Humanitarian migrants are fleeing trauma and persecution. Many have spent periods of time in refugee camps or detention centres, pending resolution of their status. The journey that people make from refugee to citizen is one where they will encounter many hurdles, but also support from people who took the journey before them, from the community and from different levels of government.

This article describes the cohort profile of the Building a New Life in Australia (BNLA) study. BNLA is a large‐scale longitudinal study of humanitarian migrants in Australia and their settlement journey. The study data are available to approved users.