Abstract
In 2015, the resettlement of 25,000 Syrian refugees in Canada placed a strain on social services. Caseworkers employed in these agencies often come from similar migratory trajectories to those of the refugees. This experiential proximity requires an understanding of the subjective perspectives that caseworkers with migratory paths have of refugees in the context of their professional practice. We analyzed fifteen individual interviews with Canadian caseworkers and conducted field observations of resettlement activities in the Ottawa-Gatineau region using inductive reasoning inspired by grounded theory. Adopting a sociogenetic approach to social representation theory, this qualitative study illustrates how the social representation of refugees among foreign-born caseworkers is highly informed by their migratory past experience, as well as by the social identity and social context from which that representation was socio-generated. Our analysis reveals the mirror effect of the caseworkers as a fruitful concept for understanding the identity-otherness dynamics in the encounter between the distant other (refugee) and the self.
Highlights
The last decades have seen a significant increase in forced migration [1]
In September 2015, the Liberal Party of Canada made the resettlement of Syrian refugees a major component of its election platform, which was extensively covered by the media [4]
The social representation of refugees expressed by our participants incorporates two realities that at first glance seem to be contradictory
Summary
The last decades have seen a significant increase in forced migration [1]. This was a period of exceptionally high numbers of forcibly displaced people in their own and other countries [1]. Following the Syrian government’s crackdown on civil protestors and political crisis in March 2011 [2], more than six million Syrians were displaced internally and externally to camps in the neighbouring countries of Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. These individuals became “refugees” as defined in the 1951 Geneva Convention under article 33 [3]. The liberal government decided to welcome refugees [5] on the basis of this election promise to rebrand Canada’s humanitarian tradition and re-invigorate its socio-economic potential
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