With over 65.3 million people of concern under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees mandate, the world is facing its biggest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. The World Health Organization states that war and disasters have a large impact on a person’s mental health and psychosocial wellbeing, estimating that 5-10% of people who have experienced emergency situations suffer from mental health related problems. For refugee women in particular, research suggests that they have higher instances of mental health problems than other refugees which include depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and anxiety. Using a scoping review methodology, this thesis examines the prevalence of refugee women’s mental health problems in the African context. It examines the experiences of these women living in African camps and the availability and accessibility of mental health services during their residency. Upon completion of the scoping review, the literature reveals that there is a high occurrence of mental health problems among refugee women residing in African camps. Furthermore, with relation to services it was found that varied mental health services are present but lack qualified personnel. Lastly, four themes emerged regarding refugee women’s experiences: violence, family life and losses, poor quality of life, and coping mechanisms.

Research in Canada and abroad has shown that newcomers face multiple obstacles in their search for health care during their resettlement and integration to the host society. In Ontario, primary care services are organized in three main models based on the remuneration scheme to physicians: fee for service, capitation, and salaried. During the Primary Care reforms in early 2000s, the province introduced new models of primary care practices to enhance the quality of care through the expansion of comprehensive multidisciplinary care, applying more preventive measures and enhanced chronic disease management strategies. Along with these innovative reforms, the province promoted an enrollment system with a family doctor in the primary care practices. This research examined the access of immigrants to the enrollment system in Ontario. A review of the literature contrasting a PMC and PHC approaches showed that the latter has more potential to address social determinants of health of immigrant populations. Taking into account the organization of health services in the province, immigrants can receive primary care services mainly through PMC practices (FFS and capitation-based), but also through PHC-type of models, such as Community Health Centers. The analysis of enrollment in primary care was conducted using a secondary analysis of administrative data. The main findings have shown that immigrants’ enrollment in primary care services has increased over time, but the levels of enrollment remain lower compared to long-term residents. Moreover, compared to long-term residents, immigrants have less access to the most comprehensive models of care, which represents an important inequity. In exploring the perceptions of immigrants in two major cities of the province, most of the participants perceived that important factors, such as information, knowledge, language barriers, cultural issues; are affecting their capacity to understand and navigate the system. Hence, it takes a long time for them to make sense and learn how to connect and use the system.

Refugees are on welfare and get into difficulty because the Federal Immigration policy does not give them work permits and Povincial Education policy does not provide English as a second language. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

Práce se zabývá vazbou mezi životním prostředím, migrací a konfliktem Specifická pozornost je také věnována tzv. "environmentálním uprchlíkům" jako novému a hojně diskutovanému fenoménu v rámci této problematiky. Tato problematika je v České republice poměrně málo známým a málo diskutovaným tématem, a v češtině je k němu k dispozici jen velmi omezená literatura. Dalším cílem práce je tedy snaha zmapovat dosavadní výzkum k tomuto tématu na základě dostupné zahraniční literatury. Práce hledá odpověď na tyto hlavní otázky: Mohou enviromentální změny způsobit migraci? A pokud ano, je tato vazba kauzálně přímá, nebo zde hrají roli i další faktory? Může migrace vyvolaná enviromentálními změnami způsobit konflikt ohrožující světovou bezpečnost? Je vazba mezi enviromentálními změnami a konfliktem kauzálně přímá nebo ji ovlivňují i další faktory? Je volání po řešení otázky "environmentálních uprchlíků", jako opomíjené skupiny bez dostatečné mezinárodní ochrany a pomoci, oprávněné? Je správné a žádoucí samotné užití pojmu "environmentální uprchlík"?

This diploma thesis is concerned with the issues of refugees with a focus on refugees living in the Czech Republic. The thesis analyses the current situation concerning the life and work of refugees in the Czech Republic and assesses the impact of the refugee and asylum policy on the Czech Republic's economy and labour market. The thesis is divided into three chapters. On the basis of general introduction the first chapter examines the basic terminology and categorical definition of the refugee status. The chapter distinguishes legal and institutional framework of refugees under international, European Union and Czech Republic law. Moreover, the first chapter emphasises the global economic and social impacts of the migration of refugees on both host and source countries. The second chapter is narrowly focussed on the issue of refugees and the position of the Czech Republic. It describes the core of the Czech Republic asylum system policy and the governmental and non-governmental institutional frameworks. Considering the established facts, the second chapter analyses the socioeconomic impacts of asylum seekers on the economy and society of the Czech Republic. The third chapter is the practical chapter and analyses the overall processes of economic adaptation of refugees and deals with the difficulties of the assertion of the refugees on the Czech Republic labour market. Furthermore the final chapter highlights the essential obstacles associated with employment of foreigners and the matter of illegal labour market. On the basis of personal research, the third chapter analyses the attitude of Czech Republic employers towards employing foreigners and in particular refugees staying in the Czech Republic.

The purpose of this study was to understand the meaning of "opportunity" as expressed in the experiences of three recent refugee youth from Central America (Guatemala and El Salvador). The setting of the study was MOSAIC'S Youth Job Corps programme in Vancouver, Canada. This four-month voluntary programme was designed to give immigrant Canadian youth language skills to facilitate their entry into the work force. Data for the study were obtained through a twenty-week field study at the Job Corps site followed by the construction of three case studies based upon a series of interviews. Among the findings of the study were the following: the three refugees used a notion of opportunity as the overriding theme in defining their situation in Canada. This theme contained two aspects. First, the "what" of opportunity was future-oriented and contained a social dimension of "wanting to become someone," a material dimension concerned with "wanting to have things," and a familial dimension of "wanting to maintain the family unit." Second, the "how" of opportunity referred to the way the three refugees defined opportunity in terms of their past experiences, their initial difficulties since coming to Canada, the support networks available to them in Canada, their perception of the lives of other immigrants, and finally, the age factor. There was a strong awareness among the refugees studied that their attainment of personal goals (the "what" of opportunity) was dependent on acquiring fluency in the English language and in their finding secure employment with career mobility. The study also found that many of the refugees' future aspirations were related to their own past experiences in their countries of origin. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

Undetected acute Pulmonary Tuberculosis in the 50,000 refugee immigrants from Southeast Asia to Canada would constitute a serious public health hazard. The 10,000 Southeast Asian refugee immigrants to British Columbia in 1979/80 were rescreened for acute Pulmonary Tuberculosis despite provincial and federal health authorities disagreeing on the need for such rescreening. This thesis demonstrates that the rescreening of the refugee immigrants was warranted by: A) Comparing the rate per 100,000 population with acute Pulmonary Tuberculosis among: 1) The Southeast Asian refugee immigrants arriving in British Columbia in 1979/80 with the rates of acute Pulmonary Tuberculosis per 100,000 population for the three-year period 1976/78 among 2) the general population of British Columbia, 3) the registered native Indian population of British Columbia, 4) the non-refugee Asian immigrant population arriving in British Columbia, and B) Estimating the increased risk of acute Pulmonary Tuberculosis to the general public from the presence of the 10,000 refugee immigrants in British Columbia. Age-specific rates of acute Pulmonary Tuberculosis and the prevalence rates of acute Pulmonary Tuberculosis confirmed bacteriologically were calculated with statistics extracted from the records of the Division of Tuberculosis Control of British Columbia, the Federal Department of Health and Welfare, and the Department of Immigration. Comparison of the age-specific rates demonstrated that acute Pulmonary Tuberculosis occurred 6 times more frequently in the refugee immigrants than in the general population of British Columbia, and 1.25 times more frequently in the refugee Asian immigrants than in the non-refugee Asian immigrants. Comparison of the prevalence rates demonstrated that acute Pulmonary Tuberculosis confirmed bacteriologically occurred 3 times more frequently in the registered native Indian population of British Columbia than in the refugee immigrants to British Columbia. The extra public health risk of acute Pulmonary Tuberculosis from the presence of 10,000 refugee immigrants in British Columbia for one year was estimated to be 730 in 10⁶ for each member of the general population of British Columbia. The rate of acute Pulmonary Tuberculosis occurring in the 10,000 refugee immigrants arriving in British Columbia in 1979-1980 confirmed that the rescreening of the refugee immigrants was warranted. Recommendations were made to centralize the rescreening program within British Columbia so as to minimize the public health hazards of acute Pulmonary Tuberculosis occurring in the Southeast Asian refugee immigrants. / Medicine, Faculty of / Population and Public Health (SPPH), School of / Graduate

The objective of this study is to investigate the variations in the type of trauma (post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and disorder of extreme stress not otherwise specified (DESNOS) resulting first from group membership, and second from variations in socioeconomic status, and last, from exposure to physical and psychological methods of interrogation due to imprisonment. I use a diverse sample of 202 child ex-detainees who served sentences in Israeli prisons and were 17 years of age or less at the time of arrest. Various regression techniques were utilized to determine the most parsimonious way to distinguish between the three groups in their trauma responses. The key finding in this study is that child refugee ex-detainees living in refugee camps, in general, did not report PTSD or DESNOS reactions compared to their counterparts. Continuing PTSD and DESNOS symptoms were more prevalent among the group of refugees living outside the camps. However, there is at least one finding that supported what I hypothesized: refugees living in camps were more likely to experience elevated levels of alterations in attention or consciousness (DESNOS2). For refugees in camps, the DESNOS absence tells us that the volatile childhood these children experienced was not associated with severe pathological reactions or heightened sensitization to trauma. In contrast, refugees living outside camps suffer from alterations in self-perception DESNOS4 symptomology, in addition, to elevated levels of complex trauma DESNOS and they qualified for the DESNOS diagnosis more than the other two groups of children. Refugees living outside camps were the only group subjected to interpersonal stressors.

In the late 1940s and 1950s Czechoslovakia accepted nearly 14000 political refugees from Greece. In this paper we examine the Greekness of those who chose to stay in the Czech Republic. We analyse their current sense of ethnic allegiance and how it is manifested, after more than 60 years of co-existence with Czechs. Our analysis is based on cultural elements (language, folklore, music, food, religion), which appear to be important factors of ethnic identification for Greeks in the Czech Republic and Greeks in general. We juxtapose the Greek and the Czech-Greek perception of them. We attempt to illuminate the singularity of the Czech-Greeks and uncover the conditions that led to it. Thus we simultaneously acknowledge the varied Greekness of the Czech-Greeks as legitimate.

La thèse s’intéresse à la construction et l’évolution de sous-classes de réfugiés au sein du système international de protection mis en place par le Haut Commissariat des Nations Unies pour les Réfugiés depuis les années 1950. Par un premier travail d’analyse des archives de l’organisation internationale, elle montre comment le système de protection a toujours fonctionné en opérant un tri parmi les réfugiés statutaires. L’analyse porte plus particulièrement sur la manière dont les « réfugiés africains » ont, dès leur arrivée dans le système international durant les années 1970, été pensés et traités comme des réfugiés particuliers. Par un second travail qualitatif mené au Maroc entre 2014 et 2015, la thèse s’intéresse au prolongement et à l’actualisation de ces enjeux en analysant le cas des « réfugiés subsahariens ». Réfugiés statutaires, ils constituent pourtant l’incarnation du « faux réfugié » sur lequel pèse un soupçon permanent. La thèse s’intéresse alors à l’expérience des individus pris dans cette sous-classe et à leurs tactiques pour tenter d’être reconnus et traités « comme des réfugiés à part entière ». / This PhD research focuses on the construction et evolution of refugees’ subclasses within the international protection system implemented since the 1950s by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. This work firstly explains, based on this international organisation’s archives, how the protection system has always operated by selecting within recognised refugees. The analysis examines how « African refugees », since their arrival in the international system in the 1970s, have been thoughts of and treated as peculiar refugees. Secondly, a fieldwork in Morocco between 2014 and 2015 addresses the realisation of these issues thanks to a case study analysis of the « sub-Saharan refugees ». Despite being recognised refugees, they embody the « bogus refugee » under constant suspicion. This research focuses on the experience of individuals caught up in this subclass and on their tactics in order to be recognised and treated as « full-fledged refugees ».