In November 1992 the government accepted 1,000 Bosnian ex-detainees released from Serb-run detention camps for resettlement in Britain. This group was the first refugee quota to be accepted into Britain for more than a decade. A resettlement policy was developed by the government in conjunction with the Refugee Council which aimed to resettle the Bosnians in six cluster areas. The resettlement was managed by four non-governmental organisations. The thesis aims to determine the extent to which Bosnia resettlement patterns were shaped by state intervention or by individual refugee decision making. It also aims to make a number of recommendations for future resettlement programmes in Britain. The research was carried out in four locations in Britain - London, West Yorkshire, Oxford and Derby - where qualitative methods were used to investigate key research issues. Interviews were carried out with a range of actors in the resettlement programme, including policy makers and managers, project staff and refugees. The thesis finds that implementation of the resettlement policy varied such that the arrivals were, in practice, the recipients of a very different resettlement policies. It describes the resettlement patterns of the Bosnians and concludes that whilst the resettlement policy played a major role in shaping these, the extent to which they reflect individual decision making varies. The research provides an insight into the decision making strategies of refugees where familiarity and the location of relatives were found to be the key influences shaping resettlement preferences. Housing availability is also found to have played a major role in shaping resettlement patterns.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:636275 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Creators | Coleman, C. C. |
| Publisher | Swansea University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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