The conference took place on November 23 at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. Below is the conference programme.
The IGHD’s Psychosocial Wellbeing, Integration and Protection (PIP) cluster is delighted to invite you to our third annual conference, “Social Connections and Integration: Learning from the Past, Building towards the Future,” which will take place on Wednesday November 23, 2022, at QMU and online.
It is now 20 years since Alison Strang and Alastair Ager began working on what would be the Home Office’s first Indicators of Integration (2004) report, in which they detailed “the importance of relationships to understanding the integration process.” For those of us – researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike – continuing the tradition they started, this conference presents an opportunity to celebrate, take stock of the past and reflect on the future of the framework that has shaped integration policy in the UK and beyond. Whilst last year’s conference explored the role of social connections in everyday integration, with researchers learning from practitioner reflections, this year we are turning the tables: inviting practitioners to reflect with their research partners.
Together we will contemplate the 20-year legacy of social connections across three panels: 1) The social connections approach to integration; 2) Integration, Isolation and Trust; 3) Social connections in humanitarian settings. We are delighted to announce that our keynote speakers, Dr Alison Strang and Professor Alastair Ager, will close the conference with a panel discussion on the influence and evolution of the approach over the past two decades and the new directions, challenges and opportunities of decades to come.
9:30-10:00 Registration and coffee
10:00-10:15 Welcome – Dr Marcia Vera Espinoza & Prof Daniel Reidpath
10:15-11:15 Panel 1 – The Social connections approach to integration
Panel Chair: Dr Emmaleena Käkelä
Framing question: How has learning from our practice-research engagements contributed to our understandings of the role of social connections in refugee integration in the UK?
Form, function, meaning: findings on social connections from the ABM3 project | Helen Baillot
Helen Baillot is a Research Fellow currently conducting research on the AMIF-funded New Scots Integration project. Helen was involved in the evaluation of Scotland’s Holistic Integration Service (with Alison Strang and Elodie Mignard) and was an adviser and service manager for Scottish Refugee Council from 2002-2012. Her research and practice interests include integration, social connections and the migration experiences of women and children.
Embedding the Personal within the Systemic: on the Politics of Care in Integration Service Provision AMIF BRC | Dr Arek Dakessian
Dr Arek Dakessian is a research fellow at the IGHD. As a sociologist, his research interests lie in the production of political alterity and the intimate entwining of the aesthetic and the political. His current projects include work around integration policy and the provision of health and integration services in the UK, with a focus on Scotland.
Support for Scotland’s Afghan refugees: Promoting networking and agency among local authorities and their communities AMIF SRC | Gianluca Palombo
Gianluca Palombo is a research assistant, policy consultant and project manager with an interest in asylum, migration and equalities. After completing his International Relations MSc at the University of Glasgow in 2017, Gianluca worked freelance with Scottish Refugee Council and has consulted with organisations such as Migration Policy Scotland. Currently, he works as a research assistant at the Institute for Global Health and Development at Queen Margaret University. Gianluca also has several years of experience organising programmes and campaigns for Scottish NGOs CodeYourFuture and Maryhill Integration Network.
Discussant: Wafa Shaheen | SRC
Wafa Shaheen is Head of Asylum, Integration & Resettlement Scottish Refugee Council. Wafa joined Scottish Refugee Council in 2000. She has worked on immigration and asylum issues, programmes and projects providing information, advice, advocacy and support to refugees at different stages of the asylum and integration process.
11:15-11:30 Break
11:30 – 12:30 Panel 2 – Integration, isolation, Trust
Panel Chair: Dr. Arek Dakessian
Framing question: what have we learned about the factors that counter isolation and promote social connectedness?
Out of reach: social connections and their role in influencing engagement between the police and refugees | Bryony Nisbet
Bryony Nisbet is a researcher with Migrant Integration and Social Connections team at Queen Margaret University. She has extensive experience as a mental health professional across the statutory and third sector. Her research interests include refugee integration, wellbeing, mental healthcare accessibility, and participatory research methodologies. She led on the research extension phase of the AMIF-funded Family Reunion Integration Service. Funded by the Scottish Institute of Policing Research - Seldom Heard Communities grant, Bryony was also Co-I on research that explored refugee and asylum-seeker experiences, trust and confidence with Police Scotland.
Experiences of Refugees and Asylum Seekers during Covid-19 Lockdown: Implications for Connection and Integration | Dr Maleeka Salih
Dr Maleeka Salih is a researcher and consultant in the field of conflict-related mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) services with a particular focus on transitional justice and psychosocial wellbeing. Her focus of work is on addressing the challenges of promoting MHPSS services and developing the institutional and personnel capacities for delivering these services. Through her research and capacity building work, she is interested in enabling vulnerable and marginalised individuals and groups access support services for their wellbeing. She has a PhD in International Development and Global Health from Queen Margaret University.
Integration or Isolation? Refugees’ Social Connections and Wellbeing | Prof Neil Quinn (Confirmed)
Prof Neil Quinn is Professor in Social Work and Public Health and Co-Director of the University's Centre for Health Policy. He is an international leader in social work and public health has been invited to be a Visiting Professor at New York and Yale Universities. He has a particular expertise in health inequalities, human rights and citizenship and has a specific commitment to working with vulnerable groups, including people with mental health problems, asylum seekers and refugees and people experiencing homelessness. Neil has led a number of important research and knowledge exchange programmes.
Safe Spaces: Developing Trusting Relationships in the Healing Neighbourhoods Project | Leyla Kerlaff
Leyla Kerlaff is a research fellow within the Migration Integration and Social Connections team at Queen Margaret University. An anthropologist, she has extensive experience working in the fields of social development and inequality. Her research interests are in forced migration, social connections and the role of place in integration. Particularly, she works collaboratively with partners to inform understanding of integration and the role of social connections from the perspectives of refugees, settled communities and refugee service providers across the UK.
Discussant: Fiona Crombie | Freedom from Torture
Fiona Crombie is a clinical services manager and psychotherapist based at Freedom from Torture since September 2018. Freedom from Torture is a charity organisation dedicated to the protection and treatment of survivors of torture. She qualified as a social worker in 1999 and maintain professional registration with the Scottish Social Services Council. She also has a Master of Science in Family and Systemic Psychotherapy from the University of Strathclyde, Masters in Social Work and a Diploma in Social Work from Glasgow University. Prior to joining Freedom from Torture she worked for 15 years in the NHS in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in Glasgow.
12:30 – 1:30 Lunch (Coffee provided on return)
1:30 – 2:30 Panel 3– Social Connections in Humanitarian Contexts
Panel Chair: Gianluca Palombo
Framing question: The social connections approach attunes us to the importance of relationships in the integration process. Reflecting on your research findings what role or meaning would you ascribe to social connections in humanitarian settings?
Pathways to care for IDPs in Garowe and Kismayo, Somalia | Amina Jama Mahmud
Amina Jama Mahmud is Director of Research and Senior Gender Advisor at the Somali Institute for Development and Research Analysis (SIDRA) and an associate researcher at Uppsala University, Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, International Maternal and Child Health (IMCH). As a Co-Investigator of the DISOCO project, she leads the Somalia team and leads on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). Amina’s research focuses on gender and social inclusion and health information systems. She has over 15 years’ professional experience in providing strategic leadership in evidence-based policymaking, innovative design, and implementation of needs-based, sustainable programs to improve health and livelihoods for vulnerable communities in Sweden and Somalia.
Connections in the community: from Family to Faith actors | Dr. Kanykey Jailobaeva
Dr Kanykey Jailobaeva's research expertise has focused on child protection, child rights, and community development in low and middle-income countries. Dr Jailobaeva has done feasibility studies, child rights situation analyses, and other types of research studies for different international development organisations (e.g. UNICEF) in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Western and East Africa. She was involved in the study on the faith communities' engagement in ending violence against children in Senegal, Uganda, and Guatemala. She is currently researching the role of faith in child marriage in Bangladesh, Mozambique, Napal, India, and Philippines with QMU.
Intimate partner violence in refugee camp settings: community-based approaches to prevention and response | Dr. Rebecca Horn QMU
Dr Rebecca Horn came to IGHD in 2008 as a research fellow, after being awarded funding by the ESRC to write up some of the work she had done whilst managing psychosocial services in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya. Since 2009 Rebecca has worked as an independent psychosocial specialist, along with continuing in a Research Fellow role with IGHD. Her focus is primarily on community-based approaches to mental health and psychosocial wellbeing in humanitarian settings, particularly with populations affected by conflict and displacement.
Discussant: Dr. Kathleen Routledge
Dr Kathleen Rutledge has served in humanitarian response and development leadership and research for 17 years in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Key roles have included leading a Middle East regional response to the Syria crisis and displacement caused by the war with ISIS in Northern Iraq, serving as Country Director for relief and recovery programming in South Sudan during the civil conflict and spearheading operations as Relief Coordinator in the wake of a catastrophic cyclone in Myanmar. Kathleen is a Lecturer at QMU and Independent Consultant in MHPSS, project design and management and monitoring and evaluation.
2:30 – 2:45 Break
2:45 – 3:45
Keynote speakers’ roundtable
Chair: Marcia Vera Espinoza
Dr Alison Strang is a Senior Research Fellow (Honorary) at the Institute for International Health and Development, Queen Margaret University Edinburgh. Her research addresses the mental health and wellbeing of people affected by disaster and conflict in humanitarian and resettlement. She co-founded the Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Network and established the New Scots Refugee Integration strategy. Over 20 years ago, Alison began the ‘Indicators of Integration’ research programme, commissioned by the UK Government’s Home Office. – which continues to inform refugee policy and practice in the UK and beyond.
Edward Eaton is Principal Research Officer, Home Office Analysis and Insight. Edward joined the Home Office in 2019, as the principal research officer leading on evaluation and research relating to refugee resettlement and integration. He joined the Civil Service as a researcher in 2014, and prior to joining the Home Office he worked in a variety of roles, including research around LGBT policy at the Government Equalities Office, and child mental health and wellbeing at the Department for Education.
Dr Carolyne Tah has worked in various capacities across academia, non-governmental, local and central government. Carolyne has managed and supported the evaluation of numerous national and international programmes in the Home Office and HM Land registry. Carolyne led the commissioning of the original indicators report and co-authored the 2019 published Home Office Integration framework. She is currently the head of ONS Analysis Function cross Government Evaluation support with the remit to develop cross government evaluation capacity and support innovation and better decisions.
Prof Alastair Ager is Emeritus Professor of Global Health and Development at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh and Professor of Population and Family Health at Columbia University. From 2017 to 2020 he served as the Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Department for International Development. He was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in March 2019 on the basis of his applied research and policy influence in the areas of humanitarian response, child protection, refugee settlement and strategic religious engagement.
3:45 Wrap up
4:00 Conference Ends
Social Connections and Integration: Learning from the Past,
Building towards the Future
Click here or on the conference banner above to watch
the keynote speakers’ roundtable from the conference.