Missing chapter of the modern refugee crisis.

At the end of next month the world will commemorate a refugee week. It aims to bring attention to the refugee crisis, while celebrating the diversity and contributions of the various refugee groups. This month I was invited to take part in the Tate workshop exploring how digital archives can best capture the ways in which cities change in response to the arrival of refugees. It is part of the research project by the LSE and Rockefeller Foundation and a dedicated team of researchers spent the past year collecting stories of refugees in Athens, Berlin and London. These stories, once published, will shed light on refugees' past lives, motivations for fleeing, hardships of transit and camps, and losses. Losses of culture, family, rights and purpose. Despite it's comprehensive scope, I couldn't shake the feeling that one chapter in particular was missing. The chapter I have in mind would be titled 'Integration', and it isn't missing through researchers' omission, it is missing because to date it is largely non-existent in refugee stories. Stuck in a cycle of uncertainty, they do not plan for the future and cannot begin to rebuild their lives. 

Before I go on, I must confess to my own bias - I work in this field. Together with a few colleagues and an army of dedicated volunteers, we run Code Your Future (CYF) - a coding school for refugees, asylum seekers and other disadvantaged groups that aims to aid social integration through education and highly skilled employment in the tech sector. I, we, believe that comprehensive vocational (re)training and consequent high-skill future-proof employment are keys to attainments of stability and social integration. 

I was talking to a founder of an Italian IT school for refugees recently and she mentioned, unkindly though not unjustly, that our approach for comprehensive tech education would never work in Italy. UK has always been very selective about people it gives shelter to and refugees who wash up on the beaches of Italy are very different to refugees who come to the UK. They are, in her words not mine, "crème de la crème" of the refugee community. She is not wrong, people we work with often have higher education degrees. At least a dozen of the 100 or so people we worked with to date held PHd degrees. I am willing to bet a pretty dollar that nothing I have done so far in my academic or professional life has been as intellectually challenging as obtaining a PHd in mathematics. Yet it is them, not I, who are relegated to the fringes of our society.  

Asylum seekers live on £35.39 a week, are barred from employment or educational establishments, and until 2013 were prosecuted for daring to volunteer. Lucky asylum seekers who received their refugee statuses are often stuck in unreliable, low-paying, entry-level manual jobs, provided that they are lucky to find a job in the first place. Even despite policies that only select the best of those in need (UK is home to measly 0.005% of global refugee population), we still fail to make use of the people who look for shelter in the UK. 

As Third Reich began its ascendancy in 1930s, some 100,000 refugees fled to Britain from Central and Western Europe. Among them, 10,000 Kindertransport children. Like 100,000 Ashkenazim half a century earlier, they were fleeing a superstitious, tyrannical regime that institutionalised a pogrom on their way of life; and the violence and bigotry that followed in its wake. They recognised the regime for what it was and looked for refuge in Britain. The popular image of a refugee in any age is rather unflattering - impoverished, a threat to the way of life, a drain on society. In his book The Hitler Emigrés, Daniel Snowman estimates that 1930s migration produced 74 Fellows of Royal Society and 16 Nobel laureates. The 100,000 who fled Nazi ideology weren't just another uncultured mass, this was Europe's cultural elite. Intellectuals, scientists, entrepreneurs and artists of every shade, they have invigorated every aspect of British cultural, academic and political life. 

Currently, there are just over 120,00 refugees in the UK. About half of them are unemployed, as only 1 in 5 refugees are likely to secure employment in the first 5 years after arrival. Over 50% of refugees with higher education struggle to find jobs. Public initiatives  to get refugees into jobs are well-meaning but are largely anaemic. Nation-wide charity Refugee Council helped 79 people to enter employment in 2017/2018, that's 0.001% of the unemployed refugee population. I am not just pointing fingers either, to date CYF have only placed 49 of 71 graduates in jobs. These are good coding jobs but it is still just 0.0008% of unemployed refugees. Look around the sector and you will find that even prominent organisations are struggling to attain triple digits for refugee job placement. We are barely making a dent. It is not a question of effort, scale or reach, this is a matter of market-wide exclusion. At this rate, it will take just a few short centuries to bring unemployment rate within the current crop of refugees on par with nation's average. I dare say some of them may not make it that long. 

Of course, we aren't the only players in the sector, nor the biggest, and refugee employment is not a matter to be tackled by a charity sector alone. Market-wide problem requires a market solution. Corporate efforts to put refugees on the employment ladder are a lot more impressive. Starbucks have pledged to hire 10,00 refugees globally (2,500 in Europe) by 2022. WeWork pledged to hire 1,500 refugees globally and in partnership with Breaking Barriers are offering customer service training to prepare refugees for employment. To date these are some of the biggest pledges for refugee employment from corporate sector. 

I have a few bones to pick with Gandhi, but he was right to point out that "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members". If a career ladder into customer service for precious few is the best we can offer "crème de la crème" of the refugee community, it does not reflect poorly on them, it reflects poorly on us. One of the life stories captured through the project came from M--- - a Syrian refugee who is currently living in Berlin. Back in Syria, M--- organised Mathematics and English classes to help his community grow. He could do it in Berlin too but in this new life he'll be serving you coffee if he's lucky.

It is not my intention to slight customer service jobs. Honest job deserves respect whatever it's nature. My hear, hear! is more elemental. I think we can do better, or should at any rate. To settle for anything less, to make customer service jobs a pinnacle of refugee ambition would be to do injustice to the diversity of culture, talent, and life experiences that refugees bring with them. There are those who say that it is up to refugees to work hard and establish themselves in the society. Many of them do and will continue to do so, but they are doing it in spite of the society not because of it. Currently, UK government has no actual national strategy for how to transition refugees into any labour market, let alone high skilled employment. Let that sink in. Under current conditions, refugees are set upon the path of uncertainty, loss, prejudice and isolation. This leaves but little space for hope and we mustn't forget that aspirations do not take flight in restless, desolate souls. 

We have the means to give refugees a second shot at a good, positive life. What we need now is empathy to understand the complexity of their experience and an actionable desire to open doors. I've seen them in action, if we let them, they'll write the chapters of refugee prosperity and community enrichment themselves.