Acceptance to be the host of a resettlement programme : a literature review

Sridarran, P; Keraminiyage, KP; Fernando, N

Abstract

The rate of internal displacements and consequent resettlements are increasing rapidly and drawing the attention of the world. More often than not, the consequences of resettlement will have an impact on two different communities; the community which is being relocated (displaced community) and the community receiving the newly relocated community (host community). For example, social disintegration and severe impoverishment are some of the immediate consequences of resettlements, which affect not only the displaced community but also the host community. As these negative consequences are more than likely to demand resource sharing, it is not unusual that the host community often blames the displaced communities for creating economic losses and social unease. Therefore, receiving community’s acceptance to host the new community is essential to ensure integration and to sustain the resettlement, if the repatriation is not possible for the new community. Accordingly, this paper aims to identify the influences of acceptance between the displaced and the host communities.

A comprehensive literature review was conducted to identify acceptance factors and to draw conclusions. Results show that segregation and labelling, differences in land use pattern, inadequate resources to share, the growth of an informal economy, lack of improvement in public services to the population increase, and cultural barriers are some of the factors influencing the acceptance of the host community. However, the significance of these factors is highly dependent on several background factors such as the wealth of the host community, nature of government policies, livelihood of the host community, and alike. Understandably, the difficulty in establishing an empirically verifiable list of factors affecting the acceptance / rejection between the host and the displaced communities may be attributed to the fact that these factors may stem from latent variables. Therefore, an empirical study based on the identified factors is recommended for future research to determine the latent variables.

Citation

Sridarran, P., Keraminiyage, K., & Fernando, N. (2018). Acceptance to be the host of a resettlement programme : a literature review. Procedia Engineering, 212, 962-969. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2018.01.124

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Feb 22, 2018
• Publication Date: Feb 22, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jan 28, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 28, 2019
• Journal: Procedia Engineering
• Print ISSN: 1877-7058
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Volume: 212
• Pages: 962-969
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2018.01.124
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2018.01.124
• Related Public URLs: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/procedia-engineering/vol/212/suppl/C