Time and resilience. Evidence from a new survey of refugees and asylum seekers in Italy

Abstract

Migration studies agree that resilience is a crucial dimension for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers; however, how resilience differs across age groups and its association with the integration process remain poorly understood. This study aims to investigate the role of time on resilience. Particularly, whether resilience differs by age and whether it is related to the length of time spent in the host country. Our analysis benefits from the ItRAS (Italian Refugees and Asylum Seekers Survey), the first nationally representative survey of asylum seekers and beneficiaries of refugee status or other forms of international protection. The survey was conducted in 2024 and included individuals who had resided in Italy for at least six months but not before 2011. We explored the interplay of time and resilience, controlling for the main individual socio-demographic characteristics. The analysis was grounded in an ordinal logit regression to explain variations in the intensity of refugees’ adapting capacity (ego-resilience). Among older individuals, the probability of being highly resilient is higher than among the younger. On the contrary, there is no significant evidence of the association between the length of stay in Italy and resilience. By providing insights into the role of time in studies on resilience, this paper debunks the view of older people as more vulnerable and in need of support per se, drawing our attention to the need for an accurate vulnerability assessment that does not proceed by stereotyped macro-category.