The Refugee Hosts project has published a new report titled “Religion and Social Justice for Refugees: Insights from Cameroon, Greece, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia and Mexico”. 

Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge from the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) at the University of Birmingham is a Co-Investigator of the Refugee Hosts project.  This major report is a result of two years of collaboration between the Refugee Hosts project and colleagues at Yale University.  Drawing on over 300 in-depth interviews with refugees, members of local host communities and locally based organisations in towns, cities and camps in Cameroon, Greece, Malaysia, Mexico, Lebanon and Jordan, the report identifies and examines the ways that faith plays an important role in supporting social justice for refugees.

Such a broad range of examples and case studies demonstrates a clear disconnect “between what policy makers and practitioners assume that ‘refugees need’ and what different groups of refugees themselves consider to be essential requirements, as prerequisites to dignity and justice”.  Engaging with these needs and finding ways to ensure humanitarian interventions promote rather than undermine social justice, therefore emerges as a key issue for policy makers and practitioners.

The report also details how religion is variously politicised and racialised in diverse contexts.  This demonstrates the need for greater attention to be directed toward “the varying ways in which religion is imposed, adopted, rejected, and negotiated as a key marker of identity by different stakeholders affected by and responding to displacement”.

Read more information about the Refugee Hosts project

View the full 'Religion and Social Justice for Refugees' Report