Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Impact of Immigration Policies on Refugee Integration Experiences: A Comparative Analysis

This project asks: How does refugee integration and adaptation play out within different policy contexts? Why do refugees in one host country perceive a better future for themselves than refugees in another host country? The project compares refugees in different countries for two reasons. First, governments vary in terms of refugee integration policies. They allocate different amounts of resources for the economic, social, cultural, and legal participation of refugees. Second, the degree of success in the integration of immigrants and refugees varies by host societies. Examining this topic using an international comparative study design will allow for the development of a typology of reactions to refugees, as well as similarities and differences in the mechanisms of integration. This research will discover what works well and less well in the countries, and why. The primary method of data collection in this qualitative project will be via in-depth interviews with Syrian refugees and other key informants including representatives of organizations who work with refugees. Interviews will be conducted with at least twenty Syrian refugees in each country--Canada, Germany, Turkey and the United States--in addition to about five key informant interviews per country. Interviews will take place in important refugee destinations in each country: Toronto; Buffalo; Istanbul; and Berlin. A purposive snowball sampling method will be used to recruit respondents. All interviews will be voice-recorded with a digital recorder and fully transcribed. Each transcription will be analyzed using standard qualitative methods with the help of atlas.ti, a qualitative data analysis software package, to inductively establish codes and themes from the data to derive findings and draw conclusions. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.