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Integration of Syrian refugees

Figure 3. Syrian refugees sent for resettlement by country of resettlement, 2003–2016.
Source: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Resettlement Data, 2003–2016 (http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/resettlement-
data.html)

policies to curb these flows with military vessels. When refugees reach Australia, they are usually placed in offshore
detention camps (Loewenstein, 2016) with poor living conditions in Nauru and Papua New Guinea (Pearson, 2016).
Canada had a considerable increase in the number of resettled Syrian refugees in 2016 [Figure 3]. The Canadian initiative
is primarily due to a commitment by the Liberal Party’s Fundraising and Community Engagement (Seidle, 2016). By May
2016, 56.5% of Syrians were resettled as government-assisted refugees, 34.9% were privately sponsored, and 8.6% received
federal and private funding. Refugees received 12 months of income support, as well as health care and other services.
Germany has been a major actor in addressing humanitarian aid for Syria and neighboring countries (UNHCR, 2016).
The nation has been pushing for synchronized actions to address the Syrian refugee crisis by EU countries. In 2015, the
German Government reformed asylum policies to accelerate the asylum process, including the establishment of norms for
cash benefits for refugees and the reduction of the financial burden on states and municipalities (Gesley, 2015). However,
in 2016, the government sets stricter asylum rules to suspend family reunification in specific cases, reduce cash benefits,
and facilitate deportation (Gesley, 2016a). These actions seem to have increased the resettlement of Syrian refugees in
Germany between 2012 and 2014 and decreased it between 2014 and 2016 [Figure 3].
Greece has also experienced the impact of the refugee crisis due to its geographical location. In the 1980s, immigration
started to increase in Greece as Asians, Africans, and Poles looked for work in construction, agriculture, and domestic
services. The political changes of the Central and Eastern European Governments in the second half of the 1980s also
increased immigration flows to Greece. A major factor that transformed Greece into a receiving country is its geographical
location, which positions the country as the eastern entrance to the EU with extensive coastlines and easy border access.
Although Greece has had constant inflows of Syrian refugees, it has not been resettling them (UNHCR, 2017a). Most of
these refugees live under difficult conditions on Greek islands (Karakoulaki and Tosidis, 2017).
In Italy, the number of refugees and migrants arriving in the country has been constantly updated by UNHCR: 153,842
people arrived in 2015, including 70,354 people in the first 6 months of 2015 (UNHCR, 2017b). These figures remained
almost the same when compared to the 70,222 arrivals between January and June 2016. The vast majority of arrivals to
Italy was from Nigeria (17.3%), Eritrea (12.6%), Gambia (8.1%), and Côte d’Ivoire (7.5%). The portion of Syrian (0.3%),
Iraqi (0.2%), and Afghan (0.2%) arrivals remained low in 2016.
The United Kingdom offered to resettle 20,000 refugees by 2020 (OXFAM, 2016b). Scotland alone offered to resettle at least
2000 Syrian refugees (Gower and Cromarty, 2016). In December 2017, the Scottish Government celebrated the resettlement of
2000 Syrian refugees, 3 years in advance of their original plan (Nelson and Saltmarsh, 2017). This proposal included children and
orphaned children, per the UNHCR recommendations. Full costs of resettlement are expected to be covered from the international
aid budget, to ease pressure on local authorities. The organization, Save the Children, insisted that the British government should
resettle 3,000 unaccompanied children who were in Europe in 2016 (Dearden, 2016; Gower and Cromarty, 2016; Wintour, 2016).

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