Fostering inclusion of refugees: storytelling and dialogue

The goal of this Agora project is to foster dialogue with Eritrean refugees, Swiss citizens, and social workers about integration challenges based on our SNSF funded project. The integration of Eritrean refugees, the largest group of black refugees in Switzerland, is a significant social issue. Most live below the poverty line, relying on social welfare due to high unemployment, low educational attainment and insufficient income. Studies show that the public has limited understanding of the challenges refugees face in integration owing to distortions in media representations and political discourses. For our SNSF project, we conducted in-depth interviews with 65 Eritrean refugees of varying lengths of residence in Switzerland to understand their experiences at different stages of integration. The research advanced the framework of integration by demonstrating the multidimensionality of refugee agency and introducing a novel theorization of emotional labour. We found that misunderstandings of cultural differences constrain employment and job training opportunities. We also identified several barriers contributing to dependence on social welfare. Additionally, we found that difficulties in making friends and experiences of prejudice constrain contact with Swiss citizens. These findings form the three axes of our communication concept: cultural differences, barriers to independence, and contact across boundaries, which form the foundation of this Agora project. We aim to raise awareness of refugees’ struggles and facilitate dialogue with Eritrean refugees, Swiss citizens, and social workers about effective integration measures and strategies for social inclusion. We also seek to empower refugee participants by giving them the opportunity to voice their opinions and concerns. This Agora project will develop three means of communication: a storytelling video documentary, video cafe dialogues, and a summary recommendations. We will collaborate with an Agora communication expert team to maximize the effectiveness of the video storytelling, including personalization, dramatization and emotionalization to promote perspective-taking and empathy. The storytelling video documentary will be an edited compilation of personal videos created in video workshops by Eritreans who came to Switzerland as refugees and participated in our research project, alongside scripted videos derived from the real-life situations shared in interview data. The storytelling video documentary will be presented at 11 public video cafe dialogues held in various cities, designed to encourage dialogue with the participants and generate novel and creative ideas for effective integration measures at the institutional, neighborhood, and interpersonal levels. To ensure the impact of this Agora project beyond the proposed timeline, these ideas will be compiled into a recommendations document, which will be shared with integration organizations and communes. The storytelling documentary will also be uploaded on YouTube and linked to websites of partnering organizations. We have formed collaborations with integration and cultural organizations that will assist in organizing and promoting local video cafe dialogues, and distributing the YouTube storytelling documentary through their networks. We will also collect data about our process of social science communication to assess the effectiveness of the storytelling format in communicating social science research on sensitive topics such as refugee integration. The results of this analysis will be presented in a manuscript, which we plan to submit to a leading journal in social science communication, such as Science Communication.