Gratitude and Hospitality: Tamil Refugee Employment in London and the Conditional Nature of Integration

Abstract

Refugees are often one of the most economically and socially excluded groups in host countries. The policy of integration attempts to address different elements of exclusion, yet relatively little research has considered what integration means to the refugees themselves. This paper explores one key area for supporting integration: Employment. Understandings of integration are advanced by exploring how a group of twenty-six Tamil refugees and nineteen people who worked with refugees in the UK perceived an underlying rhetoric of anticipated gratitude within the policies around refugees. These perspectives are theorised within a framework of hospitality. The participants believed that refugees were expected to be grateful to the host society, and subsequently felt a debt for what the host society had given them: safety and education. However, they also identified frustration towards the host society where they felt marginalised or discrimination. It is possible to analyse employment as both an opportunity to give back, and something for which to be grateful. However, gratitude may not necessarily be felt towards the host society. If employment is found through the ethnic community, gratitude is likely to be concentrated there, rather than in the wider society. For the refugee participants in this research, asylum is a debt which can rarely be fully repaid, leaving them to seek acceptance and respect beyond the tolerance they are offered.