Research Update - Monitoring community attitudes toward refugee settlement in Armidale, NSW, 2018-2020

In 2017, Armidale NSW became a new refugee resettlement location under the Humanitarian Settlement Program. Around 650 Ezidis settled in Armidale from March 2018 to March 2020, when new arrivals were paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Armidale refugee resettlement program offers an opportunity to study a regional community’s response to refugee resettlement in Australia. While there have been many studies of refugees’ resettlement in Australia’s major centres and regional communities, very few studies have closely examined the receiving community’s response. However, the success of refugee resettlement goes both ways. It requires mutual positive relations between refugees and the receiving community, and the receiving community’s responses to the newcomers form an important contextual element of refugee resettlement. The well-being of both is entwined as refugees become part of the fabric of the receiving community.