Scholarly record

MAKING RESETTLEMENT WORK IN ROMANIA. STRENGTHS AND CHALLENGES

Smaranda Witec

Abstract

The decision establishing a resettlement program in Romania was agreed in 2008 and Romania joined the European resettlement countries. Thus, Romania has agreed to be involved in taking a more focused responsibilities in addressing global issues in the context of refugee protection, resettlement is the only solution that had not been addressed by the Romanian authorities so far. In June 2010 Romania received the first group of resettled refugees, 38 Burmese resettled from Malaysia and, for the first time, Romania faced with challenges of resettlement. From the analysis of this resettlement operation in Romania (interviews and focus group with the social actors involved), essential was the importance of the pre-transfer stage and of the first days after arrival in the country of resettlement, these first stages having a central role in the development of a successful or of a not successful integration of the resettled refugees. Although both, authorities and NGOs have worked for the beneficiaries involvement in activities designed to assist them for integration, they refused most of the proposals and this had a decisive impact on the development of the integration process. During the process of resettlement of Burmese refugees have emerged a number of difficulties deriving from the lack of an ethnic community support, the complaints about accommodation in accommodation centers, language barriers - effects of transmission of information that refugees do not understand can be difficult to repair: trust can be lost through lack of communication or a communication malfunction, rumors can spread quickly and misunderstandings become a reality in the group of refugees. This had a decisive impact on the development of the integration process. Most of the group subsequently left Romania and some sought asylum elsewhere in Europe, mostly in Nordic countries. Most were subsequently returned to Romania. Currently, six refugees are still enrolled in the Romanian integration programme for refugees. After this resettlement experience in 2010, Romania did not resettle in 2011, 2012 and 2013. In 2014 a new group of Iraqi refugees are planned to arrive from Turkey. The Romanian government envisages different measures to facilitate the integration process of this group and everybody wants to make sure that the Iraqi group from Turkey has realistic expectations and that there will be a proper follow-up after their arrival in Romania. As a support for integration must be enabled and strengthened the cooperation and communication with representatives of the foreigner community in Romania. Difficulties and misunderstandings arising from language barriers will be prevented by intensive language courses for the first six months. It was also an opportunity to reflect on ways to cooperate in order to improve the responsiveness to emergency, urgent and priority resettlement needs. These actions provide for resettled refugees an overview on life that awaits them and also create realistic expectations, so the culture shock of the first days to be lower and easier to overcome.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2014/B12/S2.063

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