Civic Activism of Refugee Community Organizations and Their Effectiveness in Supporting Refugees

Authors

• Anis Zaman, Portland State UniversityFollow

Keywords

Civic Activism, Migration Governance, Syrian Refugees, Rohingya Refugees, Refugee Community Organizations, Refugees.

Abstract

The development and governance architecture of migration policy often lacks migrants' perspectives. Thus, in most cases, migration policies generate conflicts between migrants and host communities. In this regard, refugee-led community organizations (RCOs) offer solutions by promoting collective action among refugees. RCOs play a vital role in fostering collective action by refugee communities to alleviate suffering and assert refugee rights. However, RCO’s operations and interactions in the host country are challenging and are shaped by the nature of migration governance and the host government’s tolerance for refugee activism. The nature of migration governance dictates the spaces for refugee civic activism. This paper argues that the effectiveness of RCO’s operations and interactions in the host country is determined by the host government’s tolerance for migrants’ collective activism. Analyzing the refugee situations in Turkey and Bangladesh and evaluating the roles of RCOs in both refugee situations, this study contends that the national and religious identities of refugees, and the importance of their origin country in the region often influence the host government’s migration policy as well as tolerance to RCO’s activism. This paper also calls for detailed studies of the civic activism of RCOs across different refugee situations to understand how refugees' identities influence their activism in a host country.

Publication Date

7-9-2026

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Zaman, Anis (2026) "Civic Activism of Refugee Community Organizations and Their Effectiveness in Supporting Refugees," Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs: Vol. 10: Iss. 1, Article 8.