Introduction

Although many Western nations are sites of asylum for refugees, their fulfilment of this humanitarian obligation has become increasingly begrudging and a matter of intense political debate. Different national and political attitudes, and different immigration and resettlement policies affect refugees’ social and material trajectories (van der Veer, 1992; Renaud and Gingras, 1998), and can be prime determinants of their reconstructions of ‘home’ and belonging in the country of asylum (Black, 1994, 2002; Bloch, 2002; Korac, 2003). Research indicates that early stable housing trajectories beget security and autonomy and facilitate functional and social integration (Zetter and Pearl, 1999; Carey-Wood et al, 1995; Carey-Wood, 1997; Murdie and Teixeira, 2000; Garvie, 2001; Foley and Beer, 2003). Some research suggests that the terms ‘social integration’ and ‘functional integration’ are synonyms measured by socioeconomic or ‘instrumental’ indicators (Ray, 2002). However, more frequently a qualitative distinction is made between functional and social integration, where socioeconomic ‘instrumental’ indicators describe the former, and ‘affective’ indicators the latter. Functional integration is commonly measured in terms of language proficiency, labour market participation, civic and political participation, educational performance, and accommodation in adequate housing (Home Office, 2000; Ray, 2002) and social integration is inferred from issues of identity, belonging, and the quality and strength of social links (Korac, 2002; Zetter et al, 2002). Research has demonstrated that ‘affective’ indicators are profoundly significant to integration (Ryan and Woodill, 2000; Bloch, 2002; Korac, 2002; Zetter et al, 2002), and are knowable through in-depth interviews and a research process that creates room for participants to voice their evaluation of their circumstances and their personal satisfaction, and to reflect on their current situations in the context of the whole of their refugee experiences, including displacement, flight, asylum seeking and settlement.

Although governments pay lip-service to the rapid integration of newcomers, systemic and structural obstacles act to frustrate assertions of individual agency or upward mobility. Programmatic integration strategies that are based on involving, enabling and empowering refugees through actualising and validating their agency contribute to meeting their tangible and material, and ‘fundamental needs’. ‘Fundamental needs’ include dignity, security, social connectedness and identity (Stenström, 2003, p 30), and are important not only because they buttress functional integration, but because they are essential to human welfare and a sense of home.