From Refugee to Citizen:
‘Standing On My Own Two Feet’

Author: Jill Rutter, Laurence Cooley, Sile Reynolds, and Ruth Sheldon.
Contributors:
Price: Free
Publication Date: 18 January 2008

‘Britishness’ among political leaders and the media in the UK, part of a larger debate about social cohesioni. As this book was being drafted, government ministers published a proposal for a Britain Day, and the Commission on Integration and Cohesion presented its final report. However, relatively little attention has been paid to how migrants and refugees themselves feel about integration, or about becoming and being British. In the little research that exists about refugee integration, refugees are presented as rather passive recipients of advice, vocational education and other interventions designed to integrate ‘them’. Indeed most research on refugee integration focuses on the institutions of integration and seldom analyses the voices of refugees.

This book presents some of these missing voices. It is published to mark the 50th anniversary of Refugee Support, a non-governmental organisation whose remit includes the provision of services to promote refugees’ integration. The book documents the life stories of 30 refugees who came to the UK during the last 50 years. We use a life history research methodology to collate and analyse refugees’ experiences: pre-migration, during flight and after their arrival in the UK. We examine what integration and Britishness meant to refugees and what factors aided or hindered their integration.

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