Harm, Hope & Hybridity

: An Analysis of Migrant Integration in Bristol

Abstract

This co-produced mixed methods study interrogates the phenomena of migrant integration within the city of Bristol (UK), with a particular focus on how migrants themselves think of integration and what services facilitate this integration. Theoretically, this study positions integration as a relational process and combines it with distance to account for the structural factors within the built environment (Handel, 2018; Klarenbeek, 2024). In lessening both distance and social hierarchies, integration can more effectively make way for hybridity (Hall, 1988; Bhabha, 2004).

To operationalise this framework, a critical realist zemiological approach is used (Bhaskar, 1975; Hillyard et al., 2004). This study’s cohort of co-production partners helped create a quantitative survey and a semi-structured interview schedule. The quantitative survey targeted non-EU migrants in the City of Bristol and was translated into 5 different languages (Spanish, Somali, Ukrainian, Farsi, and Arabic). With 148 responses from respondents hailing from 39 different countries, two binomial regression analyses were conducted. Following this, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted using a max variation sampling technique, with participants from 13 different countries.

The quantitative findings reveal that immigration services and ESOL classes have the largest effect on integration. Meanwhile, migrant’s theorised integration as hybridity, community, and autonomy in the qualitative interviews. Allowing migrants to directly theorise what integration meant to them marks this study’s original contribution, and the process of doing so complicated newer trends in migration studies around de-migranticisation and to what extent this concept can be useful.

From a policy lens, this study challenges existing framings and conceptual foundations of integration related policy problems. It also shows how adding migrant voices into the policymaking process can help create a more just city

Date of Award	17 Mar 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Saffron I Karlsen (Supervisor) & Ann Singleton (Supervisor)