Refugees in Strathclyde: the challenge of resettlement

Abstract

The British Government has recently agreed to accept a further 1,000 Vietnamese refugees from camps in Hong Kong. The refugees will be admitted to Britain over the next two to three years and will join the 20,000 Vietnamese already here.&dquo;' This action, under international pressure, is to be welcomed, given the plight of those who have been in closed camps for many years. It ought also to prompt a re-assessment of this country's previous commitment to accepting refugees and its strategies for assisting them to rebuild their lives. Such a re-examination, while overdue, is also extremely unlikely.Indeed, the basic failure of previous refugee settlement was brought home to both statutory and voluntary agencies in a dramatic way when attempts were made to locate refugee communities in Scotland's largest region, Strathclyde. Of the 83 Vietnamese families settled in 1979, only 16 remained in 1988. Out of almost 200 Chilean families settled since 1974, less than 30 could be found. In the absence of adequate services and support, and in some cases facing constant racial harassment, refugees had simply migrated to London and the South. Moving elsewhere had not improved their quality of life, and often the problem of isolation in a hostile white society had been solved at the expense of creating others, such as homelessness.In order to prevent further drift and to ensure that future policies for refugees actually meet their needs, the Glasgow Council for Voluntary Services commissioned the Scottish Ethnic Minorities Research Unit to examine these needs as expressed by the refugees themselves. (2) Detailed interviews were subsequently carried out with 65 remaining households, including refugees from Vietnam, Chile, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.The research particularly identified two major aspects of government refugee policy which have contributed to difficulties experienced in settling in Britain. The first is the Home Office's increasingly hostile and punitive attitude towards asylum-seeking, itself best viewed against a growing at The University of Iowa Libraries on June 25, 2015 csp.sagepub.com Downloaded from

Bosnian refugees in Glasgow: a multi-agency response

“…In contrast 'spontaneous refugees' are individuals or families who have fled persecution independently. Often professionals and intellectuals with more marketable skills than programme refugees, they may experience better success in terms of employment and general living standards, but crucially their right to remain in this country is likely to be a source of concern as the Home Office deals with their claims for refugee status on an individual basis applying increasingly restrictive criteria (McFarland and Walsh, 1988).…”

“…In 1988 Strathclyde Regional Council funded a research project into the experience of refugees in the region and the effectiveness of statutory and voluntary responses to their social welfare needs. In this initiative they were motivated by concern for the ad hoc nature of arrangements and the absence of appropriate co-ordination and planning for refugee arrivals (McFarland and Walsh, 1988). This research criticised the pervasive view of refugee settlement as a series of isolated self-contained emergencies, it emphasised that cumulative strategies were both possible and desirable.…”