No

Yes / Pregnant asylum-seeking and refugee women are a particularly vulnerable group in society, who may be possibly living alone in poverty in inappropriate accommodation (Dunne, 2007) and experiencing hostile attitudes (Hynes and sale, 2010). They may have poor physical and mental health, placing them at an increased risk of poor pregnancy outcomes (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), 2010). Despite this, they are less likely to attend for timely maternity care. This article discusses the evaluation to date of an ongoing befriending project located in Northern england, targeting pregnant asylum-seeking and refugee women and helping to address difficulties that they may face. Volunteer befrienders, who themselves are asylum-seeking and refugee mothers, receive training to provide support and guidance to clients. Preliminary data suggest that befriending has advantages for both client and volunteer: clients appear to develop a trusting relationship with their befriender which facilitates self-confidence and helps overcome social isolation; and the volunteers feel that they are undertaking a worthwhile role and often move onto paid employment. Befriending may be a useful resource for midwives and ultimately improve pregnancy outcomes for asylum-seeking and refugee women.

No

Yes

Yes / Pregnant women seeking asylum in the UK may be particularly vulnerable with poor underlying health, more complex pregnancies and an increased risk of maternal and perinatal mortality. Studies have shown that some women seeking asylum have poor experiences of maternity care. This is despite the implementation of NICE guidelines to improve care for women with complex social factors. This article reports on a phenomenological study undertaken in West Yorkshire, aiming to explore the maternity care experiences of local pregnant asylum seeking women, to inform service development. Six women were interviewed over a three-month period. The findings focused more broadly on their experiences of living in the UK whilst being an asylum seeker and pregnant rather than focusing on maternity care, although this was included. Five key themes emerged: ‘pre-booking challenges’, ‘inappropriate accommodation’, ‘being pregnant and dispersed’, ‘being alone and pregnant’ and ‘not being asked or listened to’. These findings could be used as the basis for training midwives to understand how the difficulties women experience can impact on their health and social needs.

The prevailing discourses around refugees often serve to position them as ignorant, incapable, and needing to be assimilated into the dominant culture of receiving societies. The limited research devoted to refugees shows that they struggle in schools and on standardized tests of achievement, are underemployed, and live in poverty. Refugee women, in particular, often contend with multiple linguistic, gendered, and racialized forms of discrimination, as they navigate transnational spaces and lives in resettlement. However, this qualitative study sought to counter deficit discourses around refugee women in resettlement by critically investigating and illuminating their everyday lives and literacy practices. The participants were nine refugee women, aged 16 to 31, who engaged in an out-of-school book club over a six-month period. Sociocultural, dialogic, poststructural, feminist, and transnational theories informed this study. Critical ethnographic approaches and New Literacy Studies perspectives influenced the research process and data gathering. Qualitative data were collected from audio and video recordings of book club meetings, meeting transcripts, and researcher field notes. The data were analyzed using qualitative coding and narrative methods. The themes identified from the analysis were that participants (1) shaped and used the book club as a dialogic, border practice and space; (2) navigated and negotiated shifting and changing subjectivities and took up multi/plural identities; (3) used multiple languages and literacies as practices and resources; and (4) were living here-and-there, transnational and dialogic lives. The findings suggest that educators can foster refugee women’s English language learning and multiple literacies in three key ways: by creating learning spaces that are flexible, contingent, dialogic, and collaborative; by recognizing students’ sociocultural contexts and funds of knowledge; and by affording opportunities for students to position themselves as knowers and teachers.

No description available.

Background: A variety of factors may interplay between nurses and maternity clients of diverse ethnic origins to disrupt effective ethnocultural care encounters. Study Aim/Research Questions: The aim of this study was to explore maternity nurses care experiences with African immigrant/refugee women. Methodology: Focused ethnography. Methods: Data collection through a purposive sample using semi-structured interviews. Location/Setting: Maternity units of three acute care hospitals in Alberta, Canada. Participant Number & Characteristics: Twelve maternity nurses of RN or LPN designation. Approach to Analysis: A cyclical, iterative process of data collection & analysis with Atlas.ti6. Findings: Maternity nurses use multiple ways of gaining knowledge and information to negotiate ethnocultural care encounters. Awareness of larger social structures that impede deeper critical reflection and assessment is needed. Implications: This research study has the potential to affect positive learning outcomes amongst nurses such as improved therapeutic communication, care decision making and subsequent nurse-client relationships in ethno-cultural encounters.

abstract: Most studies on refugee populations tend to focus on mental health issues and communicable diseases. Yet, reproductive health remains a major aspect of refugee women's health needs. African refugee women in the United States continue to experience some difficulties in accessing reproductive health services despite having health insurance coverage. The purpose of this study was to understand the reproductive health journey of African refugee women resettled in Phoenix, Arizona. This study also explored how African refugee women's pre-migration and post-migration experiences affect their relationships with health care providers. The study was qualitative consisting of field observations at the Refugee Women's Health Clinic (RWHC) in Phoenix, verbally administered demographic questionnaires, and semi-structured one-on-one interviews with twenty African refugee women (between the ages of 18 and 55) and ten health care providers. The findings were divided into three major categories: pre-migration and post migration experiences, reproductive health experiences, and perspectives of health care providers. The themes that emerged from these categories include social isolation, living between two cultures, racial and religious discrimination, language/interpretation issues and lack of continuity of care. Postcolonial feminism, intersectionality, and human rights provided the theoretical frameworks that helped me to analyze the data that emerged from the interviews, questionnaire and fieldnotes. The findings revealed some contrasts from the refugee women's accounts and the accounts of health care providers. While refugee women spoke from their own specific social location leading to more nuanced perspectives, health care providers were more uniform in their responses leading to a rethink of the concept of cultural competency. As I argue in the dissertation and contrary to conventional wisdom, culture per se does not necessarily translate to resistance to the American health care system for many African refugee women. Rather, their utilization (or lack thereof) of health services are better conceived within a broader and complex context that recognizes intersectional factors such as gender, racialization, language, displacement, and class which have a huge impact on the reproductive health seeking patterns of refugee women. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Gender Studies 2011

During the so-called ‘migration crisis’ of 2015, 51,338 Syrians applied for asylum in Sweden. First, Swedish politicians called for Swedes to ‘open their hearts’, public support was strong, and media coverage was full of possibilities and humanizing images. As the crisis developed, Sweden’s generous asylum legislation switched to the EU minimum, the political climate toughened and media’s positive frames soon shifted to discussing negative consequences. This degree project focuses on those least visible in the media’s representation of the migration crisis – refugee women. By using Chouliaraki and Zaborowski’s (2017) model ‘voice by narrative’, it answers the research question; How are refugee women from Syria represented in national and local Swedish newspapers?, as well as the following sub-questions: What news frames are used in texts where Syrian women are featured? In what ways are refugee women given visibility and space to speak? What types of representations, wording, and stereotypes are used? What differences can be found between 2015 and 2020, national and local newspapers? The project examines news frames, gendered representations, typical stereotypes, visibility, and space given to Syrian women in Swedish newspapers. It does so by content analysis of newspaper articles from three newspapers published in 2015 and 2020. The project uses theories of othering, intersectionality, and post-colonial power structures as well as literature on representations in European media during the migration crisis to understand representations, voice, and news frames in Swedish newspapers. The results indicated that refugee women are often silenced and spoken of instead of given space to speak. The most commonly used news frames among the analyzed texts were negative geopolitical and women were often decontextualized. Victimization and normalization were the most commonly used stereotypes assigned to refugee women. The majority of representations of refugee women were collective and the women were in many ways othered. Refugee women are othered, decontextualized, silenced, and collectivized, which will have its consequences as they are methods that limit refugee women’s status and position in society – maintaining their position as ‘others’ in Swedish society.