2. TERMINOLOGY

This section describes some of the key terms used in this report.

Refugee type

Four types of refugees are identified in the literature. The distinctions between them are based on provisions in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 1951 Convention and 1967 protocol.^[5] The differences largely relate to an individual's eligibility for resettlement-related services and citizenship rights and responsibilities.

An asylum seeker is a person seeking refuge. Once this is granted, the person is officially referred to as a refugee and enjoys refugee status, which carries certain rights and obligations according to the legislation of the receiving country.

Convention refugees are individuals who have been granted refugee status by a state on the basis of that country's interpretation of the 1951 Convention's definition of a refugee.

Mandate refugees are individuals who have been granted refugee status by UNHCR. UNHCR grants refugee status based on the Statute of the UNHCR and the precedent set by the statute's practical implementation over time. The same individual may be both a mandate and a convention refugee.

Quota refugees are people whom the UNHCR has mandated as refugees overseas. These people are then selected for resettlement offshore under annual refugee quota programmes offered by 19 countries, including New Zealand.^[6]

Some countries refer to certain refugees as 'programme refugees' because they come into the country under a named programme such as the Gateway Programme in the UK. They usually have the same rights and privileges, including the right to remain, as Convention refugees (i.e. asylum seekers and persons granted refugee status under the state's refugee determination procedures).

Dispersal

Dispersal refers to policies that direct newly arrived refugees and asylum seekers away from metropolitan areas to provincial or regional centres. The rationale for a spatial dispersal policy is generally to distribute the financial and social costs of receipt of asylum seekers and refugees between local authorities, avoid increasing pressure on housing in areas that are already under stress and increase the speed of acquisition of language skills and knowledge about the host country. Dispersal policies may or may not take account of employment prospects.

Forced migration

Forced migration refers to the movement of refugees and internally displaced people, i.e. people forced to move as a result of conflicts, natural or environmental disasters, chemical or nuclear disasters, famine or development projects. In contrast, migrants are those who actively choose to move to another country, usually for family or economic reasons.

Generations

In this report, the term 'first generation immigrant' describes a person who was born as a national of one country who moves to live permanently in another country. This includes both migrants and refugees.

A subset of the first generation is described in the literature as the '1.5 generation'. There is no consensus of the exact age bracket that individuals should fall into to be considered 1.5. However, this term is generally used to refer to young people who are old enough to remember their previous residence and who are still participating in schooling in the new country (and thus exposed to a different form of socialising from those arriving as adults). They may or may not have been part of the destination decision. Bartley and Spoonley (2008) provide a useful discussion of the definition issue.^[7]

The term 'second generation immigrant' refers to individuals born in the new country to immigrant parents. However, as Bartley and Spoonley point out, those who arrive with their parents in the new country before school age may have a similar settlement experience to those born to immigrant parents in the new country.

Social capital and social networks

Social capital has been variously defined, but in this report refers to assets or opportunities that facilitate individual or collective action among refugees and are generated by networks of relationships, reciprocity, trust and social norms.

Social networks are one form of social capital. Social networks can be within groups (social bonds), across groups within a community (social bridges, such as between refugee communities and members of the host community) or between individuals and organisations and agencies (social links). Research included in this report explores the role of refugees' social networks in promoting or hindering economic participation and in developing connections between refugees and the wider community. Literature relating to refugee community organisations (RCOs) is included in this section.

Social cohesion

This report includes literature that refers to concepts of social or community cohesion. These terms refer to the togetherness and bonding exhibited by members of a community - the glue that holds a community together. The research covered in this report explores four aspects of social or community cohesion - social connectedness, human rights, culture and identity, and safety and security. Literature referring to policies of dispersal is covered in this context.

Social exclusion

Social exclusion relates to the alienation or disenfranchisement of certain people within a society. In this report, it refers specifically to the social exclusion of refugees and covers reference to humiliation, racism and discrimination and to refugees as victims of crime.

Transnationalism and diaspora

Transnationalism refers to various kinds of connections between people sharing some form of common identity (such as place of origin and cultural or linguistic traits) across geographic, cultural and political borders. The term has been adopted in a wide range of contexts and is constantly under review. An early definition defines transnationalism as "the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multistranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement. We call these processes transnationalism to emphasize that many immigrants today build social fields that cross geographic, cultural and political borders" (Basch, Glick-Schiller and Szanton-Blanc 1994).^[8]

Like other migrants, refugees often retain strong transnational ties to more than one home country. Communications technology (for example, the internet and email) has added a new means of achieving interconnectivity over the past two decades.

Diaspora is term for mass migration and is used particularly in postcolonial studies to denote the scattering of peoples away from their homelands. It is also associated with the concept of connections between people from the same origins who now are located in a range of geographical settings.

Some writers use the terms transnationalism and diaspora interchangeably; others distinguish diaspora as the result of forced migration whereas transnational communities may also be the result of voluntary migration. Literature using both these terms is included in this report.

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