Abstract
This study focuses on caregivers from refugee backgrounds who have children with disabilities. By concentrating on the support role of social networks, it explores how caregivers navigated the Austrian social support system. Semi-structured interviews with three caregivers and five service providers (including parents’ guides: Elternlotsinnen) for migrant families with children with disabilities were conducted. The findings reveal not only particular challenges – for example, displaced children with disabilities not receiving adequate support from social providers – but they also allude to certain good practices. Results demonstrate that one organization, that finds itself at the intersection of migration and disability, improved the knowledge about the support system for these caregivers.
Highlights
By the end of 2015, an estimated 65.3 million people around the world were categorized as refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced persons (UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees], 2016)
We investigated the perspectives of the caregivers, the children themselves, and the project team on the challenges faced by refugee families with children with disabilities trying to access social support and services
This study explored the experiences of three refugee caregivers— originally from Syria and Iraq, but living in Austria— with children with disabilities, using qualitative methods to discover their experiences accessing social support
Summary
By the end of 2015, an estimated 65.3 million people around the world were categorized as refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced persons (UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees], 2016). The number of asylum applications has continually decreased and, in December 2019, reached 12,886 applications (BMI, 2019), while the number of forced migrants continued to increase globally (UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees], 2019). In this context, refugees, as Pisani and Grech 422) put it, are “often homogenized with little or no alertness to context, culture, religion, gender, but especially dis/ability.” Due to this, these intersecting attributes are seldom analyzed, the aspect of disability. It is safe to say that refugee children with disabilities compose a sizeable group of individuals that belong to various disadvantaged groups simultaneously
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