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This chapter introduces the reader to the process that may be involved in supporting those living in Direct Provision (DP) as refugees and asylum seekers. In the first part of this chapter, I will provide a brief history of DP in Ireland, and introduce the role of International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS) in the DP system. An overview of DP, how it is structured and some of the legislation and national policy governing its delivery will also be highlighted. Moving on from this, I will explore my personal experience of DP as an International Protection Applicant in Ireland. This will be followed by a description of how my experience was used in providing peer support in the DP Centre. The process of becoming a peer advocate will be considered, as this involved a range of activities, which helped me to support others, within the setting.

Peer work would previously have been associated with having a lived experience of mental health conditions and working with people in a relatable way to model that context. However, peer support work has since embraced a wider composition from the generic context, seeing that ethnic minorities face many health, social and psychological challenges, especially those deemed Refugees/Asylum Seekers (International Protection Applicants) on their journey to resettlement in host countries. The Health Service Executive's Social Inclusion office plays a crucial role in responding to the health needs of service users from underserved communities. The health and care needs of people from diverse ethnic, cultural and religious communities fall within the remit of the Health Service Executive Social Inclusion office nationally. The context for peer work in ethnic minority communities is that it is a pilot programme evaluated and endorsed as a national programme by the National Intercultural Health Group. It is evidence-based and aligned with national strategy/policy, with training options available to peer support workers. In the Southeast region of Ireland, communities vulnerable to health inequality targeted by the Social Inclusion team would range from Roma to Refugees and International Protection Applicants – formally known as Asylum Seekers. This chapter will focus on these ethnic populations and how peer support work is delivered in these contexts.

Surveys in Europe show that immigration is more of a challenge than an opportunity for a significant number of people. However, little attention is given to attitudes toward immigration in the Middle East. This paper examines the effects of personal values and religiosity on the anti-immigration attitudes of citizens in the Middle East and North African countries.

Utilizing data from the World Values Survey, we analyze how personal values and religiosity affect anti-immigration attitudes in nine Middle Eastern countries. The data covers individual-level data of 9 MENA countries from the WVS Round 7 (2017–2022). Factor analysis is applied as a data reduction method. Afterward, an OLS regression analysis is conducted on the pooled data.

Anti-immigration attitudes increase with age, education, and religiosity. Personal values such as national pride, support for nationals, and belongingness to one’s country significantly affect anti-immigration attitudes. Furthermore, the importance of religion as a measure of religiosity was found to be positively associated with anti-immigration attitudes.

This paper contributes to underexplored literature by investigating how individual-level determinants, such as demographic indicators, personal values, and religious factors, shape anti-immigration attitudes in the MENA context, distinct from European dynamics.

Although there is a growing body of work on immigrants' information behavior, little is known about the pre-arrival information experiences of immigrants who consult formal information sources such as immigration agents. Drawn from a larger study on the information behavior of immigrants, this paper mainly reports the semi-structured interview findings on the pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants who used formal information sources with discussion on how that affected their post-arrival settlement into Canada.

The study used a mixed method approach with semi-structured interviews (n = 60) and surveys (n = 205) with participants who arrived in Canada between the years of 1971 and 2017. Data were collected from May 2017 to February 2018.

Although the overall scope of the original study is much larger, this paper features findings on the pre-arrival information experiences derived mainly from an analysis of interview data. This study provides insights into the pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants consulting formal information sources such as immigration firms, individual immigration consultants and more formal government agencies. The author introduces a new concept of “information crafting” by exploring the negative consequences of selective information sharing by immigration consultants/agents in newcomers' settlements in Canada, primarily positive information about life in Canada, sometimes with exaggeration and falsification. The interview participants shared story after the story of the settlement challenges they faced after arriving in Canada and how the expectations they built through the information received from immigration consultants and government agencies did not match after arrival. This study emphasizes the importance of providing comprehensive information about life in Canada to potential newcomers so that they can make informed decisions even before they apply.

The findings of this study have theoretical and practical implications for policy and research. This study provides insights into the complicated culturally situated pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants. Moreover, the study findings encourage researchers in various disciplines, including psychology, migration studies and geography, to delve more deeply into newcomers' information experiences using an informational lens to examine the information newcomers receive from diverse sources and their effects on their post-arrival settlement in a new country. The study challenges the general assumptions that formal information sources are always reputable, useful, and comprehensive, and it provides some future directions for research that seeks to understand the culturally situated information behavior of diverse immigrant groups.

This article develops an innovative multidisciplinary conceptual framework in the field of refugee entrepreneurship by combining the theory of mixed embeddedness with the concepts of intersectionality and agency. Focusing on the phenomenon of refugee entrepreneurship, this conceptual framework addresses the following questions: how is entrepreneurship informed by the various intersectional positions of refugees? And how do refugees exert their agency based on these intersecting identities?

By revising the mixed embeddedness approach and combining it with an intersectional approach, this study aims to develop a multidimensional conceptual framework.

This research illustrates how the intersectional positions of refugees impact their entrepreneurial motivations, resources and strategies. The authors' findings show that refugee entrepreneurship not only contributes to the economic independence of refugees in new societies but also creates opportunities for refugees to exert their agency.

This conceptual framework can be applied in empirical research and accordingly contributes to refugee entrepreneurship studies and intersectionality theory.

While most language departments of the university offer service-learning (SL) subjects based on language teaching, such as “Teaching Chinese as a Second Language in Local Schools” and “Serving the Community through Teaching English,” this paper aims to argue that teaching students to teach language(s) is yet to be the best strategy to serve the service recipients.

SL is widely understood as an experiential learning pedagogy that integrates academic focus, reflection and community service and is shown to be impactful. In Hong Kong, the first university that has made SL a graduation requirement is the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (the University). Considering this, new SL courses have proliferated over the past decade. Adopting a narrative inquiry approach, this paper examines personal narratives from a new SL subject aiming to raise awareness of refugees in Hong Kong. The data includes students’ reflective journals, co-created personal narratives and podcasts and semi-structured interviews.

This paper finds that crafting and recording narratives of shared experiences deepens cultural understanding, cultivates empathy and facilitates language learning in a genuine setting.

Ultimately, this paper advocates a well-designed SL that combines language, content and technology as a powerful, transformational experience for both college students and service recipients.

This paper focuses on a brand new SL course, “Storytelling for Understanding: Refugee Children in Hong Kong,” offered in Semester 1, 2022–2023. The subject was developed by the two authors from a language division affiliated to the University. The deliverables were podcast recordings, co-authored and co-edited by the students and the children.

Peer support work is increasingly recognised as an adjunct support across various systems of health and social care, and is a core principle in trauma-informed care. Those accessing a wide range of human and social services may have experienced prior trauma. As such, trauma-informed care is a universal organisational model that seeks to realise, recognise and respond to trauma, while limiting possible re-traumatisation when individuals are engaging with systems of care. Peer support can play an integral role in supporting those who have experienced prior traumas. However, trauma does not exist in isolation and the wider environment influences, moderates and contributes to how an individual experiences and heals from trauma. Peers can play an important role helping to alleviate some of the environmental influences by helping to build the capacity of those that use health and social care services.

Racism occurs in many ways and varies across countries, evolving and adapting to sociocultural history, as well as contemporary economic, political and technological changes. This chapter discusses the multilevel dimensions of racism and its diverse manifestations across multiracial societies. It examines how different aspects of racism are mediated interpersonally, and embedded in institutions, social structures and processes, that produce and sustain racial inequities in power, resources and lived experiences. Furthermore, this chapter explores the direct and indirect ways racism is expressed in online and offline platforms and details its impacts on various groups based on their intersecting social and cultural identities. Targets of racism are those who primarily bear the adverse effects. However, racism also affects its perpetrators in many ways, including by limiting their social relations and attachments, and by imposing social and economic costs. This chapter thus analyses the many aspects of racism both from targets and perpetrators' perspectives.