Immigration of Refugees as a Policy Field in Rural Areas

As part of an interdisciplinary team of researchers, we analyse the future prospectives of refugees in rural areas. We conducted interviews with local politicians, municipal administration and civil society as well as refugees to examine the potential of integration in rural communities. The guiding research question of our project in the field of political sciences is: What kind of immigration and integration policies are relevant in rural areas and why? First findings show that the challenges related to immigration in rural areas are very specific. Conflicts take place between the autochthonous population and immigrants or civil society and municipal administration or politicians. An example to illustrate this conflict is the issue of mobility, which is typical in rural areas. On the one hand, a shuttle service for refugees in a rural area may support refugees to overcome obstacles of a lack of public transport. On the other hand, the autochthonous population might feel disadvantaged facing the same obstacles while not being eligible for the services offered to refugees. If immigration of refugees becomes a catalyst for general policy issues on local level depends on the way how local politicians face these issues as indicated by our research findings. However, our analysis also shows that the probability of conflict is not the same for all policy fields. There is a higher acceptance of support for refugees in the typical fields of integration policies, such as housing, labour integration, education and language courses, while conflicts are more likely to arise in policy fields, such as healthcare or mobility.