Direct and vicarious administrative burdens in refugee sponsorship : experiences of UK public services as a Homes for Ukraine host

Tomlinson, Joe and Kasoulides, Eleana and Halliday, Simon and Meers, Jed (2024) Direct and vicarious administrative burdens in refugee sponsorship : experiences of UK public services as a Homes for Ukraine host. Journal of Refugee Studies. ISSN 0951-6328 (In Press)

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Abstract

In this article, we draw upon an original qualitative dataset—the most extensive assembled to date—on sponsor experiences of the Homes for Ukraine scheme to explore an important and under-analysed aspect of the hosting experience: how sponsors experience administrative burdens in the course of hosting (Herd and Moynihan, 2018). Specifically, we show how sponsors encounter learning, compliance, and psychological costs as a result of their own engagements with public bodies in the course of being a host. We also show how sponsors experience administrative burdens, not just directly but also vicariously through the interactions their guests have with public bodies (Tomlinson et al., 2023). These burdens and the associated costs can be central to the hosting experience. By demonstrating that these direct and vicarious experiences of administrative burdens are significant to the sponsor experience, we make two contributions to—and bring together—two bodies of knowledge. First, we develop the empirical understanding of, and propose a means of effectively analysing, an important aspect of being a host within volunteer-based schemes. Second, we expand the burgeoning theory of “administrative burden” in public administration scholarship by demonstrating the relevance of burdens experienced vicariously, which has fur far been neglected.

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