To what extent, and in which ways, do community integration projects in the UK support the psychosocial wellbeing of refugee members?

Abstract

The number of forcibly displaced people worldwide currently sits at 108.4 million, with nearly 329,000 refugees recorded as living in the UK. UK asylum and immigration policy is becoming ever more restrictive with the backdrop of the hostile environment, including no right to work for asylum seekers, the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and, most recently, the Illegal Migration Act 2023. Such policies serve to disrupt asylum seeker and refugee integration within UK communities, requiring third-sector organisations, including community integration projects (CIPs), to fill statutory gaps. A lot has been written about CIPs but there are still opportunities to discover to what extent, and in which ways, they support the psychosocial wellbeing (PSW) of refugee members, drawing on experience from emergency and humanitarian settings.

This narrative literature review of 20 studies overall finds that CIPs support the PSW of refugee members through safe space provision, facilitating meaningful occupation, addressing members’ marginalisation and through contributions to integration strategy. These findings have been analysed in light of the Indicators of Integration framework and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) core principles, with the author suggesting that support of PSW in integration settings would be facilitated by implementation of the IASC MHPSS principles.

The author suggests updating the Indicators of Integration framework to include ‘agency’ under the Facilitators heading, and the creation of guidelines similar to the IASC MHPSS ones for emergencies but for integration settings.