Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and photographs
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- one Introduction
- two Refugees as researchers: experiences from the project ‘Bridges and fences: paths to refugee integration in the EU’
- three Limited exchanges: approaches to involving people who do not speak English in research and service development
- four Breaking the silence: participatory research processes about health with Somali refugee people seeking asylum
- five Home/lessness as an indicator of integration: interviewing refugees about the meaning of home and accommodation
- six The community leader, the politician and the policeman: a personal perspective
- seven Complexity and community empowerment in regeneration, 2002-04
- eight Refugee voices as evidence in policy and practice
- nine Challenging barriers to participation in qualitative research: involving disabled refugees
- ten Why religion matters
- eleven Action learning: a research approach that helped me to rediscover my integrity
- Appendix Guidelines funded through the Economic and Social Research Council Seminar Series ‘Eliciting the views of refugee people seeking asylum’
- Index
ten - Why religion matters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and photographs
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- one Introduction
- two Refugees as researchers: experiences from the project ‘Bridges and fences: paths to refugee integration in the EU’
- three Limited exchanges: approaches to involving people who do not speak English in research and service development
- four Breaking the silence: participatory research processes about health with Somali refugee people seeking asylum
- five Home/lessness as an indicator of integration: interviewing refugees about the meaning of home and accommodation
- six The community leader, the politician and the policeman: a personal perspective
- seven Complexity and community empowerment in regeneration, 2002-04
- eight Refugee voices as evidence in policy and practice
- nine Challenging barriers to participation in qualitative research: involving disabled refugees
- ten Why religion matters
- eleven Action learning: a research approach that helped me to rediscover my integrity
- Appendix Guidelines funded through the Economic and Social Research Council Seminar Series ‘Eliciting the views of refugee people seeking asylum’
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Religion matters when researching refugees and those fleeing persecution or intolerable situations for two main reasons: first, because it is very important to so many of these people themselves, and second, because support groups for asylum seekers and refugees often have a large input from faith communities. Yet Gozdziak and Shandy (2002) found that this was a neglected area of research:
Despite the fact that religious persecution figures prominently in the UN definition of a refugee and faith-based organisations provide emergency relief to refugees, facilitate the settlement of refugees and provide them with a wide range of social services, public debates about migration and displacement on the international and national levels have tended to ignore religious issues. (p 129)
Religious adherence and practice is far more common in many of the countries from which people come to seek refuge than in the highly secularised West. In many non-Western countries, most people still have a religious outlook and religion is not separated from ethnicity and culture. To fail to pay attention to religious identity is, then, to fail to pay attention to an important personal identifier, as well as an important means of understanding and dealing with trauma (Gozdziak and Shandy, 2002, p 130).
When researching this topic, one needs to consider various stages in the career of people seeking and finding asylum. First, whereas many asylum seekers are given ‘temporary admission’ (TA), others are detained from the start. All detention centres (now redesignated removal centres) have a statutory obligation to appoint a manager of religious affairs and must call in appropriate ministers of religion to minister to the different religious groups detained there.
Second, most newly arrived asylum seekers are placed initially in emergency accommodation and attend an induction course before being allocated to more permanent accommodation by the National Asylum Support Service (NASS). They may, however, remain in emergency accommodation for some time before NASS is able to place them. There is no religious provision during the induction process, or when a person is placed in NASS accommodation, unless it is provided by a voluntary organisation.
A third group of people to be considered are refused asylum seekers who cannot be removed back to their home countries because it would not be safe to do so or because the Home Office cannot obtain documentation necessary for their removal.
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- Information
- Doing Research with RefugeesIssues and Guidelines, pp. 167 - 182Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2006