Being Far Away From What You Need. The Impact of Dispersal on Resettled Refugees’ Home-making and Place Attachment in Small to Medium-Sized Towns in the Netherlands
Dr. Ilse van Liempt, Utrecht University
Based on semi-structured interviews with 10 families and one single person from Syria who have been resettled under the EU Turkey Statement, this article looks into processes of homemaking and place attachment in small to medium-sized towns in the Netherlands. We distinguish between homemaking practices in and around the house and in the neighbourhood, and also look at the wider transnational social environment of refugees in order to understand how Syrian resettled refugees experience everyday life in the Dutch small to medium-sized towns to which they are dispersed. What constraints and opportunities do they experience in everyday life and how are resettled refugees becoming part of the community after being dispersed upon arrival? And how do resettled refugees who have been identified as exceptionally vulnerable experience the transition, upon arrival, to an integration system which relies heavily on refugees using their own agency?
About the speaker
Ilse van Liempt is an Assistant Professor in Urban Geography in the Human Geography Department. Previously she worked at the Institute for Ethnic and Migration Studies (IMES) in Amsterdam and at the Sussex Center for Migration Research (SCMR). Her PhD was published in 2007 as a book called Navigating Borders. Since then she has published widely on irregular migration, refugee migration, gender, public space, diversity and processes of in and exclusion more generally.
Her talk is based on a research project that was commissioned by WOTRO on the effects of the EU Turkey Deal. Currently Ilse is also working on a research project on Syrians in the Netherlands that is commissioned by the Netherlands Institute for Social Science Research (SCP).
Venue: 1.23/1.24
Date: 05 June 2019
Time: 12:00 - 13:00 CET
