This book critically examines the concept of refugee integration, challenging its colonial underpinnings and structural asymmetries while exploring alternative possibilities for inclusion. Through grounded case studies in Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Turkey, and Kenya, it delves into how education, labor, and social participation can foster more just and inclusive political arrangements. By centering the lived experiences of refugees navigating hostile environments and restrictive policies, the volume highlights spaces of agency, dignity, and relation. Rather than offering a singular model, it invites readers to imagine a decolonial politics of inclusion that resists categorization and prioritizes ethical participation beyond assimilation. This work rethinks the moral and political imagination of refuge, charting a critical path toward solidarity and justice.
The volume is aimed at scholars, policymakers, activists, and students engaged in migration studies, political science, sociology, and decolonial theory. It will also resonate with practitioners working in refugee support, human rights advocacy, and international development.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.
This book critically examines the idea of refugee integration, challenging its colonial underpinnings and structural asymmetries while exploring alternative possibilities for inclusion. Through case studies in five countries, it delves into how education, labor, and social participation can foster just and inclusive political arrangements.
Foreword Introduction: Decolonising refugee integration paradigms:
visions for a new politics of inclusion and participation in Europe and
beyond
1. Decolonizing the integration discourse through embedded narratives
2. Valuing womens spaces and communities: refugee integration in hostile
environments
3. Spaces of teaching and (un)learning: forced migration and
volunteer-led English teaching
4. Exclusionary Inclusion in the German higher
education system. Students designated as refugees and the coloniality of
epistemic power
5. Stories of hospitality: practising hospitality and
intercultural dialogue in a University of Sanctuary context
6. Crafting in
waiting: social entrepreneurship and refugee labour at the frontier
7.
Decolonizing refugee integration: challenges and pathways for addressing
protracted refugee situation in Kakuma refugee camp Afterword: Decoding
decolonising in decolonising living and writing integration: commentary of
the special issue on decolonising refugee paradigms
Fiona Murphy is an Anthropologist and Assistant Professor at Dublin City University. Her research focuses on displacement, migration, and environmental change, with a particular emphasis on refugee experiences in Ireland and Turkey. She has also worked with Australias Stolen Generation. Dr. Murphys interdisciplinary work bridges anthropology, creative writing, and advocacy, exploring themes of identity, justice, and belonging.
Ulrike M. Vieten is a transnational Sociologist and Associate Professor at Queens University Belfast specializing in the historical construction and transformation of racialised group boundaries and in and beyond Europe. She has published 8 books; the latest, Loss and Liquid Citizenship in Europe: The Postmigration Condition in an Age of Populism (with Routledge), in 2025. Dr. Vieten has held various research grants focusing on displacement, minority EU citizens, refugees and loss, e.g. working internationally with colleagues in Turkey, Ireland, GB, the Netherlands, Australia and India.
