Author: María Belén Zanzuchi, Nadja Dumann, Florian Tissot, Admir Skodo
Date: September 2023
Country: All
Type of legal pathway: Community sponsorships
Language: English
Description: Establishing and running sponsorship programmes can be time and resource intense, but well-managed programmes promise considerable benefits for both refugees and receiving communities. At a time when scarce options to reach safety have left millions of people facing protracted displacement and contributed to irregular border crossings, human trafficking, and lives lost at sea, sponsorship represents a promising tool for expanding legal pathways to protection. And by engaging community members directly in welcoming their new neighbours, sponsorship can give receiving communities more of a say in those pathways and enhance social cohesion. The strategies highlighted in this study can help sponsorship programmes address the recruitment and retention challenges encountered to date and more fully realise the benefits for refugees and their new communities.
