Workshop

Refugee Settlement and Wellbeing over the Life Course

There are now more people displaced by war and other disasters than at any time since the Second World War. Although most live in low-income countries, more than 1 million people have sought asylum in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Australia in the last few years. This influx has had profound effects on domestic politics in those countries and challenged the abilities of NGOs and Governments to meet the needs of people in search of refuge.

This research symposium brings together researchers from Germany, Australia, and the United Kingdom— three countries that have responded to the global refugee crisis in divergent ways — to present and discuss their work based on recent longitudinal studies. Presenters will discuss recent insights from three longitudinal studies:

— WELLCOME: Young civil war refugees from Syria (Germany)
— Survey of New Refugees, 2005-2009 (UK)
— Building a New Life in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Humanitarian Migrants (Australia)

Presentations will provide some preliminary cross-national comparisons of the settlement experiences of refugees, including those escaping recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and will explore factors that could contribute to differences in the successful settlement and wellbeing of refugees. International presenters include:

Professor Tarani Chandola, The University of Manchester
Tarani is a Professor of Medical Sociology. He joined the University of Manchester and the Cathie Marsh Institute in April 2010, was the head of the Disciplinary Area of Social Statistics (2012-2014) and the director of the Cathie Marsh Institute (2013-2016). He was formerly at the UCL Research Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, and prior to that completed his PhD and post-doc at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. He is a co-director of two ESRC centres: the National Centre for Research Methods and the International Centre for Lifecourse Studies in Society and Health.

Professor Sin Yi Cheung, University of Cardiff
Sin Yi holds a D. Phil in Sociology from the University of Oxford. Her research addresses different forms of social inequalities in Britain and in comparative perspectives. Sin Yi has published on the changing inequalities in higher education, ethno-religious penalties in the labour market, lone parents on benefits, claimants’ dynamics, children in care, and refugee integration. Her research has attracted funding from the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Nuffield Foundation, as well as central government departments such as the Department for Work and Pensions, and local authorities. Sin Yi has held visiting positions at Wisconsin-Madison, UCLA, and Stanford University. During her research leave (2017-18), she is taking up a JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) Invitation Fellowship to visit the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo, as well as spending six months at New York University as a visiting scholar.

Dr Hans Dietrich, Institute for Employment Research, Nürnberg, Bavaria, Germany
Hans Dietrich works on several topics related to the life course, inequality, education and the labour market, mainly from the perspective of school-to-work transition. He has published numerous contributions and articles on youth unemployment and youth schemes, vocational training and entry into the labour market from a national and a cross-country perspective. Current research projects focus on the educational decisions of German academic secondary school graduates, the labour market entry of vocational training graduates, and the outcome of pre-training schemes for less-qualified school leavers in Germany.

Date & Time

Mon, 21 May, 2018

10:00 am – 5:00 pm (AEDT)