FOREWORD

New Zealand has a long-standing commitment to humanitarian assistance in the international community. We have accepted refugees for resettlement since the end of the Second World War. In 1987, the government established a formal annual quota for the resettlement of refugees. In recent years, New Zealand's annual resettlement quota has been maintained at 750 places (plus or minus 10 percent). Over the past 15 years, New Zealand has accepted more than 10,000 refugees under the resettlement programme.

Decisions made on the composition of New Zealand's refugee quota largely reflect the priority cases for resettlement identified by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. These decisions result in the resettlement of people from a diverse range of nationalities, including those from the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe and South America.

Although refugees make up a relatively small number of newcomers to New Zealand, they comprise a distinct, significant and often very visible component of our demographic. Refugees come as forced migrants in need of protection. Their situation is markedly different from that of New Zealand's other migrants, who choose to settle here and are selected on criteria associated with successful settlement outcomes. To cater for refugees' resettlement needs, we need to better understand the background, experiences and perspectives of the diverse refugee groups who have settled in New Zealand.

This annotated bibliography is the first publication from a three-year programme of research, entitled 'Quota Refugees Ten Years On: Perspectives on Integration, Community and Identity'. The research programme is led by the Department of Labour's IMSED^[1] Research team. The Ministry of Social Development and the Department of Internal Affairs are key partner agencies. The programme of research was granted three-year funding from the Cross Departmental Research Pool by the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology.

Quota Refugees Ten Years On aims to explore the long-term settlement experiences and outcomes for people who arrived as part of our refugee quota programme ten or more years ago. This research programme builds on an earlier substantive Department of Labour research project - Refugee Voices: A Journey Towards Resettlement. This project gathered information about the early years of resettlement. In contrast to this earlier study, Quota Refugees Ten Years On builds a platform of knowledge about long-term integration, community capacity building, identity and citizenship.

The current review focuses on literature from countries with refugee resettlement quotas and shows the need to better understand long-term aspects of integration. The review largely investigates the economic participation of former refugees. However the literature reflects a growing emphasis on other aspects of long-term settlement, including the importance of social networks, identity and belonging.

The annotated bibliography will provide a new and valuable resource to a wide audience, both in New Zealand and internationally. This audience includes policy makers, service providers, researchers and people from refugee backgrounds. I look forward to further publications from the Quota Refugees Ten Years On research programme over the coming years. These publications will present us with the valuable perspectives of former refugees on integration, community and identity in the New Zealand context.

Christopher Blake
Secretary of Labour

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