Defining Economic Integration of Refugees from a Multidimensional Perspective: A Scoping Review

Background: The U.S. resettlement program is mainly focused on reducing dependency on assistance among refugees by promoting employment. Evidence suggests that despite high employment rates among refugees in the U.S., they are disproportionately impacted by poverty and deprivation across various life metrics, and this can be partly explained by the emphasis of the resettlement program on self-sufficiency rather than economic integration (Capps et al., 2005; Hadley et al., 2010; Miller et al., 2002; Naseh et al., 2022). Currently, the lack of an adapted measure to quantify economic integration among refugees from a multidimensional perspective is an obstacle in scholarly assessments in this field.

Study Objectives: Against this background, we conducted a scoping review to explore and document how different aspects of economic integration have been defined, measured, and documented among immigrants and refugees in the U.S.

Methodology: We conducted an online systematic search of ASSIA, EconLit, PsycInfo, and Web of Science Core Collection with keywords relevant to economic integration, refugees, and immigrants. The search was limited to English-language publications before or on October 1, 2022. As part of our search strategy, we also scanned the reference lists of relevant studies. Two independent reviewers screened and reviewed the retrieved studies in Covidence software, with conflicts resolved by a third reviewer. To be included, a study had to quantitatively measure or conceptualize economic integration among adult refugees or immigrants in the U.S. Studies without quantitative data related to economic integration, reviews, and studies on immigrants and refugees outside the U.S. were excluded. We followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) extension for scoping reviews in completing the search, review, and data extraction.

Results: This scoping review was part of a larger review exploring the definition and measurement of refugee success and integration in the U.S. The larger review identified 12,255 potentially relevant studies through search for studies on refugees’ and immigrants’ success and integration. After removing duplicates, we screened 8,948 titles and abstracts and identified 840 studies of potential relevance (Cohen’s k: 0.85). A full-text review of these studies led to the identification of 117 studies (Cohen’s k: 0.78) on conceptualization of economic integration or papers with outcome data on economic integration among refugees and immigrants. Extracted data from these studies suggest that economic integration is measured or conceptualized through various indicators, including occupation-based earnings, employment, occupation index (comparing income percentile based on occupation category before and after migration), wealth (income and assets), labor force participation, financial asset accumulation, earning growth, housing costs and household amenities, education (years of schooling), health (access to insurance), standards of living, economic and job security, housing quality, and neighborhood quality.

Conclusions: Our scoping review provides a comprehensive overview of the definition and measurement of economic integration among immigrants and refugees in the U.S. Findings are now in use to develop a multidimensional survey instrument to measure economic integration among Dari-speaking Afghan refugees in the U.S.