Externe Publikationen

Refugee crisis and challenges of integration

Jaji, Rose
Externe Publikationen (2016)

published on zambakari.org, 04.04.2016

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The current influx of refugees heading for Europe has rejuvenated debate on refugees in political, policy making, humanitarian and academic circles as well as among citizens of (prospective) host countries. In this piece, I specifically address refugee integration. There is a lot of uncertainty and perhaps anxiety on whether host countries can integrate the refugees, the strategies to ensure successful integration and how the end result looks like. Questions on how the future of countries that have taken in huge numbers of refugees is going to be like are compounded by confusion of integration with assimilation. In the current debates mostly in receiving Western countries, there appears to be a mixture of apprehension and panic on the one hand and calm and optimism on the other hand. One also gets the sense that there are opposite positions in which some citizens are for while others are against refugee hosting. Corresponding to these polar positions are divided opinions on integration. One extreme involving those who are anti-refugee hosting and see refugees as inherently incapable of integrating because of their racial, cultural and religious ‘traits’. The other extreme taken by those in solidarity with refugees and encouraging their countries to host them is largely characterized by political correctness to the extent of interpreting as hostile suggestions that refugees have obligations to their adopted country. For example, they see the idea of making it compulsory for refugees to learn the adopted country’s official language as tantamount to stripping refugees of their culture and identity— as quest to assimilate the refugees. Yet, language proficiency contributes to employment opportunities and the nature of jobs that are open to those who can speak the official language.