Resettlement is a tool for the international protection of refugees which has received increased attention by the EU and member states in the wake of the 2015 refugee reception crisis. This report asks how to best ensure that resettlement functions as a durable solution for refugee protection, as is intended by the UNHCR. Here we consider ideas, practices, and actors within the European resettlement regime – from selection in first countries of asylum to the reception of resettlement beneficiaries and their integration in receiving municipalities. Our analysis is based on interviews and participant observation with actors involved in all steps of resettlement to Germany and Sweden, and from local and international organizations in countries of first asylum (Lebanon and Turkey), as well as comparative insights from the USA. Based on the best practices observed in our research material we provide recommendations that we deem conducive to a more holistic and humanitarian approach to resettlement. This includes facilitating spaces for resettlement beneficiaries’ agency throughout the regime, for ‘eye-level’ encounters of mutual respect between the actors involved, and for thinking long-term and holistically about integration as an intrinsic part of resettlement. Ultimately, we argue that centring durability in the different processes of resettlement can serve as a way for the EU to commit to the humanitarian values at the core of international refugee protection.

As a result of the refugee reception crisis in 2015 the advocacy for increasing resettlement numbers in the overall refugee protection framework has gained momentum, as has research on resettlement to the EU. While the UNHCR purports resettlement as a durable solution for the international protection of refugees, resettlement programmes to the European Union are seen as a pillar of the external dimension of the EU’s asylum and migration policies and management. This paper presents and discusses the literature regarding the value transmissions taking place within these programmes. It reviews literature on the European resettlement process – ranging from the selection of refugees to be resettled, the information and training they receive prior to travelling to their new country of residence, their reception upon arrival, their placement and dispersal in the receiving state, as well as programs of private and community sponsorship. The literature shows that even if resettlement can be considered an external dimension of European migration policy, this process does not end at the border. Rather, resettlement entails particular forms of reception, placement and dispersal as well as integration practices that refugees are confronted with once they arrive in their resettlement country. These practices should thus be understood in the context of the resettlement regime as a whole.

In this paper we map out where and how values (here understood as ideas about how something should be) and norms (expectations or rules that are socially enforced) are transmitted within this regime. ‘Value transmission’ is here understood in a broad sense, taking into account the values that are directly transmitted through information and education programmes, as well as those informing practices and actors’ decisions. Identifying how norms and values figure in the resettlement regime aid us in further understanding decision making processes, policy making, and the on-the-ground work of practitioners that influence refugees’ lives. An important finding in this literature review is that vulnerability is a central notion in international refugee protection, and even more so in resettlement. Ideas and practices regarding vulnerability are, throughout the resettlement regime, in continuous tension with those of security, integration, and of refugees’ own agency. The literature review and our discussion serve as a point of departure for developing further investigations into the external dimension of value transmission, which in turn can add insights into the role of norms and values in the making and un-making of (external) boundaries/borders.

Following the refugee reception crisis of 2015, migration and integration have continuously beenplaced in the media and political spotlight in Europe. Part of the attention has been on how new residentsin the European Union might best be enabled to take part in society, and how to mediate potentialconflicts between the newly arrived immigrants and the autochthonous population. Some of theseconflicts have been framed as value conflicts, and particular attention has been paid to issues of gender equality and gender relations. Gender equality as a value is one of the core founding values of the European Union and as such incorporated into the legislations of almost all member states.This report investigates how the value of gender equality is understood and conveyed in integrationwork in Europe. In this context, we approach gender equality not as a fixed concept, but through theideas, practices and actors involved in the value transmission processes related to integration work.Integration work includes a multitude of actions and actors differing across national contexts. Theseinclude state organised civic education courses, language courses, facilitating meeting points, NGO andvolunteering work, bridge builders and many more. This report explores which role values play in everyday integration work in Germany, Hungary, Poland and Sweden, especially after the increase in stateand non‐state initiatives to integrate newcomers.Gender equality allows for a variety of interpretations depending on local, regional, and national context.Important to consider is that the four countries considered in this report have very different experienceswith migration and integration, and, while they have all incorporated to gender equality intheir national legislation), the social practices and norms pertaining to gender equality look very different.The ideas, the practices, and the actors of gender equality evolve over time and throughout differentnational and local contexts. Norms and values continuously transform within and beyond integrationwork, both in individuals and in societies. Their meaning is contested and constantly (re‐)negotiated.Time and trust, and tools to create awareness of one’s own values are essential for the value of gender equality to make a meaningful impact in integration work.

Spain has in recent years become an important destination for care work related migration, particularly for women from Latin America. In order to fill the care gap generated by Spanish women’s participation in the remunerated labor market and insufficient public welfare services, paid care work is becoming more prominent. This thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork among Bolivian care workers in Bilbao in the Basque Country of Spain and their kin in different localities in Bolivia, as well as on analysis of Spanish legal texts. It is a story about what goes on in the encounter between people and global structures of inequality, particularly in the encounter between women who have migrated from Bolivia in order to fill a gap in the Spanish quest for a functioning welfare state, and the structural components that (re)produce their migrancy. Concepts from economic anthropology are used to analyze the research material as part of a global market of care, rather than of so-called care chains. This means discussing dynamics of gift and commodity exchange within this market, and how the ‘spirit of the gift’ figures in the relationships the market entails. By focusing on practices of exchange, and the expectations and experiences tied to these, rather than on preconceived social ties, a better understanding is gained not only of complex webs of social relationships, but also of what the ‘laws of the market’ are, and of how these are connected to different structures of power and social differentiation, such as ‘race’, gender, and class. The story presented here shows how these forms of social differentiation produce particular forms of exchange in a globalized economy of care, and how people negotiate their own becoming on account of these exchanges.

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The migration project taking place between Senegal and Spain is shaped by structural factors in both countries, as well as the gendered (re-) production of identity, making migration a process of global connections and ‘embeddedness’ of economic action in social relations and institutions. Data gathered through ethnographic fieldwork in both Spain and Senegal is examined so as to elucidate how migration is a complex movement in a social landscape where gender, generation, household, kinship, and social networks are shaping the agent’s position within the Senegalese socio-economic structure.

This article presents narratives of the Senegalese migration project to the Basque Country in Spain, exploring two main ideas. First, the ways in which different structural and socio-cultural elements meet in global connections and play a part in the migration project's (re)production are examined. Second, an attempt is put forth to understand how these same socio-cultural elements are present in the migrant's defence, on both a discursive and a practical level, against Spanish legislation's continuous attempts at 'illegalising' his presence in the country. By drawing on migrants' own accounts of Senegalese gender roles, social networks and cultural tropes, I argue that it is the migrant's own sociocultural capital that is used in his attempt to stay afloat in the crisis-ridden Spanish economy.