Transcultural issues in regional settlement of refugees

This article presents a review of some salient issues in working cross culturally with resettled migrants with refugee backgrounds. Using two teaching cases we demonstrate the advantage of refugee background migrants having mentors and being assisted to learn some skills. The cases also demonstrate the importance of workers understanding the cultural backgrounds of their clients. Rural and regional settings provide some unique challenges like limited services, while at the same time offering some opportunities like agricultural product processing and seasonal farm work. Some of the challenges and opportunities may apply across the board to migrants from different non-European backgrounds, but some may be unique to people with refugee backgrounds.