The psychosocial well-being of survivors of armed conflicts, forced displacement, and/or natural disasters is becoming more and more an integral component of holistic humanitarian response. Yet many organisations rely on broad, generalised manuals or guidelines which do not take into account the unique characteristics of societies and target populations. This paper describes the author’s research with disaster survivors in Java, Indonesia, and refugee in Sweden, aiming to characterise the process of recovery, adaptation and integration through beneficiaries’ own words. The author looks at how theory can be applied, such as whether a hierarchy of needs can be universally relevant, how the host Swedish society affects refugees’ experiences, which so-called “states of being” subjects experience, and how religion and cultural differences like individualism and collectivism influence one’s ability to regain psychosocial well-being. The author used both in-depth interviews and quantitative questionnaires to obtain data. Results showed an incredible level of resilience and positivity among all groups, though Indonesians reported family, spirituality and the community as major helping factors, while many refugees in Sweden pointed to their own individual determination and will to succeed. Many Indonesians identified economic livelihood as the biggest remaining gap, while refugees in Sweden spoke of language skills, educational qualifications and employment as keys to success and integration. Many challenges and gaps remain, especially for newly arrived refugees facing an increasingly difficult job market and fewer opportunities.

We were commissioned to do this study by the Red Cross Centre for victims of torture and war (RKC) in Skövde and questions was asked about how it can be to come as a refugee to a new country and start over. The purpose of this study was to search for a deeper knowledge about older immigrants experiences of their integration in the Swedish community. The conception of “older immigrant” aimed of persons born before 1954 since these persons culturally was the older ones in the patient group at RKC. This study handled both men and women, was categorised in different themes and was analysed from theoretical points about identity and crises. The method that was chosen was qualitative interviews since we wanted to share the respondents own stories about their experiences. The respondents were chosen from former patients since ten years or more at RKC, born before 1954. We found the material partly through Internet, partly through libraries and also in literature that belongs to the social work programme. The result of the study showed that having a work is a very important part in the integration and that loneliness was the common denominator in the daily life of the respondents. Finally, it was established that we must be better on making best use of the resources that immigrants bring when they come to Sweden. / Uppdraget att göra denna studie fick vi av Röda Korsets Behandlingscenter i Skövde och frågor väcktes om hur det kan vara att som flykting komma till ett nytt land och starta om på nytt. Syftet med studien var att söka en fördjupad kunskap om äldre invandrares upplevelser av sin integration i det svenska samhället. Begreppet ”äldre invandrare” syftade på personer födda före 1954 då dessa personer kulturmässigt var de äldre i patientgruppen på RKC. Studien behandlade både män och kvinnor, kategoriserades i olika teman och analyse¬rades därefter ur teoretiska utgångspunkter om identitet och kris. Metoden som valdes var kvali¬tativa djupintervjuer då målet var att få ta del av respondenternas egna berättelser om sina erfarenheter och upplevelser. Respondenterna valdes utifrån att de varit patienter på RKC för tio år sen eller mer och att de var födda före 1954. Material fann vi dels via Internets sökmotorer, dels på bibliotek samt i litteratur som hör till socionomutbildningen. Studiens resultat visade på att arbete är en mycket viktig del i integrationen och att ensamhet var en gemensam nämnare i invandrarnas vardag. Slutligen konstaterades att vi måste bli bättre på att tillvarata de resurser som invandrare bär med sig när de kommer till Sverige.

This dissertation examines the adaptation of Christian refugees from Southern Sudan—primarily Dinkas and mostly educated—to living in Ottawa, Canada, not historically a gateway immigrant city. The discussion is based on sustained observation, documentation and analysis of South Sudanese refugees between 2005 and 2009, including 32 recorded interviews of adults, as well as a focus group held with young adults. It examines the findings through the lenses of social capital, with its focus on trust and reciprocity, and segmented assimilation to study the South Sudanese refugees’ integration through their most important groupings: ethnic, gendered, racial and religious. The study also focuses on the cultural, gender and language dynamics of a nascent South Sudanese-focused congregation and a related East African congregation. The experiences of Anglican and Catholic congregations with Christian Sudanese refugees were also examined. The research suggests that inter-culturally competent ethnic and religious leadership is central to the ability of migrant groups in the Global North to have enough bonding social capital to mediate the adaptation process and to bridge or link to other groups. First-wave, mostly male, educated refugees often have the inter-cultural skills and agency to set up effective organizations, but a continued focus on their region of origin, facilitated by the Internet and cell phones, makes a sustained emphasis on organizational-supported living in Canada difficult. While the values of many Sudanese-born women and their children converge with those of mainstream Canadian society, men living within patriarchal value systems, supported by literal interpretations of Holy Scriptures, face challenges, and the resulting conflicts threaten family cohesion. Both the denominational and the ethnic churches, in supporting new migrants spiritually and socially, are caught between denominational parameters and goals of ethnic identity, culture and values maintenance, made more difficult by the Sudanese not having a common language. The dissertation also begins to analyze the impact for recent African Christian immigrants of a culture that emphasizes individual rights, including the effects of the increasing presence of openly gay leaders in the Canadian but not in the African Church. / Cette dissertation se penche sur l’adaptation des réfugiés chrétiens originaires du Sud du Soudan, en majorité d’ethnie Dinka et scolarisés, vivant à Ottawa, Canada. Les résultats de la recherche sur 5 ans suggèrent qu’une gestion adéquate des dynamiques ethniques et religieuses au niveau interculturel est capitale dans la capacité des groupes de migrants dans les pays développés pour générer suffisamment de capital social et faciliter le processus d’adaptation pour se lier à d’autres groupes. Les églises confessionnelles et les églises ethniques, en aidant les immigrants spirituellement et socialement, sont coincées entre des paramètres confessionnels et des objectifs d’identification ethnique, de maintien de valeurs et de culture, compliqués par l’absence d’une langue commune parmi les Soudanais. Cette dissertation tente aussi d’analyser l’impact pour les immigrants africains de fraîche date, d’une culture qui valorise les droits individuels, y compris l’émergence de chefs de file ouvertement homosexuels dans les églises canadiennes mais non dans les églises africaines. / University of Ottawa

Although gender inequality is a major element of poverty, women the world over have showed their heroism in the role of both economy generators and family supporters’ by engaging in informal trade. This became most remarkable in South Africa where refugees in general and women in particular are living without either government or UNHCR supports. The following study attempts to explore business leadership qualities of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) refugee women living in the city of Durban. The study is the result of challenges that Congolese women informal traders are facing (family responsibilities, identity documents...) since their arrival in South Africa which hinders the development of their businesses. Additionally, this study identified a number of successful strategies for developing businesses and reducing poverty. This research used a qualitative method during data collection. In turn, both explanatory and descriptive theories were used. Congolese refugee women informal traders were the sample taken and were selected from the Congolese community living in the city of Durban. In order to answer the research questions, this study used in-depth interviews and questionnaires where ten Congolese refugee women informal traders between the age of 24 and 41 years were involved. Selecting respondents by the abovementioned ages in this research was helpful for exploring socio-economic challenges of the most categories of the neediest refugee women: widows, single women and mothers of 5 or more children, and so forth. These categories provided relevant information for being mothers and their daily socio-economic challenges in the city of Durban. In the line with findings, respondents on the questions related to business development mentioned the number of factors as hindrance to development of their businesses. Thus, they had no access to business training organized by government and NGOs, poor access to finance, lack of UNCHR support, and family responsibilities especially their refugee status. The study reveals the needs of both UNHCR and government’s support in terms of sponsoring refugees’ projects (including business training) and appropriate identity documents from the department of Home Affairs. UNHCR assistance together with local NGOs and appropriate identity documents are identified to be important factors of respondents’ business development strategies. / Thesis (M.Com.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2010.

The modern state system has a specific answer to the question of where and how political action can occur: in the state and through citizenship. State sovereignty underpins the basic discourse of who belongs and who speaks in political communities, which is said to have important implications for those without claim to citizenship, namely the refugee. Giorgio Agamben‘s Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life is an important discussion of how the logic of sovereignty produces the refugee in the contemporary international state system. However, I will argue in this paper that this narrative, like many others, eclipses moments of refugee agency and reproduces the refugee in apolitical terms by binging a particular conception of the political to bear. This paper critically engages with the writings of Immanuel Kant and Giorgio Agamben to explore how this discourse of political community (state) and political identity (citizenship) has emerged historically and is continually reinforced. I argue that these narratives fail to see the politicality of so called spaces of abjection which are continually reshaping and reforming perceived understandings of the political.

No description available.

There is a crisis of asylum in Africa. In response to large and protracted refugee populations, declining donor assistance and a range of related security concerns, a significant number of African states have limited the asylum they offer to refugees. Some states have closed their borders to new arrivals and pursued early repatriations. Many other states have contained refugees in isolated and insecure camps. Given the scale of this crisis, the global pressures on asylum, and the disproportionate share of the global refugee burden borne by Africa, understanding the responses of African states poses an important challenge. A critical examination of the factors influencing the refugee policies of African states is, however, strikingly absent from the scholarly literature. The objective of this thesis is to address this gap by examining the responses of Kenya, Tanzania and Guinea to the arrival and prolonged presence of significant refugee populations. Drawing on field research, this thesis argues that the asylum policies of the three cases are the result of factors both related to the presence of refugees, such as burden sharing and security concerns, and unrelated to the presence of refugees, such as foreign policy priorities, democratization, economic liberalization and the sense of vulnerability experienced by many regimes in Africa. Drawing on a political history of the post-colonial African state, this thesis argues for an approach that recognizes the politics of asylum in Africa. Such an approach highlights the importance of incorporating the host state into any examination of asylum in Africa and the predominant role that broader political factors play in the formulation of asylum policies. This is not to suggest that factors such as the protracted nature of refugee populations, levels of burden sharing and security concerns are irrelevant to the study of asylum in Africa. Instead, the thesis argues that such factors are very relevant, but need to be understood in a more critical way, mindful of the political context within which asylum policies are formulated. This approach leads to important lessons not only for the study of asylum in Africa, but also for the future of the refugee protection regime in Africa.

The last ten years has witnessed the inflow of a large number of new immigrant and refugee children, many from Africa, into Canada. These new immigrants and displaced persons (refugees) undergo a cycle of adaptation in a new society; a process that takes much longer time than the host society allows them. Most children of refugees and new immigrants enter the school system few months after their arrival in Canada when they have barely had the time to adapt to their new socio-cultural environment. However, little research has been done on the cultural adaptation of African immigrant and refugee youth in the Canadian educational system. / This study examined the social integration and educational experiences of teenage immigrant and refugee youth mainly from minority backgrounds in their first few years of contacts with the Quebec educational system. Using a qualitative methodology, interviews were conducted with ten youth, eight parents, four community leaders, two social service reception center workers and a school administrator together with information from focus group discussions with a number of youth and parents from the same backgrounds. The cultural and acculturating patterns that emerged in the context of school, family, peers, and community as well as the way in which the respondents negotiate, create, and maintain their identities were examined. / The findings showed that culture and cultural adaptation play very significant roles in the social and educational integration of immigrant and refugee children in Canadian society. They further pointed to how acculturation difficulties have led to many of these children feeling less motivated to study, losing interest in education, or dropping out of the school system altogether. / Implications of this research for curriculum development in education and social work practice with this population group are offered. These include the need for social service professionals and educators working with refugee youth to have an understanding of the different needs and history or cultural context of the country of origin of the refugees. Others are the need for teachers to be culturally responsive and competent as they deal with increasingly diverse student populations. Also of equal importance for policy formulators in the educational field is the need for curriculum that is designed to address the distinctive challenges of acculturation that these new arrivals face especially at the High School levels in Quebec. / Recommendations are made for directions for future research in the social work and education fields including structuring a longitudinal study to follow these youth participants over a period of time to examine the evolution of their ethnic identity, bicultural development, cultural values, their educational attainment and the challenges they face as adults. Furthermore, a nationwide or an inter-provincial study with similar population groups (with language as a significant variable) would provide a broader understanding of the integration issues associated with this population group.

Through interviews, observation of refugee hearings, the analysis of negative decisions rendered by the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), and the application of communication, and social work theories, as well as discourse analysis, this study explores the effects of intercultural communication on the outcome of the refugee determination hearing. It is argued that a gap exists between the principle of cultural receptiveness at the IRB, and that which occurs in the hearing. This paradox is testimony to the difficulties of applying the international definition of a Convention Refugee to a socially and culturally-constructed refugee determination process. The political, social, and cultural context in which the IRB functions, the Board's institutional culture, which mirrors the social discourse on refugees, and the way individuals ascribe meaning to information in a culturally-defined manner, all have an impact on the outcome of the hearing, and in turn on refugee protection in Canada.

This thesis takes a critical approach to examine recent developments in European asylum and migration policy. Specifically, this research is interested in addressing the emerging paradigm of "migration management" and its impact on the nature of refugee protection and asylum in an integrated Europe. Two approaches are used in this analysis. First, from a functionalist perspective, this work considers how migration management has responded to contemporary realities of international migration. Secondly, from a critical theory perspective, the thesis analyzes how refugee protection becomes subsumed within the broader goals of migration management. This thesis will argue that the paradigm of migration management has effectively shifted the contours of the asylum debate by linking refugee and asylum policy with broader issues of labor migration, illegality and foreign relations. This has resulted in the separation of asylum from territoriality and more broadly, the submersion of the humanitarian considerations to the overarching goals of migration management.