<p>The Westsaharian women are a civic group that during their soon to be thirty years as refugees in the Westsaharian camps in south western Algeria have become empowered as citizens and advanced strongly in political representation. In theory, empowerment of women’s democratic citizenship has been described as a complex phenomenon. To gain an understanding about this in this study, I have described the women’s perceived access to resources and attitudes, and in what way these factors play a role for their active citizenship. This has been done by the use of Axel Hadenius’ theory about the democratic citizenship and Jo Rowlands’ theory about which resources that are to be considered as essential for women’s empowerment. To be able to perform the study, a case study was performed in the Westsaharian refugee camps during April-May 2004, followed up by a second during October-November 2004.</p><p>The study shows that there are resources and attitudes within both human and social capital that the women perceive to play a significant role for their active citizenship. These factors make the women take part in societal activities, strive to reach higher political positions, and work for a common civic development as women and as Westsaharian citizens. The result of the study further shows that there are contextual inhibiting and encouraging factors that the women perceive to affect their resources and attitudes that play a significant role for their active citizenship. </p>

Large numbers of migrants enter South Africa legally and illegally in search of a better life, personal safety and security (Pretorius, 2004:1). The research study explored and described experiences of refugees and asylum seekers in the host country, the challenges they encountered in the process of integration regarding families in their country of origin and their “new” families in the host country, the strategies they employed to get recognition even if it led to being involved in fraudulent activities. The research has also explored the impact of laws in the lives of refugees and asylum seekers for example the Refugee Act (Act 130 of 1998), the Immigration Act (Act 13 of 2002), the 1969 OAU Convention and the 1951 United Nations Convention. A qualitative research approach was used to frame the study, which employed an exploratory, descriptive and contextual research design so as to understand challenges experienced by refugees and asylum seekers. The sample for the study was a purposively selected sample recruited using the snowball sampling technique. As a means of collecting data semi-structured interviews were utilized. The eight steps as stipulated by Tesch (in Creswell, 1994) were used to analyse data. To ensure trustworthiness the four criteria as suggested by Guba (in Krefting, 1991) were applied, namely truth-value, applicability, consistency and neutrality. The findings and recommendations are made available by means of a research report The research findings were centered on the following themes: (1) Refugees and asylum seekers articulate a range of reasons behind the decision to leave their home country. (2) Refugees and asylum seekers express negative experiences regarding leaving their country of origin. (3) Refugees and asylum seekers experience a range of feelings as they enter the host country (4) Refugees and asylum seekers report that they and their families experience a number of challenges as a result of relocation (5) Refugees and asylum seekers employ negative and positive strategies to cope with challenges of relocation (6) Suggestions made by refugees and asylum seekers concerning the involvement of Social Workers (7) Suggestions made by refugees/asylum seekers to Home Affairs in terms of improving services to refugees and asylum seekers Substance findings: the results emerged from the data collected through the themes and sub-themes identified during data analysis. Conclusions and recommendations: Based on the findings conclusions were drawn and recommendations proposed from the findings.

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.

Community-based public art education in emergencies is an emerging transdisciplinary field that exists at the crossroads of art education and education in emergencies. The Rohingya refugee camp is the largest refugee camp in the history of the world, on the border of Myanmar in Southern Bangladesh. As a response to the 2017 Rohingya refugee influx crisis, the international NGO Artolution started the first locally led collaborative public art education program in the refugee camps by selecting and educating individuals fleeing the Rohingya genocide. My research examines the learning that occurred throughout three years of teaching artist education programs with 14 Rohingya refugee and Bangladeshi women and men, through their journey to lead independent art education programs. This research employs a performance-based ethnographic data collection methodology, with qualitative interviews, focus groups, and narratives collected from the teaching artists and participating learners over three phases of data collection that took place from 2018-2019 in collaboration with UNHCR, UNICEF, IFRC, et al. The findings of the study suggest that the Rohingya Artolution teaching artist team is a living model for building a durable approach for emergency responses and humanizing a resilient future where history is defined by the voices that establish their own roles and identities in the world. The findings were presented through interweaving personal narratives and testimonials of the displaced and host teaching artists with supporting thinkers and commentary, in order to accurately link the stories of their learning and experiences by tracking the evolving teaching artist education process of cultivating creativity, curiosity, and expression in crisis-affected populations, and what that means for the future of their communities.

Due to the protracted nature of forced displacement, a majority of refugees spend their entire academic cycles in exile (Milner & Loescher, 2011). While some successfully navigate their educational trajectories, others are unable to complete basic education. Despite the important role education plays in emergency, displacement, and resettlement, refugee education remains under-researched. There is a dearth of research that has investigated what factor(s) at individual, family, and school levels contribute to children and youth’s school persistence and dropout amidst displacement. This study aimed to fill this substantial gap in the literature by taking a balanced, comprehensive approach to investigate the experiences of children and youth in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Using a sequential mixed-methods design, this study examined the different factors that influenced the schooling of children and youth in Kakuma Refugee Camp. This study found that family poverty, inability to afford school uniforms and supplies, school uniform policy, living without parents/guardians, and family responsibilities were some of the major reasons that contributed to school dropout. By contrast, different types of support—financial, emotional, or academic—received from family members, teachers, and peers mainly influenced students’ persistence, despite persistent barriers in schooling. This study finds that ensuring educational access and persistence was not the role of a single stakeholder in education—i.e., a family member (parent), a head teacher, a teacher, or a student. Instead, different actors in children and youth’s sociocultural environments could play a role in influencing their decisions to (dis)continue education. The findings from this study not only contribute to expanding the knowledge base of education in emergencies, but they also support educators and practitioners who are providing and improving education for displaced populations, as well as policymakers within the Ministry of Education working to strengthen education systems and to foster access to quality education. My research findings may also prove meaningful in understanding the school persistence of school-aged children and youth in other refugee-hosting countries around the world, including the United States, and other mobile and marginalized populations in non-conflict settings.

Events such as conflicts, natural disasters, online deplatformings, and economic collapses can force people away from their long-standing social networks and require them to rebuild their social lives in new locations or settings. How do social networks shape the effects of these disruptions on communities? How does social behavior respond to violence? In this dissertation, I investigate the dynamic relationship between violence and social networks. In two essays, I analyze the effect of violence on social behavior in two contexts, using data from conflict-affected communities in Myanmar and Ukraine. In the third essay, I formally study the relationship between civilians’ social network characteristics and the optimal violence strategies for states. The first essay investigates the effects of exposure to violence on social network composition and formation among internally displaced people (IDPs) in Kachin State, Myanmar. Using original survey data from 5 camps, I find that those exposed to violence on the extensive margin have fewer initial, new, and close ties and those exposed on the intensive margin have fewer new ties within the camps. However, those exposed to violence do not form ties with other exposed IDPs at a higher rate than with non-exposed IDPs. The second essay asks, how does exposure to violence affect the ability of forcibly internally displaced people (IDPs) to integrate into new communities? I introduce and test a demand-side theory of integration using the case of internally displaced people in Ukraine. Using original survey data, I show that those directly exposed to violence are less successful in integrating into their new communities. Moreover, I show that the results are consistent with a psychological mechanism: those directly exposed to violence are more likely to exhibit symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. The third essay asks, how does the structure of civilians’ social networks shape the optimal form of violence to be used against them? Theories explaining why states choose to use targeted or indiscriminate violence against civilians hinge on the state's capacity to gain information about whom to target and its ability to do enough damage to prevent defection to the rebel's side. In contrast to these theories, I show that the choice of strategy depends on the characteristics of the community experiencing the violence, not the state employing it. This essay argues that even when states can target certain civilians, they may choose to employ indiscriminate violence due to characteristics of civilians' social network structure. The state's optimal strategy of violence is driven by two factors: the degree distribution of civilians' social networks and the correlation between citizens' motivation to leave a network and citizens' value to other nodes in the network. When the degree distribution is uniform, and motivation and value are positively correlated, indiscriminate violence is more often preferred.

Background: refugee children are children who have lost their homes, families, neighborhoods, and lifestyle routines and have moved to another country. They are at risk of mental health problems due to the traumatic experiences and stressors. 9 in 10 refugee children live in refugee camps in low and middle-income countries which have limited access to resources, services, and better living conditions. Four themes were identified as factors promoting children’s mental health in refugee camps. Positive relationships, education, access to health care services, and community support Methods: 274 articles were identified for this studying using the same search strings on all 5 selected databases (PsyINFO, Psychology database, Scopus, Pubmed, Sociological Abstract) 108 duplicates were removed, and the abstract and title screen was done for 166 articles. only 25 articles went through the full-text screening using specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. 7 articles were finally included in this study. Results: Results indicated that children feel happy, safe, and secure, and expressed positive behaviors when they are surrounded by quality family and peer relationships when they can have access to educational opportunities, and when they have a supportive and engaging community that provide them resources and recreational activities.

O presente trabalho pretende analisar criticamente as medidas protetivas a direitos das mulheres nos campos de Dadaab (Quênia), onde boa parte da população está em situação de refúgio prolongado. O Alto Comissariado das Nações Unidas para Refugiados (ACNUR) enquadra nessa situação as populações a partir de 25 mil refugiados que vivam no exílio por cinco anos ou mais (ACNUR, 2004). Fundado em 1992, Dadaab consiste atualmente no maior complexo de campos de refugiados do mundo, com quase 260 mil pessoas registradas; na maioria, somalis com até seus 18 anos. Nesses campos como em outros, o ACNUR atua junto a órgãos, governamentais ou não, a que denomina parceiros na proteção a refugiados. As normas que embasam tal proteção nessas situações, em particular no continente africano, são descritas no Capítulo 1. As medidas protetivas às principais violações de direitos das mulheres em campos são alvos do Capítulo 2. O Capítulo 3 aborda os campos de Dadaab e as medidas de proteção a direitos humanos das mulheres nesses locais, fazendo o contraponto aos dados oficiais. Na Conclusão, inquietações com os dilemas dessa proteção são retomadas com vistas a fomentar o debate a respeito dos campos e assentamentos de refugiados no Direito contemporâneo. / This research aims to critically analyze the protective measures of the womens rights in the Dadaab camps (Kenya), where much of the population is namely bearing a protracted refugee situation. The High Commissioner of the United Nations for Refugees (UNHCR) fits in such a category any populations from 25,000 refugees or more living in exile for five years onwards (UNHCR, 2004). Established in 1992, Dadaab is nowadays the largest camp complex, with almost 260,000 registered individuals, most of whom are under 18 Somali refugees. In this, as in other camps, UNHCR partners with other entities, either governmental or not, namely to protect the refugees rights. The main norms supporting their actions particularly in such situations in the Africa region are described in Chapter 1. The protective measures for major women\'s rights violations in the camps are dealt with by Chapter 2. Then Chapters 3 addresses the field Dadaab and measures to protect human rights of women in such places, further questioning the official data. Eventually, the final Conclusions recalls issues related to protection dilemmas that might renew debates on both refugee camps and settlements in contemporary Law studies.

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

This thesis combines ethnographic methods with feminist political analysis to examine Congolese young people’s decision-making roles in families, households, communities and policy spaces in Kampala and Kyaka II refugee settlement, Uganda. As refugees and young people, research subjects face many structural constraints. However, their diverse experiences defy homogenising discourses of marginality as an inherent, fixed characteristic. Instead, this thesis develops and applies a conceptual framework of political marginalisation as a dynamic process in multiple spaces. Research findings show that young people’s decision-making roles vis-à-vis resource distribution and division of labour are relational and contextual. Their multiple subject positions and relationships in overlapping networks affect differential decision-making roles. In particular, social age and gender are major axes of decision-making processes. Analyses of inter-linkages across patterns of relationships reveal that research subjects in peer networks and intergenerational household networks with independent resources have more decision-making opportunities at household, community and policy levels than their counterparts in intergenerational family networks. This contradicts assumptions that young people without their biological parents are inherently ‘marginalised’, and highlights the political importance of decision-making processes in perceived ‘private’ spaces, such as families and households. Structure and power relationships thus situate decision-making processes and affect available choices, but they cannot solely explain political roles and behaviour. This thesis also stresses the importance of agentic beliefs, intentions and aspirations. As actors in dynamic marginalisation processes, some young people attempt to access central spaces through education, remunerated formal employment and physical mobility. Others use marginal and transitional spaces to provide alternatives to the status quo. Such creativity and productivity occasion possibilities of political change. However, UNHCR’s protection and assistance responses do not facilitate these transformative processes because of their focus on perceived essentialist characteristics of monolithic ‘marginals’. This thesis offers an alternative approach that recognises refugee young people’s political agency, as well as the structural and power dynamics that constrain their decision-making opportunities.