People and places: Bridging the information gaps in refugee integration

Abstract

This article discusses the sources of information used by refugees as they navigate integration systems and processes. The study used interviews to examine how refugees and asylum seekers dealt with their information needs, finding that information gaps were bridged through people and places. People included friends, solicitors, and caseworkers, whereas places included service providers, detention centers, and refugee camps. The information needs matrix was used as an analytical tool to examine the operation of sources on refuge‐seekers' integration journeys. Our findings expand understandings of information sources and information grounds. The matrix can be used to enhance host societies' capacity to make appropriate information available and to provide evidence for the implementation of the information needs matrix.

The emergence, peak, and abeyance of an online information ground: The lifecycle of a Facebook group for verifying information during violence

“…Scholars have investigated the usefulness of information grounds theory for discussing the role of place in information seeking and sharing (Gibson & Kaplan, 2017). Recent studies have documented information grounds among refugees moving from countries where they are at risk to developed countries (Fisher, Yefimova, & Yafi, 2016; Oduntan & Ruthven, 2020), Israeli migrant workers (Bronstein, 2017), Chinese parents of children with autism (An, Na, & Zhang, 2019), Latino undocumented immigrants (Baron & Gomez, 2017), Iranian students from different socio‐economic backgrounds (Soheili, Mansoori, & Khaseh, 2016), and U.S. students with disabilities (Williams & Smith, 2016), which are situated within their everyday lives and used to interact and look for social connections. Public places such as cafés could facilitate adversaries in establishing common grounds in an Indonesian conflict zone (Rohman & Pang, 2015; Rohman, 2020), demonstrating that interactions in such places can play critical roles in promoting peace (Williams, Megoran, & Mcconnell, 2013).…”

Cultural information needs of long-settled immigrants, their descendants and family members: use of collective and personal information sources about the home country

“…The focus of this paper is on the voluntary aspect of migration and will not analyse in detail previous research on the information needs and information behaviour of refugees. However, research shows the critical importance of digital capacities of refugees in the migration process and the role of social media in social support (Borkert et al, 2018), and in navigating landscapes of information and misinformation (Ruokolainen and Wid en, 2020;Lloyd and Wilkinson, 2019;Martzoukou and Burnett, 2018) by bridging information gaps through people and places (Oduntan and Ruthven, 2021). Beretta et al (2018) review of research about immigrants' information experience also discusses the role of information and libraries in social inclusion.…”

Heritage as an affective and meaningful information literacy practice: An interdisciplinary approach to the integration of asylum seekers and refugees

“…Refugee information studies have highlighted the role of leisure and “information grounds” (Pettigrew, 1999) in facilitating social interactions and thus fostering integration (Elmore, 2017; Oduntan & Ruthven, 2021; Quirke, 2012; Varheim, 2014). However, such social interactions are mainly framed as “social capital” (Bourdieu, 1986): their benefit to the integration process is seen as resulting from an understanding of socialization as a resource that facilitates information access and literacy.…”