Sophie BILONG
Associate Research Fellow, Center for Migration and Citizenship
Research interests:
- Participation of migrants and refugees in policies and programs
- Access of refugees to labour market
- Reception and integration of refugees and migrants in France
Sophie Bilong is an associate research fellow at the Ifri’s Center for Migration and Citizenship since January 2022. She is also a consultant for the Observatory on Immigration and Asylum since 2019. She graduated in economics at the University Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne. She worked for 13 years for organizations supporting the rights of migrants, refugees and people in poverty. She is currently coordinating the Academy for Refugee Participation for the Interministerial Delegation for Reception and Integration of Refugees and she is delivering consultancies and trainings for refugee and migrant assisting NGOs.
Her fields of research are participation of disavantaged people, particularly migrants and refugees, and integration of refugees.
The issues of employment and work for refugees have received increasing attention from both the political, NGO and economic spheres in France since 2017, but few studies have yet to address this subject. This study was born out of cooperation between the Observatory on Immigration and Asylum...
In France, people participating in policies and programs that affect them is not a new concept. It has been widely studied in the field of social work and the fight against poverty, and is at the heart of many experiments. How can this concept of participation, as is outlined for people...
Around 42% of refugees settled in France manage to find a job within a year of obtaining official status. But the jobs they find are often far below their skill levels, resulting in a "professional downgrade" that leads to discontent and exhaustion.