Knowledge of the integration process for refugees is often subsumed under the broader category of “immigrants”. This book focuses on this process for refugees, including the structural and systemic challenges they face as they integrate in their new host societies, and how they respond to such challenges. The book provides a critical analysis of Canada’s approach to integrating refugees with additional chapters focused on refugee integration in Australia, Northern Ireland, and the United States.

This collection of work critically addresses a range of topics and employs a variety of qualitative approaches to gain a better understanding of the lived experience of integration for refugees, including the ways in which refugees view integration and the attendant challenges and opportunities encountered during the integration process. Departing from viewing refugees as a “burden” that must be shared by the international community, the contributors to this collection explore the complex dynamics of race, class, gender, ethnicity, age, generation and legal status for refugees in a selection of local contexts of reception. The work begins a dialogue about the long-term dynamics of refugee settlement and integration with implications for the viability of future resettlement programs and practices.

How the world responds to the ongoing plight of the growing numbers of displaced people will be a defining feature of the contemporary global order. This collection shifts the discourse about refugees from one of victimhood to one of refugee agency and rights. The book will be of primary interest to academics in the field of refugee and migration studies, to practitioners in the settlement sector, and to those involved in making refugee policies. It will also be useful for those who work in social services and education in countries of the global north that receive refugees and refugee claimants, and anyone with an interest in refugee lives.