Refugee integration, one long-term solution to the large number of people fleeing their home countries, constitutes a challenge for both refugees and host societies. ICT and especially online peer groups seem promising to support this process. Building on literature demonstrating the societal benefits of peer groups, this paper proposes a novel peer-group-based approach to address refugee integration and introduces both an online and offline realization. A randomized field experiment in cooperation with public (refugee) services and a non-governmental organization makes it possible to expand existing research by quantitatively demonstrating societal benefits of online peer groups and ICT for refugee integration. Further, this paper is the first to assess the effectiveness of online and offline peer groups in one experimental setup comparatively. Results show that peer groups provide substantial value with respect to the integration domains social bridges, social bonds, rights and citizenship as well as safety and stability. While the outcome of the various integration domains differs for online and offline peer groups, participants’ adoption rates were higher for online peer groups.

The huge number of people fleeing their home countries poses a challenge to refugees and host societies. Q&A websites are highly promising in supporting refugee integration, one long-term solution to displacement. In our study, we aim to identify how refugee Q&A websites are used and, as a result, what value they provide to their users with respect to refugee integration. Based on data of the successful Q&A website 'Wefugees', we apply a mixed-methods approach consisting of descriptive statistics, social network analysis, and content analysis. Our results indicate that Q&A websites serve for the provision of information on a broad range of integrational topics and, surprisingly, constitute a one-way support service instead of leading to community building. We are the first to examine Q&A websites in this context and expand literature studying the role of digital services for refugee integration. Our results further provide design implications for refugee Q&A websites.