About this Research Topic
Integration has in recent decades emerged as the primary policy tool through which the nations of the global north (and increasingly the global south) shepherd their immigrants to achieve “the same social and economic outcomes as natives taking into account their characteristics” (OECD, 2018). Despite scholarship on the importance of social connections to facilitate feelings of belonging and settlement, lack of consensus around what integration means has led to bustling critique of the notion as prescribing processes through which migrant others must work their way into acceptance in the body social. Moreover, scholars recognise that discourses and practices of integration are often used as means to justify accompanying policies of disintegration and exclusion. Put differently, there is a humanitarian hand that cares and a hand that strikes.
Frameworks for understanding migration and integration traverse the realms of theory, policy and practice, and are usually intertwined with discourses and regimes of care and connectedness. This Research Topic aims to further unsettle debates around integration and care through an engagement with the value commitments that underlie integration projects and that drive everyday practice and service provision, drawing upon perspectives beyond the global north.
Using the framing and methodology of ‘social connections’, we seek to further these debates by exploring where displaced people actually turn to for care, why they seek or avoid these actors, and how closely connected they are to them. The social connections approach includes ‘formal’ care actors such as the state and the third sector, yet goes beyond these to investigate the roles of ‘informal’ indigenous, religious, customary, and others to interrogate processes of (dis)integration and care. We therefore invite papers that shed light on integration policy, practice and situated experience as underpinned by notions and politics of care, navigated through everyday relationships and connections of care giving and receiving that bring "into comfort something that’s uncomfortable" (Caduff, 2019).
In this collection we welcome manuscripts that engage conceptually, methodologically or empirically with themes including, but not limited to, the following:
- Experiences of migrants, refugees and displaced populations in giving and receiving care (broadly conceived as the provision of health, integration and other – including more informal – services) across a diversity of contexts.
- Approaches that explore these topics relationally, including through network analysis.
- Alternative or critical understandings of care from the perspective of people on the move as well as care providers.
- The role of informal as well as formal or institutional social connections in care provision.
- The politics of care and/or integration.
Frameworks for understanding migration and integration traverse the realms of theory, policy and practice, and are usually intertwined with discourses and regimes of care and connectedness. This Research Topic aims to further unsettle debates around integration and care through an engagement with the value commitments that underlie integration projects and that drive everyday practice and service provision, drawing upon perspectives beyond the global north.
Using the framing and methodology of ‘social connections’, we seek to further these debates by exploring where displaced people actually turn to for care, why they seek or avoid these actors, and how closely connected they are to them. The social connections approach includes ‘formal’ care actors such as the state and the third sector, yet goes beyond these to investigate the roles of ‘informal’ indigenous, religious, customary, and others to interrogate processes of (dis)integration and care. We therefore invite papers that shed light on integration policy, practice and situated experience as underpinned by notions and politics of care, navigated through everyday relationships and connections of care giving and receiving that bring "into comfort something that’s uncomfortable" (Caduff, 2019).
In this collection we welcome manuscripts that engage conceptually, methodologically or empirically with themes including, but not limited to, the following:
- Experiences of migrants, refugees and displaced populations in giving and receiving care (broadly conceived as the provision of health, integration and other – including more informal – services) across a diversity of contexts.
- Approaches that explore these topics relationally, including through network analysis.
- Alternative or critical understandings of care from the perspective of people on the move as well as care providers.
- The role of informal as well as formal or institutional social connections in care provision.
- The politics of care and/or integration.
Keywords: Refugees, IDPs, Migrants, Migration, Displacement, Integration, Service Provision, Social Connections, Health Services, Care
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
