Rights, Resilience and Refugee Integration in Scotland

The Holistic Integration Service has offered a unique opportunity to refugees, partners, communities and external agencies. The HIS model has focused on beneficiary need; but has equally recognised that to achieve maximum impact, organisations must invest in building successful partnerships and integrating data collection and analysis into day to day work. Finding the balance between prioritising and addressing refugees’ needs, often in crisis situations; and maintaining a longer term vision of the goals of the service has not always been easy.

Service capacity issues have made planned, long-term integration work harder to undertake. Nevertheless, the Holistic Integration Service offers multiple examples of the ways in which practical service provision can be inspired by, and give inspiration to, academic, organisational and community learning in ways which now, and in the future, will improve the situation for refugees and for the areas they live in.

Importantly in this third year, refugees’ own experiences have come to the fore in the evaluation process. We have learned from refugees that access to an Integration Service continues to be vital in a context where even the most resilient can find their way blocked by institutional obstacles which undermine their rights. Moreover, while people have a strong desire to be independent and above all to find work, the search for employment can be characterised by frustration and lack of progress.

Support towards sustainable employment options, including the potential for setting up and running one’s own business, is crucial to make refugees’ sense of empowerment meaningful in the longer term. We as an evaluation team have learnt a great deal from working with the committed practitioners, managers, development officers and policy makers involved in this project. We have been privileged to share in some refugees’ journeys in the fi rst year after they were granted status. The accounts of refugees and practitioners have challenged us to challenge our own assumptions about pathways towards integration. But above all, we have been inspired by messages of strength, tenacity and hope for the future. These are the images of refugee resilience that must, and will, underpin, our future work in this area.