In this thesis I argue that race, culture and imperialism intersect with gender at the site of refugee law to produce 'racialized and exotic others.' These exotic others are refugee women whose differences from refugee decision makers in destination countries are made crucial to their refugee claims by refugee lawyers, decision makers and the system of refugee determination. I use a comparative methodology to examine the gender guidelines for refugee decision makers and selected key cases from Canada, the United States and Australia. The gender guidelines represent a human rights approach to refugee law. I critique the guidelines and relevant cases from an anti-essential ist perspective informed by postcolonial, feminist and critical race theory. My discussion is organized by contrasting 'exotic harms,' transgression of social mores and female genital cutting, with treatment of 'familiar harms', domestic violence and sexual assault. I aim to show how the distinctions between the exotic and the familiar are founded on orientalist notions about other women in other places. I seek to suggest strategies for refugee advocates, decision makers and academic lawyers to avoid perpetuating orientalist notions of other countries and other cultures. I conclude, however, that refugee law is a limited project whose solutions to the problems faced by refugee claimants can only ever be incomplete. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate

Globally, an estimated one in four women have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) in their lifetimes. IPV has enormous physical, mental, and social consequences across ecological levels of human experience. These consequences extend to the children of adult women survivors of IPV and are worsened by intersecting experiences of racism, classism, sexism, and xenophobia. Service systems purporting to help, such as child protective services (CPS) and health service systems, can either create additional harm for women and their children or offer services that women may have difficulty accessing due to cost, isolation, and other factors. These harms can be especially pronounced among (a) Black women who have used drugs, who have children, and who are in community supervision programs (CSPs) in the U.S. and (b) Syrian refugee women with children living outside camps in Jordan. These populations of women face particular challenges getting basic needs met while navigating safety for themselves and their children – both due to IPV and from systems themselves (e.g., risk of losing custody of their children, sociocultural risk of interference in family life). Yet, limited research exists on the relationship between experiencing IPV and service involvement within these two populations. The following dissertation aims to address these research gaps in three papers, using descriptive and bivariate data as well as logistic regression analyses of E-WORTH and Women ASPIRE studies, as informed by ecological theory. The first paper (E-WORTH), guided by ecological theory, aims to determine the prevalence of and test hypothesized associations between psychological, physical, and sexual IPV and CPS involvement among Black women who have used drugs, who ever had children, and who are in CSPs in New York City (N=247). I hypothesized that women who ever had children, were in CSPs, and had ever experienced psychological, physical, and/or sexual IPV by male partners would have higher odds of being involved with CPS in their lifetime than women who ever had children, were in CSPs, and had not experienced IPV by male partners. Using self-reported data from Black women who have used drugs and were recruited from CSPs in New York City, I found that 70.85% of women who ever had children and who were in CSPs reported ever experiencing psychological IPV by a male partner, 70.04% reported ever experiencing physical IPV by a male partner, 48.58% reported ever experiencing sexual IPV by a male partner, and 40.89% reported ever experiencing psychological, physical, and sexual IPV by a male partner. Further, I found that 55.87% of women reported ever having had an open case with CPS. Multivariable logistic regression analyses revealed that women who had experienced lifetime sexual IPV had significantly higher odds of ever being involved with CPS than women in the study who had never experienced sexual IPV (OR: 1.81; 95% CI: 1.09, 3.01). Similarly, women who experienced multiple forms of IPV (psychological, physical, and sexual) also had significantly higher odds of being involved with CPS (OR: 1.81; 95% CI: 1.07, 3.04). However, these associations did not hold in adjusted models. Paper 2 (Women ASPIRE) aims to (1) compare the prevalence of mental health symptomology (anxiety, depression, and PTSD) among Syrian refugee women with children under age 18 living outside camps in Jordan who have and who have not experienced physical and/or sexual IPV in the past year; and (2) examine the relationship between IPV and mental health symptomology among Syrian refugee women with children living outside camps in Jordan. Based on ecological theory as my conceptual framework, I hypothesized that Syrian refugee women with children who had experienced IPV in the past year would have significantly higher odds of meeting screening criteria for anxiety, depression, and PTSD as compared to Syrian refugee women with children who had not experienced IPV in the past year. I found high rates of IPV, anxiety, depression, and PTSD among women in the sample (N=412). Furthermore, using multivariable logistic regression models from the Women ASPIRE dataset, I found that women with children who had experienced physical and/or sexual IPV in the past year had significantly higher odds of meeting screening criteria for all three mental health conditions – anxiety (aOR: 3.68, CI: 2.28-5.94, p<0.001), depression (aOR: 3.03, CI: 1.83-4.99, p<0.001), and PTSD (aOR: 6.94, CI: 3.75-12.84, p<0.001) – than women with children who had not experienced IPV in the past year. Despite these findings, at least one-fifth of women with children reported an unmet need for mental health or protective services, and less than one-third of women were aware of the availability of these services in their local communities. The third paper (Women ASPIRE) aims to (a) examine the prevalence of physical and sexual IPV among health service-seeking Syrian refugee women with children in non-camp settings in Jordan and (b) compare the differences in health service use between women with children who had and who had not experienced IPV (N=412). Informed by experiences across levels of ecological theory, I hypothesized that women with children who had ever experienced IPV would have lower odds of using each type of health service (i.e., general, specialist, reproductive, mental health, and emergency health services) – and would have higher odds of using limited numbers of services – than women with children who had never experienced IPV. I tested my hypothesis using binary logistic regression models and an independent samples t-test. I found that nearly 60% of Syrian refugee women with children living outside camps in Jordan had ever experienced physical and/or sexual IPV by their current or most recent husband. Contrary to my hypotheses, I found that women with children who had ever experienced IPV had over three times the odds of using mental health services and were significantly more likely to use a greater variety of health services (including mental health services) than women who had not experienced IPV (aOR: 3.10, 95% CI: 1.92-5.00, p<0.001; mean 3.26 vs. 2.84 types of services respectively, t [410] = 03.71, p<0.001). Findings affirm that IPV is a serious public health issue among the affected populations and that access to needed services remains crucial to affected populations. Results fill gaps in existing literature by confirming that women with children in each study population have high odds of system involvement, particularly with CPS and mental health service systems, thereby offering social workers within those systems opportunities to intervene effectively. Thus, this dissertation can help social work practitioners and clinicians offer more responsive, accessible, and relevant services to clients within the study populations. Policymakers and administrators can fund development and testing of interventions across multiple ecological levels to promote the safety, health, and well-being of women and their children. Researchers can build on these findings through quantitative and qualitative studies on intervention effectiveness and accessibility among women engaged with system.

This doctoral project, entitled 'Displacing AIDS: Therapeutic Transitions in Northern Uganda' examines the biosocial transitions engendered by the treatment of HIV, focusing on antiretroviral therapy (ART/ARV) interventions, and the ways these are intertwined with the social transitions of conflict, displacement and return. The research involved an inter-disciplinary qualitative study with internally displaced communities living with HIV in northern Uganda, during 10 months fieldwork between 2006 and 2009. Northern Uganda has experienced a two decade civil war between the government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army (1987 to 2006). In 2006, after a cessation of hostilities was signed, hundreds of thousands of the displaced began returning ‘home’. The effects of conflict and social displacement were to significantly shape both the social and medical aspects of ART provision. I argue that northern Uganda was significantly excluded from widespread national community-based responses as a result of the war during the 1990s and early 2000s. Given this background, ART interventions were to engender rapid social transformations among those with HIV, but also in relation to the perceptions of HIV/AIDS in the broader community. I explore these intersecting biosocial and displacement-induced transitions through several streams: the social transitions of forced displacement and the return process; the transitions from illness to a precarious health; from social exclusion to a contested inclusion; transitions between local and biomedical understandings of healing; transitions in authority and biopower; as well as continually shifting forms of identity, support and affiliation. I give particular emphasis to forms of socio-spatial and medico -moral transformations. I argue that ARV interventions have been nested in the social and moral spaces of displacement. In particular the spatial configurations of encampment, involving extreme congestion and lack of privacy, have shaped patterns of disclosure and community and identity formation. The influence of Catholicism, shaped by missionary histories in the region, has also had a strong impact. Themes of militarism, lack of productivity, and encampment have shaped the language and perceptions of HIV and AIDS. Theoretically I engage with debates around biosociality, stigmatisation and ‘clientship’ within the emerging literature on ARVs. I trace the intersections of these questions with those in forced migration studies regarding the social transformations of displacement and return. Furthermore, I use this social analysis to engage with public-health perspectives on ARV provision. I argue that community-based strategies require adaptation to the social contexts of displacement. Such adaptations, involving attentiveness to the socio-spatial specificity of displaced contexts, are critical for the long-term provision and sustainability of antiretroviral therapy to displaced communities. In particular the return phase has created unexpected challenges for treatment continuity, arising from large-scale population movements. The thesis has a strong narrative focus and traces the experiences of several people living with HIV through the paths of displacement and return.

Sverige tar i dagsläget emot en stor andel flyktingar och flertalet av dessa flyktigar lider av psykisk ohälsa. Stress, ångesttillstånd, depression och posttraumatiskt stressyndrom (PTSD) är några diagnoser som förekommer bland flyktingar. För att hjälpa dessa patienter krävs både kulturell och språklig kompetens inom vården. Syftet med denna litteraturöversikt är att beskriva sjuksköterskors erfarenheter av att bemöta flyktingar med psykisk ohälsa. Nio kvalitativa studier och en mixed method studie har används för att presentera resultatet. Studierna är gjorda i Västeuropa och Australien och de utgår från ett sjuksköterskeperspektiv. Axelssons tillvägagångssätt för litteraturstudie valdes som metod för detta arbete. Resultatet beskrivs i två huvudrubriker, Svårigheter för sjuksköterskan i mötet med flyktingar och Det vårdande mötet i psykisk kontext. De svårigheter som identifierats beskrivs i fyra underkategorier: Att kommunicera med flyktingar, Att använda tolk, Att förstå patientens kulturella bakgrund och Att prata om traumatiska händelser. Det vårdande mötet i psykisk kontext beskrivs i två underkategorier: Behovet av kulturell kompetens och Att bedöma symptom. Resultatet visar att sjuksköterskor är i behov av ökad kunskap om kulturella skillnader för att vårda flyktingar med psykisk ohälsa. Symtombilden i psykisk ohälsa varierar beroende kulturellt ursprung och ämnet anses vara tabubelagt i vissa länder. Tolkar anses vara en stor tillgång till att bygga upp en vårdande relation mellan sjuksköterskan och en flyktingpatient, men kan även ses som ett hinder.

In 2013, the U.S. Department of State allocated nearly $45 million to the Texas Office of Refugee Resettlement to help aid with the resettlement of 6,922 refugees. Approximately 10 percent of all refugees who were brought to the U.S. that year were resettled in Texas. Austin received 716 of those refugees. For 30 years, the U.S.'s Refugee Admissions Programs has been providing aid and money to help refugees fleeing religious and political persecution resettle in the U.S. The program is a system of public-private partnership in which the U.S. Department of State hands out funds to local non-profit organizations to oversee the initial six months of the resettlement. The current program is largely underfunded and is based on a self-sufficiency model that requires refugees find a job within four months of arrival setting many refugees on a path towards poverty as they are often come from conflict zones with minimal English skills, knowledge of how the U.S. works or programs to help them use whatever skills or education they have to find better paying jobs. This paper critiques elements of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program through the case study of one family that has recently arrived in Austin, Texas, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. / text

During the Cold War, approximately 36,000 persons claimed Czechoslovakia as their country of citizenship upon entering Canada. A defining characteristic of this postwar migration of predominantly ethnic Czechs and Slovaks was the prevalence of anti-communist and democratic values. This dissertation follows Czech and Slovak refugees through the German invasion of the Czech lands and Slovakia’s independence in 1939, the Second World War, the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of 1968. Diplomats, industrialists, workers, democratic politicians, professionals, and students fled to the West in search of freedom, security, and economic opportunity. Many of these individuals sought to return home after Czechoslovakia was liberated from communism. This dissertation examines the interwar, wartime, and postwar immigration experiences of Czech and Slovak refugees through the lens of Canadian Czechoslovak institutions. In Canada, Czechs and Slovaks who professed a belief in a Czechoslovak identity formed their own organizations. In the Cold War era, the two most prominent Canadian Czechoslovak institutions were the Czechoslovak National Alliance and the Masaryk Hall. Both were later incorporated and renamed as the Czechoslovak National Association of Canada and the Masaryk Memorial Institute. Czechoslovak institutions in Canada faced opposition from nationalist Slovaks who opposed a common Czechoslovak identity. By focusing on political and institutional history, this study contributes to our understanding of Cold War immigration, and its influence on ethnic organizations and Canadian society. Although the admission, settlement, and integration of Cold War refugees was heavily influenced by federal and provincial authorities, Czech and Slovak newcomers joined Czechoslovak organizations and continued in their attempts to affect developments in Communist Czechoslovakia and Canadian foreign policy towards their homeland. During the Cold War, Canadian authorities further legitimized the Czech and Slovak refugees’ anti-communist agenda and increased their influence in Czechoslovak institutions. Similarly, Canadian Czechoslovak organizations supported Canada’s Cold War agenda of securing the state from Communist infiltration. Ultimately, an adherence to anti-communism, the promotion of Canadian citizenship, and the preservation of a Czechoslovak ethnocultural heritage accelerated Czech and Slovak refugees’ socioeconomic and political integration in Cold War Canada. As a result, Canadian Czechoslovak organizations were instrumental in helping to shape a democratic culture in Cold War Canada.

This thesis is an analysis of the integration of dispersed asylum seekers in Glasgow. It is a qualitative case study that uses data from participant observation with community groups, interviews with asylum seekers and those involved in service provision and policy, and documentary analysis. It examines the impact of policy within a local context, and the difficulties of defining and promoting integration for asylum seekers. The research makes both an empirical and theoretical contribution, building on the knowledge of the impact of dispersal and asylum policy, with a Scottish perspective analysing the issues when implementing reserved asylum policy within a devolved context. The research contributes to debates on integration with an analysis of the conceptual and practical difficulties of promoting integration for asylum seekers. The research findings are structured around three key analytic themes, the impact of policy on asylum seekers and other stakeholders, defining and promoting integration, and challenges. The research indicates tensions between devolved and reserved responsibilities in relation to asylum. The different approaches to integration create difficulties for those working within devolved services, but implementing a reserved policy. Promoting integration for asylum seekers is seen as beneficial for both asylum seekers and host communities in Scotland, but there are both conceptual and practical challenges. There are difficulties of how far and in what ways temporary integration can be measured, which are analysed in relation to existing frameworks for integration. Practice related debates have formed the basis of a shift to a more strategic platform for integration work. Contexts and procedures continue to change, however, bringing fresh challenges. The concept of social capital has been influential in the structures that have been set up to facilitate the processes of integration and dispersal within Glasgow. Yet there are difficulties with the usage of a social capital based framework. Whilst social capital is a useful concept, there is a risk that its usage may mask issues of inequality and exclusion, and the fundamental difficulties of the asylum process remain.

The topic of this thesis is justice and asylum. The central argument in the thesis is that citizens of all states have a moral right that entitles them to asylum in certain circumstances of deprivation. The right to asylum can be understood as a general derivative right, and it is grounded in the more fundamental entitlement to basic needs. More specifically, I argue that all persons whose basic needs are insufficiently protected in their home states have the right to asylum when they cannot be assisted with other remedial instruments by the international community within a reasonable timeframe. By using the right to asylum as a normative evaluative standard, I also argue that the existing refugee protective institutions are morally unsatisfactory, and that a 'moral refugee regime' should be established to replace the current protective institutions. Then the questions becomes, what specific form these institutions should take. In the thesis I focus primarily on one institutional proposal, 'the tradable quota scheme', and its ethical dimensions. I defend the tradable quota scheme against several lines of criticism, and suggest that the scheme constitutes a normatively viable alternative for the existing institutional framework. Finally, I examine obligations in the protection of the right to asylum in circumstances of partial compliance. I conclude that the citizens of complying states have the obligation to 'pick up the slack' and assist those bearers of the right to asylum who are unjustly denied assistance by the non-complying states.

1.1 Background: Despite growing recognition of the negative impact of ever stringent asylum employed by western governments, psychological conceptualisations of distress in these populations remains dominated by traumamodels. 1.2 Literature Review: A systematic literature review was conducted to collate and critique findings from studies relating postmigratory stress to asylum seeker distress. The 44 reviewed studies suggested asylum seekers endure a range of postmigratory stressors relating to acculturative challenges, social isolation, material deprivation and restrictive asylum legislation. Difficulties associated with conducting research with these populations are acknowledged. It is concluded that restrictive asylum policies greatly inhibit asylum seekers’ abilities to negotiate challenges resulting from displacement. Smail’s (2005) social materialist perspective is suggested as a framework for findings. 1.3 Research Report: No known British empirical research has focused on exploring relationships between postmigratory-stress and asylum seeker mental health. Based on established methodologies (e.g. Silove et al.,1997) a cross-sectional study was undertaken to explore the relative relationship with distress of postmigratory-stressors and premigratory-trauma exposure. An opportunity sample of 98 asylum seekers completed measures of postmigratory-stress (the PLDC: Silove et al., 1997); premigratory-trauma exposure (HTQ-TE; Mollica et al.,1992) and distress (HTQ-PTSD: Mollica et al.,1992; HSCL-25: Hesbacher et al.,1980; Winokur et al.,1984). High levels of exposure to premigratory-traumatic events, postmigratory stress, and distress were reported. Regression analyses revealed ‘Feeling a burden to others’ and being denied asylum to be the strongest predictors of distress. It is concluded that a range of postmigratory stressors impact negatively on asylum seeker wellbeing. Those denied asylum experience more restrictions and poorer mental health. Limitations are acknowledged. 1.4 Implications: The literature review and research report conclude that present asylum determination processes are damaging to those seeking refuge. Psychotherapeutic interventions directed at the intra-psychic level may be of limited effectiveness given the more primary social and material needs of these clients. 1.5 Critical Appraisal: Reflections on the research process are presented alongside key learning points.

Sweden is today faced with one of the most extensive refugee waves in the history of the nation. The refugees’ attain valuable competences which are not being exploited, and alienation is becoming a serious societal problem. Researchers have stressed the importance of entrepreneurship and its positive effects on national socio-economic growth. The experience of immigrating has shown to trigger entrepreneurial activities, and it has become an apparent strategy of immigrant entrepreneurs’ to include home country resources and networks in their businesses in order to stay competitive. This has come to be known as transnational entrepreneurship, and the concept has proven to be even more favorable due to its positive socio-economic effects on dual contexts. This thesis considers the idea of refugees engaging in transnational entrepreneurship as a strategy to diminish the ongoing crisis. To enable this, a qualitative study was conducted to analyze the process of already established entrepreneurs with a refugee background. By doing so, practical and theoretical implications were able to be identified, subsequently contributing today’s refugees with valuable information on how to successfully engage in transnational entrepreneurship. By applying the theory of Effectuation on four individual cases, the authors were able to identify key aspects, allowing them to draw generalizations and final conclusions.   The outcome of this study suggests a distance to the homogeneous perspective given transnational entrepreneurs, and instead an added dimension considering the immigrants’ motives to migration. The findings in this thesis present how the resources and networks held by the transnational entrepreneurs relocate as a consequence of the additional aspect of the immigrants’ background as refugees. Furthermore, the findings of this thesis have added the dimension of multiple contexts to the theory of Effectuation and thereby enabled the theory to be applicable on an international business level.