BACKGROUND, AIM AND FOCUS

BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION
 
In June 2006, the Community Relations Commission (CRC) released a report of an investigation into African humanitarian settlement in New South wales.[1] This report was the product of wide community consultations in New South Wales including the Sierra Leone Refugee Support Group in which I serve as the secretary. I became interested during the consultation meeting in which I participated where the Chairman of the Community Relations Commission was talking about broad themes of resettlement challenges for African refugees. I remember noting a concern and expressed interest on finding out why African refugees pose more challenges for settlement services than any other cohort of refugees in the past.
To start this enquiry, I volunteered some hour’s services to the Sierra Leone Refugee Support Group and was given an office in a Migrant Resources Centre for a period of one year learning and helping Sierra Leonean refugees about settlement services. I had since then participated in a lot of forums and attended management training sessions related to refugee issues. I have written comments and suggestions in the Community Builders websites and a member of various advisory groups including the Multicultural Advisory Committee (MAC) of the Canterbury Council. I had also given guest lectures to various organizations including STARTTS, St Vincent de Paul about working with Sierra Leonean refugees.
In June 2005, I participated in a research within the Sierra Leone community and published the Sierra Leone Community Profile an effort commended by one Minister who launched the report as one of the first refugee community profile to be made by members of the community themselves. I wrote the forward to that report and issues raised there indicate how much I had demonstrated a keen interest in pursuing further research for and with the community.

I have been keen to learn and promote the understanding of settlement issues among members of the Sierra Leone community since this time from a pragmatic point of view. This proposal and so this academic inquiry is based on the quest to understand the various processes through which African refugees experiences are implicated and how that might be explain from various theoretical standpoints.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Integration of refugees is one of the preferred options for most refugees resettled in western countries. What refugees do and how they do it in trying to integrate in their new society is understudied. There is no available framework to understand the interaction between the cultural capital of both refugees and host communities and how that influences the existence of various vital conjunctures in the Refugee Integration Experience (RIE)
 
AIMS OF THE RESEARCH
 
This research is aiming at developing a model of the Refugee Cultural Integration Experience in resettlement countries. The research seeks to understand how refugee experience cultural integration through various points of liminality in that experience refers to here as vital conjunctures. To what extent is the agency of the refugee in this process matter in influencing outcomes at each point of conjuncture? What is the nature of the interaction and which elements of the cultural capital of both refugees and host community influence each other and to what extent?
 
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
There is a vast amount of literature on refugees but very little systematic and coherent theoretical and conceptual framework exist for understanding integration issues of refugees. This can be partly attributable to the gaps on empirical research about different aspects of integration of refugees. In this review, I intend to outline a general framework in which migration studies and acculturation theories have lacked sufficient details to help us understand the complex processes of integration of refugees into a new society.
This research hopes not to fill this significant gap as it will be beyond its scope. There is currently lack of research about experiences of refugees from Africa regarding integration, how they see themselves, their communities and the Australian society. There is little or no research on the various strategies of integration developed by the refugees themselves. I assume that this will be useful source of knowledge about the ways in which refugees respond to specific policy contexts and which policies allow refugees to cope better. Additionally, there is also a lack of research about the role of refugee communities and networks in the process of integration. I assume that such a research would shed more light on the relationship between integration of groups and individuals. Exploring how communities facilitate integration in the receiving society. Where resources are available, a comparative study between various refugee communities in Australia and their roles in the integration process might be useful.