Forced migration is increasingly represented in the context of international migration. Over the last few years, there has been an increase in the number of applications by asylum seekers and refugees in the world and particularly in Europe. Traditional settlement solutions, enshrined in international refugee protection legislation: return, local integration, and resettlement are increasingly limited by the circumstances of these flows and the conditions of the host societies. The influx of refugees to Europe in 2015, and in particular the European Union, has undermined the policies for the reception of asylum seekers and refugees in Europe, forcing a freeze on the Schengen and Dublin measures. The political solution was the outset of a system of redistribution within the EU, based in European solidarity, with the sharing of responsibilities for hosting these unexpected guests, through the implementation of a relocation program. At the same time, the security of the external border was reinforcement through agreements with third countries and the strengthening of the policing of its boundaries. In the context of EU burden sharing implementation, Portugal, a traditionally peripheral country in the paths and flows of asylum seekers and refugees, with a restrictive, passive policy and a limited reception structure, has shown an unusual willingness to accommodate a number of relocated people – higher than those assigned by the European Commission as a national quota: 1778 refugees. This position can be seen both as political and as humanitarian. In the first case, there is a desire to show solidarity from a country deeply burdened by economic crisis, thus demonstrating the validity of more relevant values than the economic ones in the European project, but also a humanitarian stance, evenly framed, and supported, by Portuguese civil society solidarity. It is due to the absence of a historic tradition of welcoming refugees and the lack of state structures to do so that the Portuguese relocation program is largely based on civil society management of the process regarding reception and integration, composed of a group of organizations characterized by institutional diversity and objectives and geographical dispersion, in a process that is still to be studied. In order to understand how this process is taking place, in particular the role and practices of the host institutions, we are carrying out the research project "Integration of refugees in Portugal: the role and practices of the host institutions. PT/2017/FAMI/151". In this context we will provide a preliminar synthesis of the main data collected through a questionnaire proposed to the institutions involved in order to understand the motivations, how the reception process is taking place and the reasoning of the process by the actors involved. The data collected, in the first phase of the research strategy, make it possible to have a glimpse of how local institutions perceive their role in the context of receiving relocated refugees and to explore how this position could influence the national policy of managing migratory processes in general and specific future solutions for refugees, such as resettlement.

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Refugees,Portugal

• Sociologia - Ciências Sociais