Vulnerability, Resiliency, and Dignity: Psychosocial Dimensions of the Refugee Experience

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Within the realm of refugee work, tend to be labeled when compared to legal, economic, and medical perspectives. The term itself encompasses many different ways of applying psychology and other social science knowledge, ranging from a clinical focus on individuals to broad community strategies. Often, professionals with shared backgrounds, such as psychologists, hold divergent beliefs and adopt different roles when employing psychosocial in their work with refugees and survivors of violence. As one participant explained it at a meeting of psychosocial workers from Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Uganda, is not everything, but it is in every program. But in an effort to avoid the mere tokenization of words like psychosocial, participation, and process, there are growing calls in the field for new ways of relating to and caring for refugees and survivors, listening more closely to their voices, and recognizing the specificities of the refugee context. One of the founding fathers of participatory action research (PAR), Orlando Fals-Borda, argues that the three primary strategic tensions shaping how we work with populations different from our own involve ongoing debates about (1) theory and praxis, (2) the subject versus the object in research or applied work, and (3) cosmovision and value systems. Also, it can be argued that there are three different groups of interest, each requiring a different lens, that converge when doing general refugee work. First, there are the refugees and survivors who want to have their basic needs met, strive to rebuild their lives, and demand justice and visibility. Second, there are the researchers and workers who want to understand the dynamics of conflict and recovery, and to implement programs. And third, there are the elites and institutions in charge of the transitional phase, eager to leave the violent times behind and to move forward (while often denying the survivors' right to memory). Although these three collectives agree on the basic goal of ameliorating the impact of violence, they usually differ--often considerably--in their understanding of what dignifies, who should define the needs, and how best to implement the programs. The rigor of the validity-reliability dyad, and of evidence-based more generally, is difficult to find in the field of applied refugee research and work. The soft approaches to research more commonly found here are guided by the complexity of the contexts and by the participation of the refugees themselves. It seems that it is often hard for some university scholars to understand this, given the priorities of their laboratories and classrooms when compared to the realities of the field. In this issue, we present a collection of articles that represent a shared effort exploring how to better understand and communicate with the actors in the field, especially the refugees themselves, while also reflecting on the different narratives and tools that possible to do so (e.g., words and interviews, images, media articles, data). Together, these articles help move us toward thinking about the psychosocial perspective as a transversal approach, an approach that is an indispensable component of many programs regardless of their explicit focus, and an approach that is crucial in order to better grasp the culture, the values and priorities of the people, and the nuances of the refugee context. Mike Wessells opens the conversation by acknowledging the critiques of the psychosocial approach for the absence of 'hard evidence,' and makes a clear and experience based plea for critical self-awareness, and for the specificity of action. He reminds us of the basics, which cannot be emphasized enough: local empowerment and the restoration of dignity, enhancing the importance of culture, and the need to avoid the imposition of outside when working in refugee contexts. …