and migrant experiences within accommodation centers in Turin (Italy) conducted in the winter of 2018 and 2019. Findings suggest that migrants are infantilized through the process, one which provides few opportunities to exert autonomy over self-direction and preferred settlement outcomes. Contained within reception centers without opportunities for external engagement, migrants are prevented from developing social ties or place attachment more generally. Migrants reject their subordinated status, and, exhibit a familiar form of autonomy in the post-reception period—migration, including circular and cross border mobility.

Working Hard and Pushing Through: A Thematic Analysis of Humanitarian Migrants' Experiences in the Australian Workforce.

Employment can play an important role for humanitarian migrants in their successful integration into a new country. For humanitarian migrants to Australia, there are no skill or language restrictions imposed on resettlement. Despite the benefits, humanitarian migrants often find themselves in low-status jobs and precarious working conditions. The present study examines perceptions of job quality and exposure to workforce psychosocial risk factors such as job strain, bullying, and discrimination. We conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 30 humanitarian migrants from South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Thematic analysis of transcripts identified three overarching themes: Uncertainty and Insecurity, Working Hard and Pushing Through, and Positive Attitudes and Actions. Overall, our findings show that despite high levels of education and long-term residency in Australia, many of the participants struggled to find a safe and secure place in the workforce. While some spoke about their work in positive terms, their comments should not be taken as confirmation of a positive work environment. Humanitarian migrants face an uphill battle against oppressive working conditions and underemployment.

Understanding access to higher education amongst humanitarian migrants: an analysis of Australian longitudinal survey data

Humanitarian migrants are amongst the most marginalised population groups in countries within the Global North, including Australia. An important channel for these migrants to successfully settle into the host society and improve their socio-economic outcomes is participation in the local education system, particularly in higher-education options. However, we know surprisingly little about the socio-demographic factors that structure inequalities in humanitarian migrants’ access to (higher) education, with evidence from robust quantitative studies being particularly scarce. The present study fills this important gap in knowledge by analysing Australian longitudinal survey data (Building a New Life in Australia; n = 2109 migrants and 8668 person-year observations) by means of random-effect panel regression models. Key results indicated that higher English-language proficiency and pre-arrival education levels are core factors fostering greater engagement with the Australian higher-education system amongst humanitarian migrants. Humanitarian-migrant women in our sample exhibited a greater adjusted likelihood of being a student than humanitarian-migrant men. Altogether, our findings confirmed inequalities in accessing the Australian higher-education system amongst humanitarian migrants, and that policy attention is required to redress this situation. However, they also stress that a ‘one size fits all’ policy strategy may be neither sufficient nor appropriate to boost their education prospects.

Employment Prospects of Humanitarian Migrants in Australia: Does Gender Inequality in the Origin Country Matter?

Despite a steady inflow of humanitarian migrants to Australia, their socio-economic outcomes remain visibly poorer than those of other migrants and the general population. Therefore, understanding the factors contributing to refugee integration is an important endeavor. In this paper, we focus on refugees’ labor-market outcomes and the role of a potentially important macro-level factor: gender inequality in the origin country. To accomplish this, we leverage high-quality longitudinal data from a probability survey (Building a New Life in Australia, n = 9,268) augmented with country-level data from the UNDP. Our results bear implications for gender and migration scholarship, and equity policy and practice.

Implementing and Interpreting Refugee Resettlement Through a Veil of Secrecy: A Case of LGBT Resettlement From Africa

In the last decade the number of countries aiming to resettle refugees increased and complementary pathways aiming to relocate humanitarian migrants expanded. Stakeholders in charge of the selection process of candidates and logistical organization of these programs multiplied as a consequence. Because refugee resettlement and complementary pathways are not entrenched in international law, selection processes and logistical organization are at the discretion of stakeholders in charge, sometimes hardly identifiable themselves, and can vary greatly from one scheme to another. For displaced candidates to resettlement and complementary pathways, this opacity can have dramatic consequences in regions of origin. This article will present the case of a group of African lesbian and gay asylum seekers who first sought asylum in a neighboring country, hoping for resettlement to the global North. Because their first country of asylum criminalizes homosexuality, the responsible regional office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) must circumvent the said country’s sovereignty on asylum matters and recognize LGBT asylum seekers as refugees under UN mandate before submitting their cases to resettlement countries. UNHCR agents thus conduct refugee status determination (RSD) and resettlement procedures behind a veil of secrecy, at the risk of antagonizing their local partners and confusing aspiring refugees. Meanwhile, INGOs from the global North cooperate with local LGBT associations to relocate LGBT Africans out of the same African countries. This paper will show African asylum asylum seekers’ efforts to qualify for all these programs simultaneously, unaware of the mutually exclusive aspects of some; to become visible to institutions and “sponsors” they deem more powerful, at the expense of solidarity within their group.

Advancing Our Understanding of Dental Care Pathways of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Canada: A Qualitative Study

The burden of oral diseases and need for dental care are high among refugees and asylum seekers (humanitarian migrants). Canada’s Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) provides humanitarian migrants with limited dental services; however, this program has seen several fluctuations over the past decade. An earlier study on the experiences of humanitarian migrants in Quebec, Canada, developed the dental care pathways of humanitarian migrants model, which describes the care-seeking processes that humanitarian migrants follow; further, this study documented shortfalls in IFHP coverage. The current qualitative study tests the pathway model in another Canadian province. We purposefully recruited 27 humanitarian migrants from 13 countries in four global regions, between April and December 2019, in two Ontario cities (Toronto and Ottawa). Four focus group discussions were facilitated in English, Arabic, Spanish, and Dari. Analysis revealed barriers to care similar to the Quebec study: Waiting time, financial, and language barriers. Further, participants were unsatisfied with the IFHP’s benefits package. Our data produced two new pathways for the model: transnational dental care and self-medication. In conclusion, the dental care needs of humanitarian migrants are not currently being met in Canada, forcing participants to resort to alternative pathways outside the conventional dental care system.

International Immigration Policy and Evaluating the impacts of Immigration

Over the past three decades, new anti-immigration policies and laws have issued to address the migration of undocumented and illicit immigrants. Previous study on immigration was conducted to assess and understand how these immigration policies and laws may affect to lot of sectors among undocumented immigrants and among citizens. This article will show a direct relationship between immigration policies and their effects. In addition, as a result of these policies, undocumented immigrants were impacted by mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, uncertain future, poor lifestyle, and unstable economic life. Sometimes international immigration policy has serious limitations, particularly when viewed from an economic perspective. Some shortcomings arise from faulty preliminary design, others from the inability of the system to adapt to changing circumstances. In either case, a disrelish to confront politically tenacious decisions is often a contributing factor to the failure to craft laws that can stand the test of time. We argue that, as a result, some key aspects of international immigration policy are incoherent and mutually incompatible — new policies are often inconsistent with past policies and undermine their goals. Inconsistency makes policies less effective because participants in the immigration system realize that lawmakers face powerful enthusiasm to revise policies at a later date. Policies regarding impermanent visas, unaffiliated immigration, and humanitarian migrants offer examples of laxity and incompatibility. This article proposes key features of an integrated, coherent immigration policy from an economic perspective and how policymakers could better attempt to achieve policy consistency across laws and over time.

Expanding Strategic Human Resource Management by Learning from Refugee Recruitment

The recruitment of refugees is an increasing challenge around the world and one that is unlikely to be ameliorated by any effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finding employment is one of the most critical steps for refugees towards integration into their new society. Yet, many organizations do not consider or see the benefits to refugee recruitment. Our empirical evidence is collected from semi-structured interviews with multiple stakeholders partaking in refugee recruitment including, employers, governmental organizations, refugee support-service providers and refugees in Australia, a country with a long history of receiving humanitarian migrants. We demonstrate how employers leverage a collaborative model of recruitment while attempting to hire refugees. Our analysis uncovers a stakeholder-responsive and multi-level view of strategic human resource management where recruitment is seen as an embedded process involving the expertise, know-how and interests of numerous actors, many external to the employing organizations. To attend to both the organizational and societal goals, we suggest a potential role for strategic human resource management in addressing the grand challenges linked to employment in areas beyond refugee workforce integration.

Education without evidence: Gaps in data availability for refugee, asylee, and humanitarian migrant students in US schools

The collection and use of empirical data for educational decision-making in the United States is required by the Every School Succeeds Act (ESSA) and the Results Driven Accountability mandate, but there is insufficient data available for one population, in particular: refugee, asylee, and humanitarian migrant (RAHM) students. As a result, the terms of these US federal programs are violated by all states, districts, and campuses who count refugee, asylee, or humanitarian migrant students among their populations. Evidence suggests that almost no standardized, publicly-available educational data is available for refugee, asylee, and humanitarian migrant students in the US, but what publicly-available and reported data is available is either so localized so that it can be neither replicated nor generalized or so aggregated that it cannot be disaggregated for analysis and decision-making.