abstract: The number of refugees experiencing displacement is 25.9 million worldwide, with the majority in the last 7 years from Syria. While international government organizations and researchers have called for assessment of refugee health and wellness, research in this vulnerable population is limited. This dissertation is built around humanizing refugee research on health and wellness. The introduction in Chapter 1 provides an overview for the three resulting chapters which are (a) a grounded theory study to gain insight into the lives of Syrian refugees living in displacement; (b) a systematic literature review on wellness in Syrian refugees in displacement; and (c) a concept analysis to examine wellness from the perspective of Syrian refugee women within the context of displacement. Chapter 5 includes the summary, discussion, and recommendations for future research. Chapter 2 consists of three themes which shaped the lives of Syrian refugees during displacement: (a) assets and deficits; (b) official obstacles and supports; and (c) unofficial obstacles and supports. Health emerged as a priority for the refugees which included many dimensions related to the quality of their health and health needs. The results of Chapter 2 precipitated in using wellness as a holistic lens to view Syrian refugee’s health and health needs in Chapter 3. The results of Chapter 3 added a more holistic view of Syrian refugee health, while highlighting the need for improved research methods addressing wellness in Syrian refugees. Chapter 4 clarifies and defines wellness from the perspective of Syrian refugee women. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Nursing and Healthcare Innovation 2020

This qualitative multi-site case study examines the experiences of four volunteers serving as educators and their use of science kits in three separate non-formal refugee spaces located in Greece. They received professional development and materials to support their teaching of science. An adapted Teacher-Centered Systematic Reform (TCSR) framework was used to analyze the relationship between personal factors, teacher thinking, practice, and contextual factors. Data sources for this study were pre- and post-activity questionnaires, pre- and post-activity journaling, observations, and structured interviews. Each of the data sources was analyzed to develop an understanding of the volunteer educators’ personal factors, teacher thinking, teacher practice, and contextual factors to identify emerging themes. Emerging themes provided evidence to better interpret the experiences and perceptions of volunteer educators who used science-kits in non-formal refugee educational settings. These themes were then compared between and across each case to find similarities and differences between volunteer educators. This research contributes to both the field of science education and the preparation of volunteers in emergency education to teach science.

A conflict that ensued between Senegal and Mauritanian in 1989, led many Mauritanians to seek refuge in Senegal. Though the exact number is not known, an estimated 20,000 Mauritanian refugees continue to live in northern Senegal 16 years after being expelled from their home country. The exact number could not be ascertained because the attempted registration exercise which started in December 1999 was unfortunately abandoned in 2000. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2011. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/ / nf2012 / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

The aim of this essay is to study the lives of Bosnian refugees who were forced into fleeing their homeland and integrate into the Swedish culture and society.  During the period of 1992 to 1996, approximately 2.2 million Bosnian citizens were forced to flee to other countries due to the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Some of the citizens were internally displaced in nearby regions or border countries. Other refugees sought residence in different parts of the world. The Swedish Migration agency granted residency permits to 50,000 Bosnians between the years of 1993 to 1994.1  In order to accomplish the purpose of the essay, four Bosnian refugees who arrived in Sweden during the 1990s have been interviewed. The four interviewees generated answers which are then compared to previous research in this field. Written history tends to describe people in power as well as warfare in general. Therefore, by using oral history as a method in this study to investigate Bosnian refugees ́experiences, a more significant perspective of how they experienced integration in the Swedish society is more likely to appear. With their experiences and memories that they share with us, one will understand the life of a refugee.  This essay entails a qualitative approach where we conducted semi-structured interviews with Bosnian refugees. The theory we used to analyze the results is an integration model developed by Jose Alberto Diaz who studied integration in Sweden.  As a result, this study shows various factors that affect the individual ́s integration into the Swedish society. For example, the personal integration, housing integration, language skills, meaningful employment and livelihood, social contacts and the treatment of the authorities. These are some of the factors that affect the integration of immigrants.

The Refugee Act of 1980 established the first comprehensive U.S. refugee policy. It codified a refugee definition and created the annual consultation process, which requires the president to consult with Congress before determining annual refugee ceilings and resettlement plans. While the Refugee Act of 1980 remains intact, the annual refugee admissions and resettlement plans have changed considerably. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze this policy to explore its changes from 1980-2018 through the lens of social construction theory. According to this theory, the social constructions of target populations affect policy designs that are adopted with respect to these populations. Policy designs can create and legitimize divisions among different target populations causing some to be perceived and treated as more deserving than others. This dissertation uses a qualitative research design to analyze narratives within presidential proposal documents and congressional hearings that are held as part of the annual consultation process. These documents serve as the data for this dissertation. I undertake a detailed analysis of the documents of one annual consultation process and related congressional hearings for each president in the period between 1980-2018. In these documents and hearings, different policy actors (congressional members, representatives of the executive branch and state and local governments, and other experts) provide testimony and expert opinions on refugee admissions and resettlement. It is in this context that refugees as a target population are constructed and policies to deal with refugees are debated and discussed by various policy actors. To understand these constructions and the context in which they are created, the narrative analysis elements offered by the narrative policy framework are used as a method. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This study explores how quota refugees who were resettled from Botswana to Sweden in 2014 experience migration and how these experiences are shaped by opportunities and limitations of refugee mobility rights between resettlement and naturalization. The study is grounded in a qualitative and constructivist methodological framework, and answers the question; how are quota refugees’ migration experiences in Sweden shaped by the opportunities and limitations of refugee mobility rights between resettlement and naturalization? Migration systems theory is used to analyze data gathered through semi-structured interviews. It is argued in this study that refugee migration is more socially motivated than it is economic and data shows that resettlement gives quota refugees mobility rights which in turn provide more opportunities than limitations that positively shape their migration experiences. Data also show that social reasons such as love, marriage and ethnic gatherings are the most dominant reasons why quota refugees travel.

This qualitative inquiry explores and describes the Refugees Welcome movement in Sweden from 2015 to 2020 by exploring how people became volunteers, their motivation and experience while at the same time describing events, sceneries, and context with the help of their stories. The empirical material consists of 25 interviews with 20 interviewees, the theoretical perspectives come from the fields of volunteering, civil society, and social movements. A thematic analysis is the method used and the results are presented as part 1 Refugees Welcome to Malmö during the refugee crisis in the fall of 2015, and part 2 with the post-2015 Refugees Welcome initiatives separated by the establishment of checkpoints. The volunteers paint a picture of civil society handling an international issue in a globalized world, and what happens when that globalized world closes. The conclusion is that when the states of Europe introduced checkpoints it drastically changed the context of the opportunities to help refugees, cutting off networks of solidarity from the Mediterranean Sea to Malmö Central Station, and when the local authorities took over the responsibility for the refugee reception they cut off civil society and killing the engagement of the volunteers.

Global forced displacement is on the rise with 32.5 million people currently living as refugees, about half of whom are school-aged children and youth. Within this context, refugee inclusion in host country education systems has emerged as a growing policy priority in an effort to improve education access and quality. However, there is limited research on the impacts of the policy shift and many challenges remain. Addressing this gap, this dissertation examines the internal and external influences on host country refugee education policy decisions, the ways refugee inclusion in national education systems interacts with social cohesion, and the role of the global aid system in facilitating the inclusion of refugees. Data for this comparative case study across Lebanon and Turkey are based on 47 semi-structured interviews with education actors engaged in the response to the Syrian crisis at the global, regional, national, and local levels to examine the assumptions, influences, processes, and practices of refugee inclusion in national education systems. This dissertation is presented in three distinct papers. The first examines why policies of refugee inclusion were enacted, the timing of such reforms, and contextual reasons why reforms took the shape they did. Drawing on policy transfer scholarship, my findings reveal that some of the drivers to embrace global refugee policies include expectations for crisis resolution, calculation of political and economic risks and benefits, and the operational realities of their education systems. The second paper questions the logic that policies of inclusion necessarily support social cohesion and sustainable peace in refugee-hosting contexts. I apply the '4Rs' framework of Redistribution, Recognition, Representation, and Reconciliation (Novelli, Lopes Cardozo & Smith, 2017) to analyze the ways that education interventions in support of refugee inclusion have contributed to social tension in Lebanon and Turkey while providing and important opportunity to address longstanding issues of marginalization and exclusion beyond refugees. The final paper builds on constructivist international relations theory to explore the relationship between the global refugee education policy agenda, the interests of donor states, and what that means for international responsibility-sharing, a foundational component of the refugee inclusion movement. I argue that there is a complex relationship between efforts to include refugees in national education systems and the national interests of donor countries including discouraging onward migration, promoting stability and social cohesion in neighboring regions, and reinforcing global hierarchies in the international system. Findings across the three papers contribute to theoretical and empirical debates around refugee education and humanitarian and development action. I conclude by pulling together themes that run through the dissertation and discussing theoretical and empirical contributions across the three papers.

The war in Ukraine has led to the displacement of millions of Ukrainians. Refugee policy hasalways been hotly debated and the Swedish political debate has been divided since Swedenhas received refugees from a lot of war-torn countries. Previous research has shown thatrefugees from different parts of the world are portrayed in different terms. Therefore thisstudy aims to compare discourses in the portrayal of Syrian refugees during the years2014-2015 and Ukrainian refugees in 2022 respectively in the Swedish political discourse.Specifically, it will be examined how the parties Sweden Democrats and the Moderates haveexpressed themselves in political statements about the Syrian refugees in the years 2014-2015compared to the Ukrainian refugees in 2022. The aim is also to critically analyze thesediscourses and how "us and them" identities are constructed. In order to carry out the study, acritical discourse analysis and Fairclough's three-dimensional model has been applied to theempirical material. The theoretical framework that has been helpful in analyzing the politicaldiscourse on refugees has been the postcolonial theory, the theory of racialization andOrientalism. The study concluded that Syrian and Ukrainian refugees are portrayeddifferently. Syrian refugees are mostly talked about in negative terms, while Ukrainianrefugees are described in positive terms. The result of the study also showed that the Syrianrefugees were mostly excluded to be described as "them" and the Ukrainian refugees wereincluded in a "us". These findings align with results from previous research in studies ofrefugee portrayal.

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