Romania is currently experiencing an increase in the number of asylum seekers, but little is known about the care arrangements and state-supported integration programs in the country for people in need of international protection. This paper addresses this gap and adds to the scholarly literature on forced migration by examining how integration processes for asylum seekers are represented in the public service and political discourse. Using interview data (n =14) with Romanian bureaucrats and elected representatives in national, regional, and municipal offices, this paper explores the institutional capacity of the Romanian state to integrate refugees.
About the author: Raluca Bejan is Assistant Professor of Social Work at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Canada. Between July 2018 and December 2019 she was Assistant Professor of Critical Social Policy at St. Thomas University, in Fredericton, Canada. She has a BA in Political Sciences from Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu, Romania, and a MSW and PhD degrees from the University of Toronto. Raluca was a Visiting Academic at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford, in 2016 and 2018.
