Abstract
Background: data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) show that, in 2020, among 82.4 million refugees, only 251,000 returned to their home countries, indicating the desire for refugees to stay, for the long-term, in their new homelands. The paper contributes to the scientific–psychological debate on the social representation of refugee populations, by studying this population, not simply as “foreigners”, traumatized and resourceless people, but rather focusing on the factors that lead to their positive adjustments within local communities. Method: a scoping review was carried out to explore the phenomenon of adjustment (RQ1) and to identify the factors that foster adjustment among refugees and their resettlement communities (RQ2). A research protocol and eligibility criteria were defined prior to conducting the literature research through the Scopus database. Afterwards, data charting and items were conducted to organize the results. Results: a process of data mapping outlined three dimensions of adjustment—psychological, social, and scholastic. In addition, six macro factors emerged that ease refugee adjustments—context characteristics, time, social integration markers, acculturation, social support, and psychological capital. Results show that adjustment is the result of the inter-relations among sociological and psychological factors. Conclusions: the lack of studies addressing the inner resources of refugees and community participation confirms that research in this field needs a change of paradigm, to identify the resources that refugees use to adjust to their new communities and promote their development.
Highlights
18 articles considered this kind of adjustment as the mere absence of mental health disorders [26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43], in particular, anxiety and depression, while 9 articles addressed the adjustment disorder as a syndrome occurring after an episode of acute stress [44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52]
The present scoping review verified that the literature considers adjustment as a process that impacts the lives of refugees
The review identifies the factors that lead to refugee adjustments within resettlement communities
Summary
Questioning the Association between Refugees and Trauma. The 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as a person “who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion” [1] Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was founded, to assist Europeans who left their homes because of World War II. For an in-depth historical analysis of refugee reception in Europe, refer to Gatrell’s essay [2]. The UNHCR, as the global agency that deals with the rescuing and resettlement of refugees, has adopted three long-term solutions for the settlement of refugees—voluntary repatriation, local integration, and resettlement [3]. Voluntary repatriation allows refugees to return to their home countries. According to the UNHCR, in 2020, only 251,000 of
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