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The Importance of Resources and Security in the Socio-Economic Integration of Refugees. A Study on the Impact of Length of Stay in Asylum Accommodation and Residence Status on Socio-Economic Integration for the Four Largest Refugee Groups in the Netherlands

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Abstract

In many European countries, including the Netherlands, refugees stay in asylum accommodation pending a decision on their asylum request. While it seems evident that the lack of resources and insecurity about the future experienced during this stay will impact refugees’ subsequent ability to integrate with the host society, so far this has hardly been studied in an extensive way. Also, the type of residence status granted can be a source of insecurity that impacts their integration. Previous studies on refugee integration have already shown the impact of pre-migration stressors such as traumatic experiences on mental health and integration. In this study, we use a large-scale dataset containing detailed information on about 4,000 refugees to show that also post-migration stressors affect mental health and hinder the socio-economic integration of the four largest refugee groups in the Netherlands: Afghan, Iraqi, Iranian and Somali.

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Notes

  1. www.vluchtelingenwerk.nl Source: Parliamentary Paper 19637

  2. Asylum seekers aged 18 or over must reside legally in the Netherlands if they wish to enroll for a study. This means that they should either have a residence permit or should be in procedure for a residence permit with permission to await the decision in the Netherlands. Under-age children are entitled to education in the Netherlands until their 18th year. Admission to education does not depend on legal residence in the Netherlands.

  3. Every asylum seeker in a centre is entitled to a weekly financial supplement for food, clothing, and other personal expenditure items. (RVA 2005 article 14, http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0017959/geldigheidsdatum_15-06-2009). The financial supplement depends on the extent to which the asylum seeker must provide for his or her own food. In a centre where the residents are fully responsible for their own food, this supplement is as follows (mid 2009): adults: € 55.16, children until age 11: € 35.38, children older than 11 and younger than 18: € 42.37, and single under-age aliens: € 51.72. Single parents receive an additional supplement of € 28.45.

  4. Language proficiency and knowledge of Dutch society are central to this qualification.

  5. Commission of Equal Treatment [Commissie Gelijke Behandeling]. In: Tijd en Asiel, Terlouw and Zwaan 2011.

  6. Statistics Netherlands distinguishes between western and non-western countries. Western countries are all European countries including Central and Eastern Europe (except Turkey), North American countries, some Asian countries (Japan and Indonesia) and the countries in Oceania (Australia and New Zealand). Turkey and all countries in Latin and South America, Africa and Asia are considered non-western.

  7. Usually, asylum requests are assessed individually, but if the situation in a certain country is considered extremely dangerous, categorical protection is offered to all refugees coming from that particular country or region. Asylum is thus granted on common grounds instead of for individual reasons, but just for a limited period of time.

  8. Survey Integratie Nieuwe Groepen, gathered in 2009. For more information on the fieldwork see Dourleijn (2010).

  9. This also means that the non-response is about 50 % per group. The distribution of age and gender in the sample differs slightly from the population. For example, Somali men are underrepresented, as well as youngsters (in the age of 15–34) in the Afghani, Iraqi and Iranian group; therefore, a weight was included.

  10. The dataset contained only a marginal number of invited refugees (n = 6). Since a different policy applies to this category of refugees, they are excluded from the analysis as well.

  11. The weighted least-squares with mean and variance adjustment estimator is used. This is the default estimator of Mplus and the optimal choice for categorical outcomes, based on the work of Muthén, DuToit and Spisic (1997).

  12. Thus, chance capitalisation, i.e. the chance that a reported significant association is based on coincidence, is reduced.

  13. One of the benefits of Structural Equation Modeling is that you can estimate the model for several dependent variables at once. This is why we tested the effects on employment and social benefits dependency within one model.

  14. For more than 12 h a week, as this is the Dutch definition for belonging to the employed population.

  15. We use the definition of net participation, thus inactive respondents (housewives, disabled and students) are included in this category.

  16. Social assistance (‘bijstand’), unemployment benefit (WW) and/or disability/incapacity benefit (WAO).

  17. We only used those respondents who are salaried workers; self-employed (n = 143) are excluded.

  18. Stays longer than 8 years are defined as outliers.

  19. De SF12 consists of 12 items that form a reliable measure of eight domains of health: mental health is one of these domains (Ware et al. 1996).

  20. For the assessment of the model fit, we use a combination of two fit indices. RMSEA values < .05 are considered to indicate a good fit. A CFI value of .90 or higher indicates strong correlation between the variables, which indicates a good fit.

  21. The BIC criterion is based on model fit and model complexity. It thus represents how much the model deviates from the reality taking into account the number of parameters and sample size. Models with lower values are preferred (Hagenaars 1990).

  22. This is used to test whether the indirect effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable through the mediator variable is significant.

  23. This association is no longer significant when we add language proficiency to the model. This makes sense since the acquisition of language skills is also time-dependent.

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Bakker, L., Dagevos, J. & Engbersen, G. The Importance of Resources and Security in the Socio-Economic Integration of Refugees. A Study on the Impact of Length of Stay in Asylum Accommodation and Residence Status on Socio-Economic Integration for the Four Largest Refugee Groups in the Netherlands. Int. Migration & Integration 15, 431–448 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-013-0296-2

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