Due to the so-called refugee crisis and the Netherlands’ development into a ‘participation society’, refugee reception there has recently shifted its focus to early and fast participation. In this context, numerous community initiatives have emerged to support refugee reception and integration. Compared to earlier restrictive approaches, refugee reception through active engagement of newcomers in community initiatives seems to promise a more inclusive approach, a deepening of democracy. However, such initiatives have internal and external challenges that might inhibit refugees’ active participation and the initiatives’ adoption of inclusive approaches. In this qualitative research, we have explored the challenges and opportunities for active participation and inclusion of refugees in community initiatives, considering the context of normalizing exclusive discourses and increasingly neoliberal policies on refugee reception.
The so-called refugee crisis in 2015/2016 created opportunities for faith-based organizations, community initiatives, volunteers and refugees to get actively involved in refugee reception in Amsterdam. This study investigated the resilience potential of three refugee reception approaches that were taken during that transformative period: those of a semi-governmental organization (COA), a faith-based organization (The Salvation Army) and a community initiative (Hoost). Based on qualitative data, the article shows that the nexus of regulations and flexibility in crisis responses impacts the ability to employ multiple local resources and thus predetermines the capacity to adopt resilient solutions to refugee reception during crises. The authors plead for daring governmental efforts that acknowledge, connect and facilitate the innovative power of local communities, faith-based organizations, volunteers and refugees in the refugee reception process without further withdrawals of state responsibility for refugee reception. However, it is crucial that such innovative efforts integrate and learn from existing knowledge to prevent mistakes from being repeated.
Within the Dutch hegemonic discourse, the “migrant other” is portrayed as almost incompatible with “national culture” while it is simultaneously pressured to assimilate. This creates paradoxes for the queer refugee participants in this study. When these refugees assimilate, they risk reinforcing the dominant discourse considering their group as the “backward other”. When they do not assimilate, they are considered not “properly” Dutch. This paper explores how queer refugee artists can unsettle such dominant exclusionary discourses through exilic (art) narratives. Their experiences of exilic positioning (being neither there nor here) and queer liminality (e.g., nonbinary gender identifications) and their intersectional positionalities situate these artists in various “states of in-betweenness”. Although these states may be challenging, this paper shows how they can also stimulate agency. Inspired by a feminist approach, this study aimed to co-create knowledge with rather than about participants, focusing on creativity and resilience. Methods included biographical interviews and an arts-informed component in which participants were invited to create artistic works concerning their experiences during COVID-19 for an online platform. This study shows how the research participants challenge hegemonic discourses at various levels, using multiple modes of reflection and creation while engaging with their in-between situatedness. At the individual level, they challenge discourses by exploring (or performing) their non-conforming queer positioning through their art practices. At the communal level, plural reflexivity is triggered via art shared within and outside the community. At the societal level, queer refugees exercise activism creatively through images, songs or performances.
Many consider academic research an important means to address societal inequality of marginalized groups, such as refugees. However, transformative research arguably requires critically engaged practices that consider and transform dominant exclusive structures permeating both society and knowledge production. This paper discusses challenges and opportunities of such research practices, especially given power and (neoliberal) politics around knowledge production within Dutch academic and refugee research structures. Based on 14 researchers’ narratives, the results reveal how critically engaged refugee research is challenged by its marginalized position, academic pressures and culture as well as the recently emerged ‘refugee research business’. However, the paper also uncovers various ways in which researchers manoeuvre within challenging and facilitating structures by operating outside or in the margins of academic structures, making use of facilitating spaces and strategically employing dominant discourses. Finally, researchers arguably transform academic structures by challenging dominant research paradigms and transforming the institution of academics itself.
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