From cognitive processes to discursive practices: Taking a critical discursive psychology approach to refugee and asylum seeker integration

Abstract

AbstractMuch of the research in social and cultural psychology on refugee integration or acculturation has tended to adopt a socio‐cognitive approach which assumes this to be a ‘process’ with a defined outcome that can be measured as successful or not. Such approaches tend to overlook the rhetorical function of talk about integration and in this article I show how research from a critical discursive psychology perspective in relation to refugees and asylum seekers has typically focussed on media, political and lay discourses about refugees. However, more recent research has focussed on analysing the talk of refugees themselves which I will show points towards the importance of shifting how refugee integration is considered and that taking a critical discursive psychological approach suggests that, in the context of research focusing on integration, a shift from ‘processes’ to situated ‘practices’ is useful where meaning is at stake.