Non-state organisations and feminist care ethics: refugee settlement organisations in Melbourne, Australia

In neoliberal states, refugee settlement processes shift responsibility for settlement on to individuals with little recognition of the social and relational networks in which lives are embedded and sustained. However, the settlement services sector comprises a diverse ecology of organizations whose ethical commitments exceed those of neoliberalism. Whether and how these organizations mobilize this more diverse set of commitments beyond the strictures of neoliberalism has implications for the wellbeing of new migrants and the effectiveness of settlement processes in diverse cities. Drawing on interviews with refugee settlement organizations in Melbourne, Australia, we reveal how organizations work to advance a relational social ontology recognizing that services users are emplaced in networks of social connection and relation. These ethics not only foster a sense of familiarity, family, and belonging, but underpin normative settlement outcomes. As such, we offer two key contributions to the geographies of care. First, our research centres non-state organizations as critical sites through which feminist care ethics are operationalized, unsettling and diluting the powerful individualizing logics of neoliberalism. Second, we locate care ethics within the relations between non-government organizations, mainstream services provision and public services clientele, comprising care infrastructures supportive of settlement in post-welfare cities.