From Marginalization to (Dis)Empowerment: Organizing Training and Employment Services for Refugees

Although many UK-based refugees have professional qualifications and experience, they experience high unemployment. This article draws on a study of organizations providing employment-related services to refugees. It explores the discourses and narratives of the providers and refugee users of these services in relation to contrasting constructions of refugee identity. Both the official discourse of refugee resettlement and providers’ accounts emphasize the idea of ‘empowerment’, reflected also in refugee participants’ presentation of themselves as active subjects. But, in an environment characterized as largely unfriendly to refugees, enacting such an identity is difficult. Empowerment has become increasingly associated with refugee participation, self-help and the involvement of refugee community organizations. However, the association of ‘community’ with a position on the margins may serve to reinforce refugees’ outsider status. The question is raised, for both individual refugees and refugee organizations, of the possibility and desirability of choosing not to perpetuate a separate refugee identity.