The ability for communities to integrate refugees successfully is a topic I’ve touched on increasingly in recent months, especially as countries across Europe have attempted to get to grips with the new refugees arriving from north Africa since the Syrian civil war.

For instance, recent research from Stanford suggests that communities can play a crucial role in the integration of Syrian refugees.

It suggests that refugees benefit when they reside in ethnic communities as these communities help the newcomers find work and navigate local bureaucracy.  The study, which explored the Swiss labor market, found that refugees were more likely to find work in their first five years if they lived in an area where a large community existed of people who shared their nationality, language or ethnicity.

“Our study shows that ethnic networks can be beneficial for the economic status of refugees at least within the first few years of their arrival in the host country,” the researchers explain.

The right size

A second study, from the University of Alberta, suggests that such communities don’t need to be large to be valuable.  Indeed, people appear to report higher satisfaction with settlement services when the community they reside in is smaller.

The study compared the experience of refugees settling in both Edmonton and the smaller town of Lethbridge.  The results suggest that those residing in Lethbridge were more creative and efficient in terms of integration in their first year in Canada, with the refugees reporting higher satisfaction levels with the services on offer to them.

“It seems that smaller urban centres, such as Lethbridge, can better serve refugees in the short term,” the researchers say. “Their small size helps agencies, officials, and individuals to come together much more quickly and can also be creative in their service delivery.”

This effect may wear off over time however, with larger communities potentially having a more positive impact on integration in the long-term as they afford better access to a diverse range of job prospects, a bigger volunteer community to call upon and a range of non-government support.

The findings do nonetheless provide a new level of nuance to an increasingly important topic, and the researchers believe it’s an area that demands more analysis so that evidence is driving the settlement of refugees as much as possible.

“Our government agencies would be well served to conduct critical analyses before determining the number of refugees destined to various urban centres across the country,” the researchers conclude. “The ratio of newcomer numbers to the capacity of service infrastructure present matters because it largely determines the efficacy of settlement services—regardless of the size of the urban centre.”