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Hirosha Lakmali

Hirosha Lakmali
Masters in Development Management
Fakultet for samfunnsvitenskap
27. januar 2017

Hirosha Lakmali

Integration is not something we can plant from somewhere in the society, it should arise from the society. Therefore, community based organisations have more potentials do to effective refugee integration. local community based organizations (CBO’s) has major role to play in refugee integration process because the successful integration process should be a bottom-up plan.

Norway is one of the biggest recipients of refugees in the world Out of Norway’s 428 municipalities, only eighteen municipalities do not have refugees (Østby,2016). More than half of the asylum seekers to Norway in 2015 were from Syria. According to Statistics Norway, Norwegian mapping authority found that Kristiansand is one of the municipalities having a particularly high level of refugees (over 5.53 per cent refugees (Østby,2016). Refugees are faced with considerable challenges when they come to a new society such as cultural and linguistic differences, intricate educational and employment opportunities, climate adjustments, and so on.

 Therefore, there should be strong mechanism to integrate them into society. Integration has been identified as “newcomers to a country become part of society while protecting their cultural identity” (Castles et al., 2002: 112–113), Integration is not something we can plant from somewhere in the society, it should arise from the society. Therefore, community based organisations have more potentials do to effective refugee integration. local community based organizations (CBO’s) has major role to play in refugee integration process because the successful integration process should be a bottom-up plan.

This research project mainly focusses on community Based Organisation in Kristiansand named Refugees Welcome to Agder and how does this organisation contribute for the refugee integration in Kristiansand, Norway. My role of this project is collecting data. I used participant observation and unstructured interviews for data collection. It was a great experience for me to understand how to collect primary data from the research field. It reflected my own master thesis as well. I would like to thank Professor Hanne Halland and Hege Wallewek for giving me this opportunity.

References

Castles, S. (2002). Migration and community formation under conditions of globalization. International migration review, 36(4), 1143-1168.

Østby, L, (2016), Refugees in Norway retrieved from http://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/artikler-og-publikasjoner/refugees-in-norway