| Description: |
The Australian refugee sector provides welfare and other supports as well as facilitating community engagement and capacity building opportunities for refugees and asylum seekers. Service providers are critical to settlement success, brokering access to housing, employment, and healthcare. While existing literature has focused on the role of refugees’ own social networks in facilitating integration, less attention has been paid to the networks, attributes and resources of service providers. To address this gap, we explore the role of service providers and their use of economic, social and cultural capital, as put forward by Bourdieu, with respect to housing refugees in Australia. Drawing on qualitative thematic analyses of interviews with 16 refugee sector service providers in Victoria, Australia, we found that service providers act as connectors, supporters, and advocates for, and with, refugees. Service providers utilise their extensive personal and professional networks to deliver effective settlement support, oftentimes through mentorship. Furthermore, they perform acts of advocacy by using subtle stratagems to challenge systemic barriers to accessing housing resources. We use Bourdieu’s theory of capital to understand the types of capital flowing through service provider brokered networks, highlighting agency rather than refugees’ lack of resources. |