COPOCS: Challenges, Opportunities and Prospects of Community Sponsorship – Multidisciplinary, Multimethod and Multiperspective Analysis

This project will endeavour to address the lack of a theoretical and methodological framework to research community sponsorship (CS in short) and the implications of CS for admitting and supporting refugees. Thus, the overall aim of the project is to develop such a framework, and conduct a comprehensive analysis of the challenges, opportunities and prospects of CS, especially testing its possible implementation in a country with a limited influx of refugees, such as Poland. CS relies on the public-private partnership, i.e. the cooperation between the state and private actors, including individuals, companies and civic society organisations (often faith-based). The state takes responsibility for the legal admission of refugees, while private actors support them in their reception and integration at the local level after their arrival to the country of asylum. The project will adopt a broad approach to CS by investigating cases of CS and, in their absence, initiatives which can be seen as some partial forms of CS and looking into the prospects for its introduction in new countries. It will analyse existing sponsorship models in different countries across the world and how and why they have been shaped in a certain way. Particular focus will be placed on Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland. The most important criterion for their selection is their different levels of advancement in CS and, additionally, the level of voluntaristic activity and models of social policy.

This project is led by dr hab. Aleksandra Grzymała-Kazłowska, University of Warsaw, and receives funding by Narodowe Centrum Nauki in the OPUS-21 framework. Birgit Glorius is member of the advisory board and will specifically support the identification of case studies in Germany.