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<p>According to the latest refugee statistics from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR 2011), the number of people forcibly displaced worldwide has reached 43.7 million, the highest number in 15 years. Roughly 80% of this population are women and children. Afghanistan continues to be the place of origin for the largest number of refugees under UNHCR responsibility across the globe. From 1979 to 1990, the largest and most enduring forced migration in human history occurred when 6.2 million Afghans were displaced and fled their homeland to neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Iran.</p> <p>During the processes of conflict, upheaval, exile, and resettlement, refugee women face numerous traumatic events and are exposed to various challenges at every stage of their refugee journey. Very little scholarly research has examined their strengths and resiliency during this time.</p> <p>The primary purpose of this study is to provide insight into the challenges that Afghan refugee women have faced during pre-migration, exile, and resettlement. Specifically, this inquiry using feminist theory and method examines (a) their experiences in all three contexts in which they have lived and managed, (b) the significant roles that they have played, and (c) the coping mechanisms that they have used to overcome the problems in these situations.</p> <p>The sample for this interpretive qualitative research was drawn from Afghan refugee women in the city of Hamilton and the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. The study was conducted with six in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The results provide contextually laden detail of the Afghan refugee women’s unique lived experiences. The results revealed Afghan refugee women as resilient and as strong leaders. The dominant discourse that portrays Afghan women as weak and oppressed should be challenged. Implications for social work practice, education and policy are identified, and recommendations for improved services are outlined.</p> / Master of Social Work (MSW)

<p>Refugee women experience important physical and mental health disparities which are often unmet during resettlement to host countries. These health disparities have been attributed to the gendering of the refugee process, such that women are more vulnerable to gender-specific violence and abuse during flight from war and conflict. Despite having unmet health needs, they face multiple barriers to leading healthy lives and healing during resettlement to a new host country. This paper seeks to respond to the need for research in understanding the health of refugee women in western nations within feminist geographical scholarship by exploring the ‘lived experiences’ of refugee and refugee claimant women during resettlement to Hamilton, Ontario. Data was collected through in-depth interviews and focus groups with key informants (n=9) and refugee women and refugee claimant women (n=37) from various source countries. Results from this study provide in-depth understandings on the experiences of resettlement including the particular challenges refugee and refugee claimant women face in attempting to rebuild their lives in Canada. Perceptions of good health are closely related to various dimensions of gender (roles and identities) and citizenship (status). This paper explores important health determinants as expressed by the participants: pre-migration experiences, citizenship (status), employment and housing experiences and health care during resettlement. Accounts from this study reflect the need to address ongoing immigration reform and refugee policy in a manner that will honour Canada’s commitment to international humanitarian agreements such as the 1951 Geneva Convention.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

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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.

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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.