Maria Francisca R. Costa for SPRH
October
Agree or disagree: “Most refugees who come to my country will successfully integrate into their new society”? If, on a global average, half of the people believe this to be true, the people of Europe seem less optimistic. Under 40% of people seem to have faith in the integration of refugees in their societies—with France, Greece, Germany, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Belgium, and Hungary, among the countries where this share of the population is one of 35% or below. These countries are also among the ones ranking the lowest in the percentage of population believing that refugees are likely to have either a positive or neutral impact in their country’s culture or way of life; in Germany and in the Netherlands, the share of people believing that they will have a negative impact in this field almost reaches 50%.
A study conducted to examine the impact of local populations’ perspectives on refugees on their social integration in Germany found that negative natives’ attitudes do, in fact, reduce the chances of a successful social integration. This last term is defined by whether refugees “feel welcomed in their municipality”, “how much they trust others”, “how often they feel disadvantaged due to their heritage” and “social ties” assessed through “how much time they spend with Germans in general” and in particular “time spent with their German neighbours.” Locals’ attitudes towards refugee populations appear therefore to generate a vicious cycle: more discrimination, less integration and vice versa.
Two factors have been found to influence the attitudes of acculturation from locals to refugees: “perceived value, similarity and threat”. Those who are perceived as more similar to the host community—and thus perceived as having greater “value”—have a greater chance of a successful integration. On the other hand, cultural minorities are frequently perceived as threatening, leading local communities to adopt an exclusionary attitude, “endorsing more ethnocentric forms of acculturation,” towards these groups of refugees. These attitudes perpetuate other obstacles to integration, such as “in the face of hostility and prejudice, refugees’ disengagement front the host society may function as a self-protective mechanism to avoid further rejection.”
In the EU, many non-institutional and institutional factors play a significant role in the difficulties faced by refugees in integrating their host societies. A comparative study between France, Germany, and Switzerland, found frequent discrimination of refugees in accessing employment: “a refugee with higher education and proper training in France described submitting 30 applications for jobs at local pharmacies and all of them being rejected” and “women who wear hijabs were routinely rejected for employment.” Additionally, governmental institutions make the recognition of refugees’ qualifications difficult by demanding “coursework, examinations, and lengthy times of supervision.” These issues generate frequent underemployment within these groups.
Accessing the job market is a crucial means for refugee integration, as “it allows them to learn the language, build a future, regain confidence, and establish status.” Focusing on the relevance of the value perceived of a refugee by the host community, we can easily deduce that such obstacles to achieve status through employment only serves to generate greater stereotyping and discrimination against refugees. Furthermore, the lack of a stable income hinders refugees’ ability to attend community events which reduces the opportunity to establish links within their host societies.
These obstacles generate a distance between refugee communities and locals that is likely to further perpetuate misperception and discrimination against refugees. The most frequent forms of discrimination encompass the “overgeneralization of stereotypes and religion.” As the same study notes, “masses of refugees from the same population” were pictured as “backward, inferior, terrorists or supporters of the Islamic State ISIS, lazy, job-stealing, criminals, and religiously radical”.
Together with their institutions, many European societies struggle to make the successful integration of refugees a reality. The institutional obstacles posed to the economic and social establishment of these groups are those which contribute to perpetuating a devaluation of their position in host societies. Refugees are impeded access to mechanisms of cultural participation and their chances of acculturation and social integration are reduced due to further discrimination. European policies must be redesigned so the reception of people on the move is not thought of as a process to obtain asylum—but one where the acquisition of a refugee status is but the first border to be crossed.