<p>Scholarly and political debates on refugee integration often focus on refugees’ performance within integration systems, while paying less attention to how policy frameworks shape refugees’ capacity to pursue their own aspirations after displacement. Conceptualizing aspirations as socially and institutionally shaped, this study adopts a relational perspective to examine how refugees negotiate future-oriented goals within the opportunities and constraints of integration policy. Drawing on focus group discussions with Syrian refugees in Rotterdam, this study examines how the Dutch Civic Integration Program (CIP) shapes refugees’ ability to pursue their desired futures. The findings show that refugees’ aspirations extend beyond employment and self-reliance to include emotional recovery, safety, stability, social belonging, and long-term educational mobility. While the CIP supports aspirations aligned with language acquisition, labor market participation, and economic self-sufficiency, it provides less space for aspirations that fall outside activation-oriented trajectories. Participants experienced the program as both enabling and constraining: although language instruction and institutional guidance were valued, rigid schedules and pressures toward rapid labor market participation often conflicted with broader life projects and post-displacement realities. The study further demonstrates that safety and emotional stability function as prerequisites for successful integration. By foregrounding refugees’ aspirations, this article contributes to critical integration scholarship by showing how civic integration policies shape not only participation outcomes, but also the horizons through which refugees imagine and pursue their futures.</p>