REFUFAM Working Package 3 (WP3) is dedicated to the analysis of the impact of policy gaps in migration and integration governance on refugee families’ access to core domains of integration such as work, education and housing. The main research questions are: how do refugee families access domains such as housing, work, education? What difficulties and challenges do they face and how do they access and participate in these domains by carving out new paths? 

WP3 takes a socio-spatial perspective to respond to these questions and develops and employs two main concepts: “inclusion pathways” and “enabling infrastructures”. First, we transition from using “integration” to  “inclusion pathways”, defined as a process embedded spatially and shaped by social relations that enable newcomers to access and participate in different domains, considering constraints, resources and contours of support within receiving milieus. Second, we employ “enabling infrastructures” to explore the receiving milieus as enmeshed with interlaced sets of socio-spatial and temporal infrastructures, that (may) enable refugees to carve their inclusionary pathways. In WP3, our focus is on 3 cities in Belgium: Leuven in Flanders, Tournai in Wallonia, and Brussels. Through (virtual) ethnography, life stories, mapping, volunteering and workshops, we explore how refugee families practically carve these pathways, what affects newcomers access in such settings and shape their inclusion trajectories. The research intends to develop recommendations for enhancing refugees’ well-being and inclusion in various life domains.