Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the direct and indirect impacts of urban Syrian refugees on the residential urban fabric of Al Mafraq city physically and socially. Physically means regarding architectural style and socially means regarding social cohesion and sense of community. Therefore, the research questions are: What are the main source of tensions between the urban Syrian refugees and Al Mafraq host community that hinders the social cohesion? And what is the impact of the urban Syrian refugees on Al Mafraq city socially and architecturally?

Different research methods were used to explore and provide a rich description of the direct and indirect impacts of urban Syrian refugees on Al Mafraq city architecturally and socially. Desk reviews, focus group discussions and semi-structured individual in-depth interviews were used to explore the social impact of the Syrian refugees on Al Mafraq city. In addition, a qualitative comparative analysis was used to explore their impact on architectural style and urban sprawl.

The results show that changes have occurred on the character of the residential environment resulting in a conversion about the urban fabric of Al Mafraq city both physically, in regard to architectural style, and socially, regarding social cohesion and sense of community. Physically, the city suffers from a decline in the uniformity of the built environment, resulting in a partial loss of its identity as a homogenous place with calm, cohesive residential neighborhoods. On the other hand, the social fabric of the city is losing its homogeneity and solidarity, causing a decline in the sense of community, social cohesion and levels of trust, and a rise in the social tension leading to severe conflicts among community members.

The different stakeholders should express high concern for the different sources of tensions between the urban Syrian refugee and Al Mafraq host community. They should foster formal and informal communication and promote dialogue between the two communities to improve social relations and reduce the tension between them. The consequences of Syrian asylum on hosting countries present an issue that has been vastly studied by several scholars and international agencies. Research, reports and surveys all denote the negative impact of refugees, especially in cases where resources are scarce, as is the case with Jordan. As a part of such consequences, Al Mafraq city is moving in the wrong direction as a result of the increasing flow of refugees.

The current discourse about the influence of urban refugees on social and architectural style among host communities lacks veracity. Therefore, the significance of this research is offering an alternative academic view to enrich current knowledge and encourage further discourse research about urban refugees. In addition, this research is a comprehensive and double focused, not just on social inclusion and tensions but on urban environment and architecture. This research is useful for architects, urban designers and planners, sociologists, policymakers and humanitarian and peace-building practitioners in the urban non-camp complex emergency setting.

In 2017, 50 percent of Syrian refugee applications in Egypt were submitted by females. However, a suitable integration strategy for this target group remains obscure since the available approaches focus mainly on male integration. That is due to the assumption that women refugees are mere followers to men who socially and economically dominate the families in the Middle East. Accordingly, the integration of the Syrian women refugees in society, as well as in the market, proceeds spontaneously without clear visions and therefore with delays. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

To methodologically understand the circumstances of the aforementioned group expert, focused and narrative “episode interviews” have been conducted. Alexandria, Egypt’s second capital, is the research case study as well as the researchers’ hometown. Thus, it allows following a “descriptive comparative analysis” process between the three Alexandrian districts, with different urban fabric: “Al-Nkhil Agamy” gated community, “El-Asafra/Sidi Becher” informal settlement and “New Borg El-Arab” new city.

Yet, it is unknown what criteria the Syrian women refugees set for choosing their accommodation. Similarly, the obstacles they encounter, especially the ones preventing their integration, are ambiguous. Even their daily life, which might give insights into the barriers they face, due to their status, is unclear. These are the gaps this paper tackles, in addition to the refugees’ immaterial cultural impact in the host society.

Finally, but also importantly, the topic has been seldom researched in Alexandria, in comparison with Cairo. Therefore, this paper aims at qualitatively hearing of the Syrian refugees’ voices in order to enhance their societal interaction and coexistence in Alexandria.

Access to health-care services for refugees are always impacted by many factors and strongly associated with population profile, nature of crisis and capacities of hosing countries. Throughout refugee’s crisis, the Jordanian Government has adopted several healthcare access policies to meet the health needs of Syrian refugees while maintaining the stability of the health-care system. The adopted health-care provision policies ranged from enabling to restricting and from affordable to unaffordable. The purpose of this paper is to identify the influence of restricted level of access to essential health services among Syrian refugees in Jordan.

This paper used findings of a cross-sectional surveys conducted over urban Syrian refugees in Jordan in 2017 and 2018 over two different health-care access policies. The first were inclusive and affordable, whereas the other considered very restricting policy owing to high inflation in health-care cost. Access indicators from four main thematic areas were selected including maternal health, family planning, child health and monthly access of household. A comparison between both years’ access indicators was conducted to understand access barriers and its impact.

The comparison between findings of both surveys shows a sudden shift in health-care access and utilization behaviors with increased barriers level thus increased health vulnerabilities. Additionally, the finding during implementation of restricted access policy proves the tendency among some refugees groups to adopt negative adaptation strategies to reduce health-care cost. The participants shifted to use a fragmented health-care, reduced or delayed care seeking and use drugs irrationally weather by self-medication or reduce drug intake.

Understanding access barriers to health services and its negative short-term and long-term impact on refugees’ health status as well as the extended risks to the host communities will help states that hosting refugees building rational access policy to protect whole community and save public health gains during and post crisis. Additionally, it will support donors to better mobilize resources according to the needs while the humanitarian actors and service providers will better contribute to the public health stability during refugee’s crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to prepare healthcare providers in high-income countries to deal with mental health and psychosocial issues among resettled Syrian refugees.

Collaborative work of the authors on a comprehensive review of social context, cultural frameworks and related issues in the mental health and psychosocial well-being of resettled Syrian refugees.

A practical guide that emphasizes the importance of considering the social and cultural dimensions of their predicament and highlighting principles that can help clinicians address the unique needs of Syrian refugee patients.

The content of this paper is inspired by the collaborative work of the authors on a report commissioned by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR).

Refugees commonly face inequitable access to health care services in their host country. This study aimed to identify factors influence refugee access to health services and to assess perceptions of barriers to health care for different refugee groups in Jordan.

In-depth interviews were combined with document analysis and analyzed using thematic and framework methods.

Findings highlighted inequitable access to health services between different refugee groups. Unlike Palestinian refugees from the West Bank, Palestinian refugees from Gaza faced financial barriers to access health care as a result of citizenship status, which affected their health insurance, referrals for health care and legal right to work. Syrian refugees similarly lacked Jordanian citizenship and health insurance and mainly depended on UNHCR for health services, though some were able to acquire work permits and pay for private care.

This study demonstrates a need for politically and economically appropriate policies to minimize the disparity of health care access among these refugee groups.

The present qualitative interpretive synthesis (QIS) aimed to re-interpret and understand in detail the findings of the studies related to the health practices of Syrian migrant women living in Turkey.

İn this study, the QIS method was used. Three articles were included in the present QIS study from the five electronic databases.

Present QIS has once and again emphasized that Syrian immigrant women have health problems, yet face problems accessing health-care services. While the women suffer from various health problems and have health care needs such as pregnancy or maternity, they give priority to the needs of their children and other family members and often postpone taking care of themselves. The most important finding was that migrant women do not want to give up on their cultural teachings.

There were only a limited number of studies available for review that fit into the inclusion criteria; the low sample sizes across the included studies posed additional limitations. Despite these limitations, these findings suggest important implications, indicating the migrant women’s health practices from a systemic perspective.

All these issues and concerns should be addressed with empathy for developing sustainable health policies and nurturing healthy future generations in Turkey.

This study is the first study that used the QIS approach to understand and re-interpret qualitative studies findings. Then, this study also emphasized the necessity of looking at the health of migrant women’s health from different perspectives.

Recent years have seen a wave of immigration in western countries. Entrepreneurship can foster refugees’ integration in the labour market. Hence, the authors observe an emergence of incubators with social purpose, addressing the key challenges of refugee entrepreneurs. The purpose of this paper is to look at the particularities and the impact of business incubation on entrepreneurial development and embeddedness of refugee entrepreneurs in the host country by applying the theoretical lens of mixed embeddedness theory.

This paper is based on a qualitative case study approach exploring one business incubation model for refugee entrepreneurs in Germany. For a multi-stakeholder perspective, the data were collected through a participatory focus group workshop and semi-structured interviews of refugee entrepreneurs and incubator stakeholders (e.g. incubator management, mentors and partners) contributing to the incubation. The data collection extends over the duration of five months of the incubation programme.

The empirical results emphasise the impact of the business incubator on refugee entrepreneur’s development and embeddedness. In this analysis, the authors identify key themes of a particular incubation process addressing the lack of embeddedness and barriers to refugee entrepreneurs in the host country. From the results, the authors elaborate a particular business incubation process framework of refugee entrepreneurs.

The findings enhance the understanding how business incubation contributes to the embeddedness of refugee entrepreneurs in their new hosting environment. Thus, this research contributes to the existing literature by extending incubation model frameworks towards refugee entrepreneurship and embeddedness perspectives. Furthermore, the study emphasises the role of the incubator in the context of the dimensions of the mixed embeddedness of the refugee entrepreneurs.

Addressing the housing needs of the displaced communities is an essential part of a recovery programme that has distinct links to livelihoods, health, education, security and social and family stability. The housing factor acts as a social centre for family and friends, a source of pride and cultural identity and a resource that commands both political and economic importance. Therefore, addressing the housing needs of the displaced communities should be seen as a mode to promote resilience and sustainable communities. Instead, the consideration of housing needs merely as a physical need results in many issues to the communities, including no access to livelihood, poor living condition, health problems, lack of financial independence, lack of social satisfaction and social cohesion, and sometimes even recreates and worsens the existing vulnerabilities of displaced communities. Within this context, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors to consider when addressing the housing needs of the displaced communities, promoting resilience and sustainable communities.

The research team of the project titled REbuildinG AfteR Displacement (REGARD) conducted 47 in-depth interviews in four partner countries (the UK, Sweden, Estonia and Sri Lanka) with officials, community representatives, social support networks, agency networks, etc. Apart from that, focus group discussions were conducted with the community members in Sri Lanka covering both conflict-induced and disaster-induced displacement.

The findings of this paper revealed that the housing factor has a significant role in rebuilding communities and determining the long-term satisfaction of displaced communities. Further, the results present eight essential factors to consider when addressing the housing needs of the displaced communities, promoting resilient and sustainable communities.

The findings are helpful for future planners, urban designers, architects and policymakers who work in the resettlement field. Planners, urban designers and architects can use these identified factors to cross-check their resettlement planning and designing strategies in addressing the housing needs of the displaced communities. Further, policymakers can mainstream these identified factors into the resettlement housing-related policies and regulations.

Addressing the housing needs of the displaced communities is an essential part of a recovery programme that has distinct links to livelihoods, health, education, security and social and family stability. The housing factor acts as a social centre for family and friends, a source of pride and cultural identity and a resource that commands both political and economic importance. Therefore, addressing the housing needs of the displaced communities should be seen as a mode to promote resilience and sustainable communities. Instead, the consideration of housing needs merely as a physical need results in many issues to the communities, including no access to livelihood, poor living condition, health problems, lack of financial independence, lack of social satisfaction and social cohesion, and sometimes even recreates and worsens the existing vulnerabilities of displaced communities. Within this context, this paper investigates the factors to consider when addressing the housing needs of the displaced communities, promoting resilience and sustainable communities.

This paper presents the research findings of the “Syrian New Scots’ Information Literacy Way-finding practices” research project, funded by the Information Literacy Group of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. The purpose of this paper is to explore the information needs of “Syrian New Scots” (the preferred name for refugees in Scotland), their habitual and adaptive information literacy practices and the barriers and enablers they encounter within their new socio-cultural setting via their interactions with people, tools and processes.

Primary data were collected via interviews with three Local Authority Leads for Syrian Resettlement and focus groups with Syrian New Scots in three geographical locations in Scotland: two rural areas and one urban. Syrian research subjects were also involved in a drawing exercise that helped to contextualise the findings.

The main information needs expressed by participants revolved around the learning of English language which was linked to addressing health-related information needs, well-being and community engagement. All participants also highlighted the issue of socio-cultural differences in fulfilling everyday life information needs (such as health and housing). Information provision to Syrian New Scots requires a more structured process that acknowledges personalised information needs and it is tailored to the different stages of the adaptation process. The findings suggest that the “ways of knowing” that Syrian refugees bring with them are converging information experiences of past and new knowledge structures gained via different socio-cultural and migration experiences.

The research findings of this project will be of interest to local and regional support organisations and community volunteer groups who contribute to the social well-being and social integration of Syrian refugees. In addition, they may be of interest to public libraries due to their role as centres for educational and cultural orientation sessions, and as places of support for newly settled Syrian refugees and the communities that embrace them.