Refugees In Britain Research Articles

Negotiating fit into host country work settings: Understanding the interplay between the past and the present in the accounts of skilled refugees

How do marginalised cultural outsiders negotiate fit into new work settings? I draw on a discursive (re)positioning lens to examine qualitative interview accounts of a group of skilled refugees in Britain and provide insights into three temporal moves they make to portray themselves as unconstrained by a lack of host country cultural know-how, able to swiftly address gaps in knowledge and skills, and able to blend in. I theorise newcomer self-socialisation as a temporal (re)positioning dynamic that involves retrospectively defining oneself as a particular kind of person who has the potential to fit. I argue that temporal (re)positioning enables newcomers to maintain worth, secure external validation and impact on their contexts. I propose that the simultaneous foregrounding and minimising of the past is an important mechanism for skilled refugees to negotiate an ambivalent sense of fit into new work settings.

The Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association and Irish Ex-Servicemen of the First World War, 1922–1932

In 1925, the Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association (SILRA), originally founded for the relief of southern Irish loyalist refugees in Britain, created a fund for ex-servicemen resident in the Irish Free State (IFS). Populated primarily from among the ‘diehard’ right of the British Conservative Party, SILRA’s charitable work was inevitably influenced by the world view of its membership and their audience. But it also had a Dublin sub-committee that operated in very different circumstances in the IFS. This study of SILRA’s efforts to provide welfare to southern Irish veterans of the First World War highlights the extent to which conditions in Ireland – real or perceived – continued to animate British Conservatives long after the Irish Revolution (1916–23). It also adds to the growing literature on ex-servicemen in post-revolutionary Ireland through the lens of SILRA’s lobbying and fundraising.

Vietnamese refugees in Britain: Language, translation, and the politics of protection in camp life and beyond

Through the lens of assemblage thinking and “territorialisation,” this article examines the operationalisation of language support by the voluntary sector in the Thorney Island and Sopley camps, which temporarily accommodated Vietnamese refugee arrivals in Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Drawing on archival sources, the role and agency of interpreters are foregrounded in an analysis of the relationships between the materiality of the camps, camp practices, and their impact on refugee experience. A post-camp initiative to train refugees as parasocial workers (a role that included interpreting) reveals a more person-centred approach, in contrast to what we have termed a solutionist approach to interpreting observed in the camps.

The relief of Belgian refugees in the archdiocese of Glasgow during the First World War: ‘A Crusade of Christianity’

The relief of Belgian refugees in Britain is an emerging area of study in the history of the First World War. About 250,000 Belgian refugees came to Great Britain, and at least 19,000 refugees came to Scotland, with the majority hosted in Glasgow. While relief efforts in Scotland were co-ordinated and led by the Glasgow Corporation, the Catholic Church also played a significant role in the day-to-day lives of refugees who lived in the city. This article examines the Archdiocese of Glasgow's assistance of Belgian refugees during the war. It considers first the Catholic Church's stance towards the War and the relief of Belgian refugees. The article then outlines the important role the Church played in providing accommodation, education and religious ministry to Belgian refugees in Glasgow. It does this by tracing the work of the clergy and by examining popular opinion in Catholic media. The article establishes that the Church and the Catholic community regarded the relief and reception of Belgian refugees as an act of religious solidarity.

Interpreters as technologies of care and control?

AbstractThis article investigates aspects of intercultural communication in institutional interaction with refugees in Britain following the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Their arrival, against a backdrop of Cold War politics and the ongoing Suez crisis, constituted Britain’s first test as a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees. While accounts of displaced persons in 20th century Britain mention communication problems, the impact of interpreters on the early phases of refugee reception can be better understood only through systematic research into their lived experiences and those of their interlocutors: this should include social attitudes and recruitment practices. The use of non-professional interpreters in the period concerned is examined in relation to the metaphor of the interpreter as a technology of care and control, which also serves as a broader critique of post-war refugee treatment in Britain. Contributing to the growing body of interpreting scholarship that explores the sociology of agents and structures in the translation process, the article focuses primarily on the actors concerned with translatorial activity in the many reception camps set up at that time. Artefacts from the National Archives and accounts from the field help identify institutional approaches to mass population displacement, and related discourses about (and by) interpreters.

Melitta Schmideberg: Her Life and Work Encompassing Migration, Psychoanalysis, and War in Britain

The article deals with the forgotten work of Melitta Schmideberg (1904–83), who was a significant, pioneering female psychoanalyst in the intellectual culture of 1930s and 1940s Britain. If scholars know anything about Schmideberg, it is that she was the troubled daughter of eminent psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. Contributing to the still limited scholarship on this intense period in the development of psychoanalysis in Britain, the article reveals that Schmideberg was a very active early psychologist, an avid public speaker, a founding member of important institutes for the study of crime, and a prolific author on a very wide range of issues that bothered her and others and that were tied to the troubled history of the twentieth century. A Central European Jewish refugee in Britain, she was among the first to psychoanalyse children and criminals. As the focus on women in the scholarship of twentieth-century European intellectual history is hardly sufficient, this article recovers her forgotten work whose significance warrants reclamation from obscurity. It provides the first exploration of her life showing that the issues her experiences raise are central to the history of the time.

Alien or Refugee? The Politics of Russian Émigré Claims to British Asylum at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

This article explores the ways in which the debates about the Aliens Bill and the controversy surrounding British immigration policies confirmed Russian émigrés’ identification as refugees and legitimised their anti-tsarist activities in the early twentieth century. It assesses how Russian émigrés made use of the British political crisis about immigration not only to protect their personal right to asylum, but also to advance their larger political and ideological perspectives about the illegitimacy of the Romanov regime. This article argues that the early twentieth-century transnational advocacy championing the right of asylum for Russian refugees in Britain explicitly established the moral and legal criteria used to define refugees outside of the context of war and justified the humanitarian necessity of political and religious asylum as an answer to governmental persecution.

“Their Only Words of English Were ‘Thank You’”: Rights, Gratitude and ‘Deserving’ Hungarian Refugees to Britain in 1956

AbstractThe Soviet invasion of Hungary in late October 1956 resulted in the exodus of approximately two hundred thousand Hungarians, of whom approximately twenty-one thousand came to Britain within a matter of weeks. This article historicizes the process of reception and resettlement of Hungarian refugees in Britain. Through exploring the rhetoric used and attitudes displayed during the reception and resettlement process, it considers if and how legally recognized rights established for refugees under the 1951 UN Convention mediated their arrival and treatment. It finds a failure of a new discourse of rights to permeate the language surrounding their reception. Instead, well-worn tropes of the generosity of the British and their traditions of tolerance and hospitality were deployed consistently at national and local levels. This had the effect of implying that entry to Britain was a privilege and one not to be abused, and it marginalized refugees who failed to conform to particular expectations. The article argues that tying attitudes toward Hungarian refugees—variously positioned as “grateful” or “ungrateful”—can be usefully understood within the context of broader conceptions of the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor and their relationship with the (welfare) state. Consequently, along with exploring the experiences of reception and resettlement of Hungarians in 1956/7 the article contributes to understandings of behavior, rights, and welfare in postwar Britain.

African Political Thinkers, Pan-Africanism and the Politics of Exile, c.1850–1970

This essay aims not only to detail the early history of African refugees in Britain but also to look at the political culture, ideas, writings, activities and organisations which African refugees and exiles from Africa and the diaspora developed while they were in Britain, and how this culture influenced wider political culture. It argues that further study of the histories of African migrants in Britain is required not just in order to provide an historical context to more recent concerns with transnational activities and diasporas but because to ignore the existence, struggles and political culture of those of African origin impoverishes and distorts our understanding of British political culture and Britain's historical past.

‘The Sunshine of Manly Sports and Pastimes’: Sport and the Integration of Jewish Refugees in Britain, 1895–1914

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Jewish refugees arriving in Great Britain were exposed to an ‘anglicisation’ campaign designed to aid their integration into British society and their assimilation of British character traits and cultural values. Within this campaign, especially the element focusing on the children of the migrants, interest and participation in sport was consciously ‘transferred’ through the medium of youth and sporting organisations in order to help in their ‘anglicisation’. This essaywill show how physical recreation was promoted by the English Jewish establishment and how participation in sport amongst young Jews grew.

The Societization of Medicine or the Medicalization of Society?

The Societization of Medicine or the Medicalization of Society? John Burnham (bio) Andrea Tone . The Age of Anxiety: A History of America's Turbulent Affair with Tranquilizers. New York: Basic Books, 2009. xx + 298 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $26.95. This book presents a challenge to general historians of the United States. For some time, historians of medicine have been situating developments in biomedicine in a social and cultural context. Andrea Tone now points out, more overtly than most scholars, how the general culture itself interacted with technical developments in medical pharmacology. To make her case for the historical impact of the minor tranquilizers ("tranks"), Tone invokes the idea of consumerism. Miltown and successor chemicals constituted either a departure from medicalization or a new version of it. The difference was that the widespread use of tranks was driven, not by doctors—nor, initially, even by drug firms—but by consumers. Several recent books have described how pharmaceutical manufacturers attempted to create and shape markets—most notably Marcia Angell, The Truth about Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It (2004). Tone takes a leaf from Michael Schudson, however, and instead centers on consumer demand rather than marketing tactics. Tone in her emphasis thus departs from another recent book, David Herzberg's Happy Pills in America: From Miltown to Prozac (2009). Herzberg tells the same story as Tone, but with a focus on the cultural history of the tranquilizers and especially on the interactions of tranquilizer history with advertising, politics, gender, and ideas of the self. Tone, for her part, emphasizes how consumer demand led pharmaceutical firms to aggressive marketing and to manipulating prescribing physicians. It is true, writes Tone, that there was significant demand for penicillin and other miracle drugs of the mid–twentieth-century decades. But the demand for tranquilizers was a phenomenon in itself, even as it served as the model for marketers in the late twentieth century. Tone makes her argument, as does Herzberg, by constructing a powerful narrative—illustrating well the continuing effectiveness of telling a story about the past. Tone draws on parts of a large historical literature about the [End Page 611] ways in which physicians tried to deal with neurotics or "the worried well" in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Given an unregulated free market, people medicated themselves with various chemicals that they hoped would make them feel better. Barbiturates constituted a substantial part of this market, but they increasingly became tied to nonmedical use and, by the 1920s–1940s, became drugs of abuse along with the opiates and other legally forbidden substances. By World War II, informed Americans were aware of "the barbiturate crisis" caused by widespread employment of these very dangerous substances (p. 26). Tone's main narrative begins with the advent of amphetamines in the 1930s, a story now detailed in Nicholas Rasmussen's On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamines (2008). But, again, even the amphetamines only set the stage for the first revolutionary tranquilizer: Miltown. Miltown appeared in 1955, although a Czech refugee in Britain, Frank Berger, had discovered it five years earlier. Before that, while he was working with penicillin, Berger tested mephenesin on mice. The mice became relaxed but stayed alert. This substance had promise for use as a relaxant in surgery and other areas of medicine. Tone, however, pictures it differently: "for the first time . . . a drug's capacity to tranquilize had been singled out as an attribute worth testing and discussing in a pharmaceutical journal" (p. 36). In 1949, Berger became director of medical research at a small U.S. drug firm, Wallace Laboratories, a subsidiary of a company famous for "Carter's Little Liver Pills." Wallace Labs was looking for possible patentable but "ethical" drugs. In 1950, Berger and a colleague chose a mephenesin relative, meprobamate, for trial with mice and monkeys. Meanwhile, some psychiatric clinicians working with very ill patients reported that mephenesin, the original drug, had had a calming effect on those patients. In 1951, there was another complication: a new U.S. law had created a broad category for drugs that could be dispensed only on prescription, thus helping protect people from indiscriminate self...

Medical Refugees and the Modernisation of British Medicine, 1930-1960.

This paper reappraises the position of medical refugees in Britain between the 1930s and 1950s. Advocates of reforming British medicine in terms of its knowledge base and social provision emerged as strongly supportive of the medical refugees. By way of contrast, an élite in the British Medical Association attempted to exercise a controlling regime through the Home Office Advisory Committee. The effects of these divisions are gauged by reconstructing the complete spectrum of refugees as a total population. Applying this methodology of population reconstruction provides a corrective to the notion of a cohesive 'medical establishment' exercising rigid and discriminatory controls.

Medical Refugees in Britain and the Wider World, 1930-1960: Introduction.

This collection of papers considers the experience of medical refugees in Britain and the wider world. The collection owes its inception to the significant role of refugees in the modernising of British medicine in terms of medical provision, and medical research. But it is clear that the refugee situation can only be understood in international terms. Displaced physicians looked—with increasing desperation—throughout the world for locations where their skills might be valued, or at least for a place of safety from worsening Nazi persecution. Britain had a key role, as registration of professional qualifications in Britain had implications for admission to practise in the various Dominions and colonies, and British policies were decisive for admission to its Palestine Mandate. While Britain was important as a place of safety and staging-post for onward migrants and temporary exiles, it became a new home for thousands of displaced medical practitioners. Vigorous scientific and humane support for medical refugees clashed with professional restrictionism and animosity against alien practitioners, as diluting an insular medical tradition. The refugee experience varied enormously, and it renders the situation complex and open to differing interpretations.

Young Jewish Refugees in Britain 1938/9 and 1945/6

The Declaration of the Rights of the Child, adopted by the League of Nations in 1924, was greeted as a major step in the field of human rights. But the rise of fascism and the extinction of the League dashed all its good intentions. The outbreak of the Second World War had tragic consequences for European children, none more so than Jewish children who, along with their Gypsy counterparts, became victims of one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever during that war. By recording their experiences, childrens' perception is opened up so that we can see beyond the dry statistics to the human and emotional side of the story, which surely is relevant where any child has been, or is, at risk. Their ordeal during the Holocaust has become a yardstick against which all other human rights abuses against children have been measured.

Open Secrets: Literature, Education, and Authority from J.-J. Rousseau to J. M. Coetzee by Michael Bell

MLR, I03.4, 2oo8 I095 ner' s 'Portrait of theTranslator as Chameleon', on theother hand, is a patchwork of quotations where the exercise in rhetoric seems toconstitute an end in itself.Included in the section on 'Historical Perspectives', Christophe Declercq's paper on Belgian refugees inBritain during theFirstWorld War is an interesting ifratheroddly placed contribution, dwelling only marginally, as itdoes, on translation, and diverging en tirely from the textual and literary focus of the volume. Apparently more inkeeping with the overall theme of the collection isElena Xeni's examination of theproblems pertaining to the translation of figurative speech. Her report is based on an applied project comparing thedifficultiesencountered by experienced translators and trainees when facedwith translating intoGreek selected passages fromSue Townsend's The Secret Diary ofAdrian Mole, Aged I33/4. Unfortunately, however, the article would have greatly benefited from close editorial attention. This last observation could be applied to the volume as a whole: amore rigorous editing process could have eliminated a number of linguistic problems and evened up thequality of the contributions. As itstands, thecollection lacks homogeneity but stillmanages to offer amix of bright ideas, specialist information, and unexpected curiosities. UNIVERSITY OFWARWICK LOREDANAPOLEZZI Open Secrets: Literature, Education, and Authority fromY.-J.Rousseau toJ. M. Coet zee. By MICHAEL BELL. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007. vii + 254 pp. ?50. ISBN 978-O-Ig-92080g-8. The 'open secret' in this difficult study,both tentative and assertive, concerns what is imparted in teaching, and what cannot be imparted. The book's arguments foran education which, as humanistic, is aware of the limits of the teachable, and not inter ested in education as something quantifiable, are admirably sharply expressed, and are quietly fearful thatglobal uses ofEnglish and the increase of computer translation 'will completely change thehuman relation to language [. . ] to render impossible an older conception of poetry' (p. 215). Early, admirable chapters examine textswhose theme is education, presented from the point of view of the educator, not the pupil: Rousseau's Emile, Tristram Shandy, Wieland's History ofAgathon-an unfamiliar text interestingly commented on-and two chapters on Goethe, on Wilhelm Meis ter'sApprenticeship and Wilhelm Meister's Journeymanship. The last chapter in this firstpart discusses Nietzsche. While these chapters are good, ifa little inconclusive, each having discussions of theBildungsroman which are sensitive and scholarly, in the second half the tone changes, with chapters on D. H. Lawrence, F R. Leavis, and J. M. Coetzee togetherwith his fictional alter ego, Elizabeth Costello. Michael Bell reads Lawrence as an equivalent, within an English tradition,ofNietzsche, andwould align discussion of Lawrence with suggestions of the importance of Leavis, focusing on his stress on teaching and reading as 'heuristic'. Though there is good reason to welcome a freshattempt at evaluation of Leavis, the discussion here seems slightly disappointing. Seeing Lawrence inNietzschean terms educes a humanist Nietzsche who reads less incisively than he might: itdoes not seem enough to define ressenti ment as 'the desire to take revenge on the past' (p. I47); and itmay be questioned whether Nietzsche on thewill should be read inBell's humanistic terms. Problems about seeing Lawrence as anything like an equivalent toNietzsche may be compared with Lawrence's lack of relation toFreud, which Bell is silent on. Bell would align Leavis with Heidegger. The politics of thisapart, this seems prob lematic: how can Leavis's humanistic concern with the single author who intends meaning (Bell quotes finesections fromLeavis here) be compared with thewriter for Io96 Reviews whom humanism must be set aside, and-in The Origin of the Work of Art-the con cept of the individual imagination? Derrida's pervasive critique ofHeidegger as too interested in defining Being as presence (but Derrida isneglected in this study) sug gests that Heidegger needs tobe read asmore post-humanist thanLeavis orLawrence. If Leavis were to be characterized as Heideggerian, it could be by a reading of his work which found places where Leavis differed fromhimself,making a deconstruc tive reading possible. The point holds with Lawrence: Bell's fine, impassioned pages confirm the 'traditional' Leavis view of Lawrence, rather than attempting to read Lawrence anew, differently from the older I950S and 9g6osarguments. They stake out the familiar ground again. Bell gives insufficient...

Moving Towards Integration: The Housing of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Britain

The government has explicitly identified housing as a key dimension of its strategy for refugee integration, the goal being to assist new migrants to access decent, safe, secure and affordable accommodation. Yet the evidence suggests that many asylum seekers and refugees experience housing deprivation and insecurity. The precise meaning of housing ‘integration’, what it can and should achieve, and how progress towards integration can be measured is uncertain and sometimes contested terrain. Drawing on qualitative research across five English localities, the paper explores what local housing providers and community development workers feel are the prerequisites for successful housing integration. The discussion focuses on the induction process, on-going support, ‘move-on’ support for new refugees, and the need to combat racist harassment. The paper concludes that despite good intentions and some localised successes, there are still many obstacles to refugee housing integration, which arise from multiple gaps in provision, choice and support.

Wien — London, hin und retour. Das Austrian Centre in London 1939 bis 1947 by Marietta Bearman, Charmian Brinson, Richard Dove, Anthony Grenville, Jennifer Taylor

AUSTRIAN STUDIES, I3, 2OO5 275 to some extent deadening, but take one man out of many and it can still be heartbreaking' (p. 206). Magdalen College, Oxford Robert Pyrah Wien London , hin und retour. Das Aust?an Centre inLondon 1939 bis 1947. By Marietta Bearman, Charmian Brinson, Richard Dove, Anthony Grenville and Jennifer Taylor. Vienna: Czernin. 2004, 287 pp. 23,00. isbn 3-7076-0165-X. This book focuses on an organization set up in London in 1939 by Austrian refugees who had escaped Nazi persecution. Assisting newly arrived immigrants inadapting to life ina foreign country and providing an Austrian oasis inLondon to ease homesickness were among itsprincipal purposes until 1947, when the Austrian Centre closed itsdoors. As well as supporting individual immigrants, the Centre tried to establish itself as an official organization representing the Austrian people and therefore entided to negotiate with the British government for an improvement in the legal status ofAustrian immigrants toGreat Britain. The authors explore how the Austrian Centre gradually made itselfheard. As the British started to detain so-called enemy aliens in camps all over the country ? some were even transferred to places as distant as Australia ? the Austrian Centre made every effort to convince the British government thatAustria was to be considered as an occupied country and not a German war ally, and therefore that the internment of Austrian men as enemy aliens was incorrect according to international law.The demand for recognition of Austria and her people as victims of Nazi Germany soon became the basis of all of theAustrian Centre's endeavours, both in the cultural sphere and in terms of political lobbying. The Allied Powers adopted a similar stance when, in theMoscow Declaration of 30 October 1943, theydeclared Austria to have been 'the first country to fall victim toHitlerite aggression' and asserted that theywished 'to see re-established a free and independent Austria'. Towards the end of thewar theAustrians pleaded for a separate battalion within the British forces, in order to support the Allies in the liberation ofAustria. In tracing the development of the Austrian Centre during the war years, the authors follow the chronology of international events, and the respective chapters are structured in accordance with the changes in Soviet-British relations. In doing so, they emphasize how far theAustrian Centre's bargaining power depended on Soviet politics ? because the Austrian Centre was dominated by Communists. Consequently, the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939 had generally negative effects on the Austrian Centre's credibility and shattered political beliefs within the leftist exile community. Despite Stalin's policy, the Austrian Centre tried to present itself as a reliable ally in the battle against Hitler. But itwas not only the Austrian Centre that strived for British acknowledgement. Several exile organizations tried to establish themselves as the legitimate representatives ofAustrians in exile, and strong rivalry,especially between Communists and Socialists, prevented concerted action, while the British showed no preference for either. 276 Reviews The Austrian Centre activists followed twomain strategies. First, they used informal contacts with British politicians to gain intercessors for Austrian interests, as is recounted by Charmian Brinson in the third part. Second, they launched massive propaganda to attract the attention of the British public to the Austrian case, focusing on future conceptions of Austria as well as on the fate of theAustrian refugees inBritain. The youth organization 'Young Austria', for example, not only introduced Austrian teenagers to patriotic thinking but also was able to reach British youth organizations. The authors dedicate a considerable part of their book to the manifold cultural endeavours of the Austrian Centre, to publications such as Zeitspiegel and Austrian News, to theatre groups such as the 'Laterndl' and to musical events. Evidently, the Austrian emigrants did not flinch from trading in tired clich?s, and promoted both classical music and, on stage, the Wiener Schm?h as Austrian cultural assets. A critical examination of this phenomenon would have enhanced the historical analysis. In concentrating on the different means of political propaganda used by the Austrian Centre, the authors manage to avoid the well-trodden path of a biographical focus on renowned ?migr?s, and are thus able to reveal interesting perspectives. However, the reader is in...

‘Labour Market Participation and Conditions of Employment: A Comparison of Minority Ethnic Groups and Refugees in Britain’

This paper draws on data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and from a survey of 400 refugees in Britain in order to present an up to data comparison of the labour market experiences of minority ethnic groups and refugees. It will show that refugees experience lower rates of employment than their ethnic minority counterparts and that those refugees in employment are more likely to be in temporary and part-time work with poorer terms and conditions of employment and with lower wages. The reasons why refugees experience greater disadvantage in the labour market than others include structural barriers due to policies such as dispersal that can leave refugees isolated from social and community networks that provide information and advice and informal routes into employment but also leave refugees in areas with higher levels of unemployment. Migration patterns are also influential with refugees for the most part arriving more recently in Britain than people from minority ethnic groups. Refugees are also increasingly reliant on agents and smugglers to plan their route and destination and so asylum seekers can find themselves in countries where they have no social networks. Social networks and community organisations play an important role in the early stages of settlement. Finally, the circumstances of exile, attitudes to the country of origin and the insecurity of having temporary status in Britain all prevent economic activity.

Challenging Barriers to Participation in Qualitative Research: Involving Disabled Refugees

In this article, the authors discuss the need to consider the potential barriers faced by both interviewers and respondents who wish to participate in qualitative research. Drawing on their experience of enabling disabled refugees to interview other disabled refugees, they discuss their conceptual basis for challenging barriers, and the practical measures they took to address the health, impairment and linguistic needs of both interviewers and respondents participating in the ‘Disabled Refugees in Britain’ research project. They conclude by encouraging other researchers to identify and challenge the barriers faced by all potential participants in qualitative research.

Bosnian Refugees in Britain

The way in which migrants are incorporated into society varies according to which society is being examined. The British model is loosely based on notions of multiculturalism. Groups of migrants are considered to constitute a community and, through community leaders, the needs of the group can be conveyed to others. The same model has been used for the incorporation of refugees into society and informs current legislation and policy as well as the work of refugee support agencies. Furthermore, research on refugees often looks at one or more refugee `communities'. More recently, groups of refugees, including Bosnian refugees arriving in Britain as part of the UNHCR programme in December 1992, have been considered as transnational communities or as diasporas, that is, scattered communities. This article looks at the refugees themselves and the community associations that have been established and concludes that the associations exist largely as a result of the benefits that can be obtained through them and that there is no informal Bosnian community. Instead, there is a contingent community: a group of people who will, to some extent, conform to the expectations of the host society in order to gain the advantages of a formal community association, whilst the private face of the group remains unconstituted as a community.