Liberian Refugees Research Articles

The Subjective and Economic Well-Being of Repatriated Liberian Refugees from Ghana

The Subjective and Economic Well-Being of Repatriated Liberian Refugees from Ghana

You-Will-Kill-Me-Beans: Taste and the Politics of Necessity in Humanitarian Aid

Despite their nuanced palates and cooking skills, as guests at the humanitarian table, Liberians living at the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana were expected and assumed to adapt to the “tastes of necessity.” In the refugee camp, the sensory experiences and pleasures of the taste of liberty—or “luxury”—existed, if at all, as an indicator that one was no longer in need of aid. In this article, I consider how innovations in cooking and taste shape humanitarian politics and argue that Liberian refugees subverted the biopolitics of necessity through biographies of taste. Through their sensuous encounters and critical responses to the taste of necessity, humanitarian subjects are able to produce biographies of food aid and a public accounting of the historic and contemporary conditions of humanitarianism. By prioritizing the taste of refugee food, camp residents have challenged the reason of humanitarian reason by expanding the sensibility of food aid and repositioning recipients as essential figures in humanitarian aid.

Contextual Identity among Liberian Refugees in Ghana: Identity Salience in a Protracted Refugee Situation

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of a protracted refugee situation on identity among Liberian refugees in Ghana. A strong national identity was observed among Liberians within the context of Buduburam Refugee Camp, despite previous ethnic divisions in their home country during the two Liberian civil wars. According to social identity theory, individuals may hold several identities at one time, but the expression of these identities are dependent on context. Using a grounded theory approach, I find three theoretical explanations for this phenomenon. Three identity primes heightened the salience of being Liberian. First, identity discontinuity resulting from trauma focused awareness on shared past experiences, creating a shared generational identity among residents at Buduburam. Second, a shared refugee status, and third, shared perceptions of difference between the Liberians and Ghanaians, played key roles in activating and sustaining a collective national identity among Liberian refugees in Ghana.Related Articles Byrne, Jennifer, and Gregory C. Dixon. 2013. “.” Politics & Policy 42 (): 83‐116. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12002/abstract Catalinac, Amy L. 2007. “.” Politics & Policy 35 (): 58‐100. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2007.00049.x/abstract . 2011. “.” Politics & Policy 39 (): 271‐294. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2011.00291.x/abstract Related Media . n.d. “Home for Homeless People.” http://buduburam.com/ . 2014. “Liberian Refugees in Ghana.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k85CJe5JWAw

Challenges and coping strategies of refugees: Exploring residual Liberian refugees’ experiences in Ghana

This study explored the challenges and coping strategies among Liberian refugees in Ghana. Using a qualitative research design, 40 participants were purposively recruited at a refugee settlement in Ghana. Four focus group discussions and sixteen in-depth interviews were conducted. The focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were audio-taped, transcribed, coded, and analyzed thematically based on the objectives of the study. The findings indicated that the refugees experienced challenges related to disruption in social networks, disputes over resources, high rate of unemployment, and increased level of criminal activities. The study also revealed that the refugees included in this study resorted to religion, spirituality, and income earning activities as their coping strategies. The findings offer insights for social workers, policy actors, and future research.

Home-making during protracted exile: Diverse responses of refugee families in the face of remigration

Through in-depth case studies about repatriation decision-making among Liberian refugees, this article examines how different processes of home-making during prolonged exile affects their return decisions and result in diverse familial responses to repatriation. Conceptualizations of forced displacement are often tied to notions about “loss of homeland” and exile, with references made to being literally “out of place.” This, however, ignores the reality that during protracted exile in a refugee camp refugees also establish links to new places and become “emplaced,” creating a new “home” that is meaningful to them. Importantly, even among those living in the same refugee camp, this process of emplacement is experienced differently, mediated by age, gender, marital status, and personal goals. When refugees consider returning to their country of origin, refugee families often struggle to come up with unified agreements about remigration decisions, leading to internal contestation among family members...

“When you are here, you have high blood pressure”: Liberian refugees’ health and access to healthcare in Staten Island, NY

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine health issues among Liberian refugees living in Staten Island and access potential barriers to accessing healthcare. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative methods including interviews (n=68) with West African immigrants, predominantly Liberian refugees, and long-term ethnography were employed to elicit West Africans’ views on health, acculturation, and access to service providers. Framework analysis was employed to analyze the data thematically. Findings – Chronic health diseases, depression, isolation, and inadequate access to healthcare were the main concerns of the population studied. The findings are in contrast to the public health experts’ concentration on infectious diseases. Practical implications – The barriers to access proper healthcare have implications for healthcare providers and government institutions and information about these barriers can help them to refocus their health efforts to better address the needs of West African refugees. Originality/value – Africans are among the newest immigrants in the USA and are considerably understudied compared to other groups such as Latin Americans and Asians. Additionally, there is an abundance research about refugees’ health status when they first arrive in the USA, but there is little data on their health after their resettlement.

Identity and Language Attitudes Among Liberian Refugees in Oru Camp, Ogun State, Nigeria

The concern of this study is to investigate the language attitudes of Liberian refugees in Oru camp with respect to their indigenous languages and the language of the host community, Yoruba. This is with a view to ascertaining their identity patterns. A significant majority of teenagers and young adults positively evaluated their Indigenous languages while the full adults expressed a high evaluation. The teenagers highly evaluated Yoruba and correspondingly had a high proficiency in it. The young and full adults negatively regarded Yoruba. Refugees need to identify with their host community for purposes of inclusion and the benefits of diversity.

God-Talk in the Survival Epistemology of Liberian Refugee Women

This qualitative research study examines and analyzes the narratives of Muslim and Christian Liberian refugee women. Findings speak to the expression of God-Talk in the collective subjective lives of the participants’ survival stories. This interpretation is based in a cultural context and historical perspective and utilizes a womanist theological framework. Narrative research methodology reveals an understanding that faith and its expression, God-Talk, is the mechanism of Liberian women’s’ epistemology of survival. Women’s reliance on God protects and guides them while ensuring their families’ survival. Six subcategories ground the findings in a cultural context.

Liberty and moral ambivalence: Postsocialist transitions, refugee hosting, and bodily comportment in the Republic of Guinea

ABSTRACTGuinean hosts viewed Liberian refugees with the same ambivalence and fascination that many held for their own children, who were embracing the consumerist ethos of Guinea's postsocialist 1990s. Loma‐speaking farmers’ categories for evaluating historical change and refugee comportment grew out of metaphors of embodied agency and morality. These categories challenge some aspects of both Guinean elites’ and contemporary anthropologists’ understandings of the meaning of post–Cold War social change. [subaltern historiography, embodiment, Guinea, West Africa, fast capitalism, postsocialism]

Already in America: Transnational Homemaking among Liberian Refugees


 
 
 This article explores how refugees at the Buduburam Liberian refugee settlement in Ghana constructed and imagined home in and through a place they have never been to—“America.” Drawing on ethnographic examples of homemaking at Buduburam, this article develops the concept of entanglement to show how preferences for and access to the three durable solutions of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees were influenced by centuries of transnational homemaking embedded in the histories of the transatlantic slave trade and colonization of Liberia. Refugees preferred and practised resettlement not as a final destination, but as an active form of transnationalism. The reconfiguration of homemaking through the lens of entanglement demonstrates the importance of developing migratory policies and practices that are attentive to historic and future forms of inequality. 
 
 

Continuity and Discontinuity

This article explores the cultural change generated by Pentecostalism among Liberian refugees in Ghana, who fled from their nation’s civil wars to a refugee camp in Ghana’s Central Region. Anthropologists of religion have argued that Pentecostal conversions have in large parts become popular because they enable a “break with the past.” Liberian converts, as well, seek to distance themselves from a past that is mired in conflict. To this end, they connect to global Pentecostal networks in an attempt to overcome their marginal status. In so doing, many of them reject aspects of their past, which they associate with the Liberian civil wars, for example traditional belief systems, ethnic identity, and the Liberian gerontocracy. Yet, as the ethnographic examples illustrate, this “break with the past” is rarely complete. This study’s findings are related to debates on whether anthropology of religion should focus on “continuity” or “discontinuity” in exploring religious conversions. The author argues that the religious experiences of Liberians in exile can only be understood by paying attention to the interplay and tensions between continuity and discontinuity.

Kinka: Traditional Songs from Avenorpedo. 2007. Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology, Department of Music, University of Alberta. Recorded by Gavin Webb and Godwin Yao Azameti. Annotated by Michael Frishkopf and Carinna Friesen. Produced by Michael Frishkopf. 40-page booklet and website (http://www.ualberta.ca/-michaelf/kinkadrum/Home.html) with notes in English and Eve. Translations by Norvor and Godwin Yao Azameti, Colour, b/w photographs, map, bibliography, orthographic chart.

Kinka: Traditional Songs from Avenorpedo. 2007. Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology, Department of Music, University of Alberta. Recorded by Gavin Webb and Godwin Yao Azameti. Annotated by Michael Frishkopf and Carinna Friesen. Produced by Michael Frishkopf. 40-page booklet and website (http://www.ualberta.ca/-michaelf/kinkadrum/Home.html) with notes in English and Eve. Translations by Norvor and Godwin Yao Azameti, Colour, b/w photographs, map, bibliography, orthographic chart.

Humanitarian spectacles from below: A study of social connections in unsettled contexts

Humanitarian actors struggle to protect refugees from the violence of war, but critics argue that they often succeed in nothing more than segregating the displaced and turning their hardships into global public spectacles. This article narrows and refines these criticisms of contemporary humanitarian action by examining humanitarian spectacles at a local level in an ethnography of the Buduburam Refugee Camp, a predominantly Liberian refugee camp in Ghana, West Africa. It is clear from this vantage point that disenfranchisement and bureaucratic intransigence deeply constrained camp life. But the public spectacles we examine also highlight the unexpected persistence of civic life and the depth of social connections between camp residents themselves; between refugees and humanitarians; and between refugees and their hosts. By making the homogeneous, distant concept of humanitarian spectacle into a heterogeneous concept with local dimensions, we are able to capture more of the experiences of people who live in unsettled contexts. This argument contributes to research on refugees and humanitarianism by drawing attention to the interconnected social world of the refugee camp. It also contributes to research on public spectacles by casting these spectacles as neither a pure expression of distance nor empowerment, but rather an easily sullied form of civic life.

Humanitarian Crisis as Everyday Life

Contemporary scholarship understates the resilience of everyday life in humanitarian crisis. Disaster may seem like a fleeting moment—colloquially, we say “the world stood still” or “everything changed in a blink”—but in the Buduburam Refugee Camp, a predominately Liberian refugee camp in Ghana, people experienced calamitous tragedy accumulated over years of daily activities. Though they remained politically and economically “out of place,” residents constructed buildings and other ordinary material objects to forge a new lived environment. As residents engaged with this new lived environment—from building homes to managing rainwater—they regularly participated in moral boundary work that helped establish how “good” people ought to act in inhumane circumstances. Moral boundary work did not obviate inequality or conflict, but it did help mediate between immediate bodily needs and the wider social order. More broadly, the study documents the crucial role that seemingly mundane material objects play in moral boundary work. Material objects like signs, garbage cans, and homes can operate like sociospatial props in the stories that people tell about their daily lives. These stories reinforce the moral boundaries that divide “good” and “bad” people and ultimately help make a shared moral order possible.

Fostering Resilience: Protective Agents, Resources, and Mechanisms for Adolescent Refugees' Psychosocial Well-Being.

Adolescent refugees face many challenges but also have the potential to become resilient. The purpose of this study was to identify and characterize the protective agents, resources, and mechanisms that promote their psychosocial well-being. Participants included a purposively sampled group of 73 Burundian and Liberian refugee adolescents and their families who had recently resettled in Boston and Chicago. The adolescents, families, and their service providers participated in a two-year longitudinal study using ethnographic methods and grounded theory analysis with Atlas/ti software. A grounded theory model was developed which describes those persons or entities who act to protect adolescents (Protective Agents), their capacities for doing so (Protective Resources), and how they do it (Protective Mechanisms). Protective agents are the individuals, groups, organizations, and systems that can contribute either directly or indirectly to promoting adolescent refugees' psychosocial well-being. Protective resources are the family and community capacities that can promote psychosocial well-being in adolescent refugees. Protective mechanisms are the processes fostering adolescent refugees' competencies and behaviors that can promote their psychosocial well-being. Eight family and community capacities were identified that appeared to promote psychosocial well-being in the adolescent refugees. These included 1) finances for necessities; 2) English proficiency; 3) social support networks; 4) engaged parenting; 5) family cohesion; 6) cultural adherence and guidance; 7) educational support; and 8) faith and religious involvement. Nine protective mechanisms identified were identified and grouped into three categories: 1) Relational (supporting, connecting, belonging); 2) Informational (informing, preparing), and; 3) Developmental (defending, promoting, adapting). To further promote the psychosocial well-being of adolescent refugees, targeted prevention focused policies and programs are needed to enhance the identified protective agents, resources, and mechanisms. Because resilience works through protective mechanisms, greater attention should be paid to understanding how to enhance them through new programs and practices, especially informational and developmental protective mechanisms.

Editorial: From Research to Clinical Practice in Adolescent Psychiatry

Editorial: From Research to Clinical Practice in Adolescent Psychiatry

Living Without Economic Assets: Livelihoods of Liberian Refugees in the Buduburam Camp, Ghana

This paper employs the Sustainable Livelihood Framework and social capital theory to examine the economic activities and livelihood strategies of Liberian refugees in the Buduburam Camp in Ghana. The paper is based on primary data collected through questionnaire surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions. The findings show that the Liberian refugees, in the Buduburam Camp, are pursuing their livelihoods within a macroeconomic environment that is characterized by various forms of vulnerabilities, which include resource constraints and lack of employment opportunities. Even though most of the refugees lack the necessary physical and economic assets to live within such a vulnerability context, they have relied on networks of social capital to survive for several years. Based on these findings, it has been recommended that Liberian refugees, in Ghana, should be encouraged to form mutual groups to enhance the benefits from such social networks. Churches and community-based organizations that are providing material assistance to vulnerable refugees must also be encouraged to continue with their humanitarian work in the camp.

“You Got to Apply Seriousness”: A Phenomenological Inquiry of Liberian Refugees' Coping

Liberian women's coping with refugee resettlement in the United States was examined. The authors analyzed interviews of 10 women according to van Manen's () hermeneutic phenomenology. Nine themes, grouped within 3 coping categories (adopting culturally sanctioned attitudes, engaging with a new environment, and situating oneself in a narrative), were identified. Implications include the need for counselors to use holistic and advocacy‐based counseling approaches and facilitate coping by cultural meaning making of experiences.

“Culture Clash” in Phoenix

This case study examines online news framing of a group rape occurring in a Liberian refugee community in Phoenix, Arizona, where four boys sexually assaulted an eight-year-old girl. Specifically, the paper analyzes how the website of the Phoenix-based Arizona Republic newspaper, azcentral.com, constructed the assault and its aftermath, focusing on what framing suggested about the causes of the crime and the role of identity discourses about gender, class, race, nation, and age. Findings suggest two dominant frames that blame the crime and its aftermath on Liberian culture by mobilizing identity discourse to construct youthful male Liberian refugees as violent “others,” and by suggesting that gang rape and victim-blaming are alien to American culture. A less prevalent frame counters the cultural explanation, pointing instead to individual responsibility. To some extent, dominant framing implicates social structures as a cause of rape, but overemphasizes race and nation to mask how they intersect with gender and age, thereby constructing the story in ways that support public anxiety about refugees more than progressive reforms to alleviate gender violence. The conclusions suggest that the frames identified follow established patterns for news constructions of gender violence involving young perpetrators of color. Thus, the study adds a new dimension to recent research likening online newspapers to their print predecessors in ways that reveal a cautious approach to the embrace of the innovative possibilities of internet-based news.

Etat nutritionnel des enfants réfugiés : Synthèses des cas desLibériens en Guinée et en Côte-d'Ivoire et des Somaliens en Ethiopie

Refugees constitute a rather special category of the population. For this sub-group of the entire population, a problem of definition is raised which unfortunately has not been addressed by the different studies devoted to the refugee population.When we consider the nutritional status of refugee children aged between 0 and 5 years, it appears that it is of the most precarious ones. The syntheses made show that one of the factors which would favour the maintenance of a satisfactory nutritional status for the populations, following social unresis the integration of the refugee population into the indigenous population without the construction of refugee camps.Thus, Liberian refugee children in Guinea and in Côte d'Ivoire in 1990-1992, who are integrated into the indigenous population, had a satisfactory nutritional status identical to that of the indigenous population, whereas those Somali refugees in Ethiopia in 1988-1989, hosted in refugee camps, had a poor nutritional status when compared to that of the indigenous population. The study shows that efficient strategies of refugee management and improvement of their nutritional status especially that of children might comprise:the regular and complete distribution of food ratios comprising foods rich in vitamin C and,the extension of makeshift food and therapy programmes for a better coverage of the refugee population