New brief highlights the importance of effectively matching refugees and sponsors to improve integration and program outcomes

BRUSSELS — As governments increasingly involve communities in supporting the reception and integration of arriving refugees, success turns how well matched the newcomers are with individual sponsors and local supports and services, as well as the quality of relationships with employers, mentors and hosts.

While a critical factor, effective refugee matching remains overlooked in policy discussions around community sponsorship programs and complementary pathways (such as education and labor mobility programs). Government-led programs tend to emphasize refugee placement based on agency capacity or geographic dispersal, rather than individual refugee characteristics and preferences, or other considerations in the interest of successful integration outcomes.

A new policy brief, Why Matching Matters: Enhancing refugee sponsorship and similar pathways, explores the evolution of matching in community sponsorship and resettlement programs, focusing on 16 initiatives in Europe and North America. Beyond offering examples of innovative models and promising data and technologies that permit evolving beyond making matching decisions by hand, the brief considers the impact of matching on integration outcomes and social cohesion.

"To put it succinctly, where and with whom refugees are matched matter a great deal," says researcher Craig Damian Smith, who co-authored the policy brief with Emma Ugolini.

And, they note, "It follows that more precise and holistic matching of refugees and localities or sponsors might not only benefit refugees but also provide a better experience for sponsors and receiving communities."

High-quality matching processes have the potential to equitably allocate scarce resources and produce the best possible matches across the entire beneficiary population, including of job opportunities, housing and specialized services for vulnerable individuals.

Data-driven matching holds the potential to go beyond laborious hand-matching processes, but it must prioritize transparency around the use of personal information and inputs for matching. It should also build in oversight from specialized placement staff, allow program participants to accept or decline matching assignments and prioritize stakeholder feedback.

Since the massive Syrian displacement crisis, responses increasingly have relied on a whole-of-society approach. For that approach to continue, "Sustainable sponsorship initiatives will require well-designed matching mechanisms that contribute to positive outcomes and an excellent program reputation, which can foster public support and grow the pool of volunteers, as well as education around lower-profile refugee populations," the brief concludes.

The policy brief is the third contribution from MPI Europe and partners to the Building Capacity for Private Sponsorship in the European Union (CAPS-EU) Project, which is working to build the capacity of European, national and local government, and non-governmental stakeholders to design, implement, sustain and scale up community sponsorship programs. CAPS-EU seeks to benefit policymakers, civil-society actors that manage sponsorship relationships and sponsors by giving them the practical tools and requisite knowledge to overcome obstacles to the success and eventual growth of their programs.

Earlier CAPS-EU research includes a policy brief examining the lessons that private hosting of displaced Ukrainians hold for community sponsorship programmes, as well as a report examining ways to improve recruitment and retention of refugee sponsors.

Led by the Irish Refugee Protection Programme (IRPP) and supported by the Belgian reception agency for asylum seekers (Fedasil) and MPI Europe, the three-year CAPS-EU Project is co-financed by the European Commission under the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.

Read today’s policy brief on effective matching of sponsors and refugees here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/matching-refugee-sponsorship.

For more on the CAPS-EU project, visit www.migrationpolicy.org/caps-eu-project.