This report provides an overview of the legal and policy framework of integration policies in the UK and explains the main contours of immigrant integration. The report looks into policies (macro-level), practices of stakeholders (meso-level) and experiences of immigrants (microlevel) in five thematic fields: a) labour market, b) education, c) housing and spatial integration, d) psychosocial health and e) citizenship and belonging. The report draws on interviews with asylum seekers and refugees at the micro level, and with stakeholders from NGOs and local authorities who are involved in the implementation of integration policies at the meso level. The main contribution of this study lies in its micro empirical focus by bringing in ethnographic insights from the perspective of asylum seekers and refugees based on their experiences vis-à-vis migration and integration policies. These individual accounts show us how asylum seekers and refugees are struggling to establish a new home in the UK and at a different level, in developing a belonging to a new place of living, while expressing their frustrations and hopes, their secondary traumas and resilience. In other words, they inform us about their integration experiences in society.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3945509