Life In Refugee Camps Research Articles

Suicidality after the genocide against the Yazidi in Iraq in 2014.

To explore the relationship between psychological stress and suicidality in Yazidi refugee camps in Iraq. At the time of the investigation, the Yazidi survivors of the 2014 genocide by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria had been living in refugee camps in Iraq for 9 years. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between psychological stress and suicidality in Yazidi refugee camps in Iraq. In total, 425 participants took part in the study and participated in interviews using standard scales to measure general physical and mental health and suicidality. The results demonstrate that suicidality and psychological stress are higher among the Yazidis survivors of genocide than in the other Yazidi and Non-Yazidi participants. Genocide, flight, and life in refugee camps without any prospect of being able to live in peace again increases suicidal thoughts, which should also be considered in the psychosocial care and therapy of this population. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Penning the pain of partition: Refugee camp narratives in Indian comics

Within the melange of comics studies, migration studies and autobiography studies, this article investigates the process in which the collective trauma as well as the personal trauma of refugee women has been portrayed through the visual medium in Malini Gupta and Dyuti Mittal’s ‘The Taboo’, Syeda Farhana’s ‘Little Women’ and Maria M. Litwa’s ‘Welcome to Geneva Camp’. These stories focus on the issues faced by women who migrated to Bangladesh from parts of Bengal and Bihar and thereby experienced a crucial, grief stricken life in refugee camps during the Indo–Bangladesh–Pakistan partition. Life in these refugee camps meant not only meagre resources but also a loss of nationality. In the absence of such validation, these migrants faced an extreme sense of identity or existential crisis. The group photographs, family photographs, complex roadmaps and the map of the subcontinent in the aforementioned graphic narratives are merged to serve as the ‘narreme’, the base of narratives. They are organized on the basis of experiences of women from various classes, castes and provinces, contesting with the interminable psychological violence of partition and post-partitioned reality.

KOLABORASI UGM, UNIVERSITAS PETRA SURABAYA, UNCEN DAN UOGP SERTA PARTISIPASI MAHASISWA KKN DALAM PEMBUATAN MCK RAMAH LINGKUNGAN AKIBAT BENCANA ALAM KABUPATEN JAYAPURA

The occurrence of flash floods in Sentani claimed many victims, some suffered minor and serious injuries that could not be counted, as well as many people's houses that were washed away and damaged so that the community was placed in refugee camps prepared by the government. To deal with the people affected by the flash floods that occurred in Sentani, the government could not reach out to the entirety to evacuate the evacuation sites that had been prepared. Some of the refugee campsprepared by the government do not have facilities for the community's necessities of life, namely MCK. Through this service, we are moving to conduct a field survey to see which locations can be helped to cope with life in refugee camps. The purpose of this service is to help small asey communities living in refugee camps who do not have MCK, so we encourage final semester Planology students to do KKN in that place to build environmentally friendly MCK. The materials used to build MCK houses are light steel, the process is easy to do. simple and practical. In this service, we provide training to students and the community how to cut canal C or mild steel using a hand grinder. Likewise in the assembly of bolts to the frame using a hand drill for both installation and removal if there is an error. This training is easily accepted and carried out by KKN students and the community, so that the making of MCK can be completed properly and used by the community of Kampung Asei Kecil Telaga Maya. In this service, together with KKN students, it really helps the government to overcome the lives of the people in refugee campus. Keywords: Mild steel; environmentally friendly MCK; Sentani

Lectio Praecursoria: Negotiating Futures in Palestinian Refugee Camps: Spatiotemporal Trajectories of a Refugee Nation

The seventy-three years of exile have molded the life in Palestinian refugee camps. In my dissertation, I explore the conditions created by this long history in order to discuss the futures that those currently living in the refugee camps envision for themselves. This Lectio Præcursoria is an introduction to both the research process and the ways the futures emerge in the vulnerable conditions of Palestinian exile.
 Keywords: Palestine, Palestinian refugees, future, refugee camps, multi-sited ethnography

Regimes of visibility and the affective affordances of Twitter

Online social networks produce a visuality that reflects the attention economy governing this space. What is seen becomes elevated into prominence by networked publics that ‘perform’ affective expressions within platform affordances. We mapped Twitter images of refugees in two language spaces – English and Arabic. Using automated analysis and qualitative visual analysis, we found similar images circulating both spaces. However, photographs generating higher retweet counts were distinct. This highlights the impact of affective affordances of Twitter – in this case retweeting – on regimes of visibility in disparate spheres. Representations of refugees in the English language space were characterized by personalized, positive imagery, emphasizing solidarity for refugees contributing to their host country or stipulating innocence. Resonating images in the Arabic space were less personalized and depicted a more localized visuality of life in refugee camps, with an emphasis on living conditions in refugee camps and the efforts of aid organizations.

“Children are our pension”: Livelihood diversification, social security, and kinship constraints among East African refugees

Stereotypical ideas about poverty and life in refugee camps make it difficult to understand the choices that individual refugees make when moving from one place to another within Africa, including from refugee settlements to town, to refugee camps and vice versa. Certain choices which individual migrants make, and which may appear incomprehensible, respond in fact to a clear logic and represent, as it were, diversified forms of social security. Recent trends in migration theories have emphasised the importance of the positive role of the group of kin in the decision to set out on the migration path, but this article reveals a much more complex dynamic underlying such movements within Africa: a vision of livelihood diversification that goes beyond the stark reality of forced displacement or the opportunity of acquiring refugee status. The article will take into consideration the migratory trajectories of a number of young persons, across the Horn and some eastern African nations, first as forced migrants and later as refugees migrating at will, as observed over a period of years. Over and above the war that initially prompted migration, the movements of these young people result from negotiating the demands of individual agency and the constraints imposed by kinship ideologies.

Bound within Borders or Free as a Bird? Karen Life in Refugee Camps on the Thai–Burma Borderlands

ABSTRACT Some residents of Thai–Burma border refugee camps regard themselves as caged birds—as prisoners of war—with little or no freedoms. External imaginations of camp residents as bound within borders are also common. This paper provides another perspective. It argues that residents subvert camp limitations; it describes how they stretch life beyond borders. Despite their armed monitoring, camp borders are contested by outwardly connecting, using tactics of transnationalism and translocalism; in essence, cross-border mobility. Such tactics provide freedom in an otherwise incarcerated camp-life and empower people in an otherwise powerless world. They enable individual actors to change their socio-political narrative. Naturally, severely isolated and restricted camps have low morale and residents have little hope. Given the relative permanence of Thai–Burma border camps (now in their fourth decade of existence), and an annual downward trend in their international aid, I recommend policy that ensures consistently clear channels of connection to life beyond camps’ borders. This paper contributes to the borderlands debate by adding camp borders as another framework for investigation; it reflects on geopolitical contexts and shifting political landscapes impacting on cross-border mobility; and underscores the agency and self-determination of the Karen people from Burma.

A life in waiting: Refugees' mental health and narratives of social suffering after European Union border closures in March 2016

RationaleIn 2015, an estimated 856,723 refugees, predominantly from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq arrived in Greece as an entry point into the European Union. The border of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia closed in March 2016, blocking a popular route for refugees through Europe, and left around 60,000 people stranded in Greece. ObjectiveA mixed-method study was conducted among refugees in the regions of Attica, Epirus, and Samos between November 2016 and February 2017. The epidemiological survey showed that depending on study sites between 73% and 100% of the refugees suffered from anxiety disorder. The explanatory qualitative study aimed to understand refugees' mental health and narratives of social suffering in regards to experienced violence, the effect of current border closures, and the lack of an onward journey. MethodThe explanatory qualitative study included 47 in-depth interviews and five focus group discussions with refugees purposely recruited through the concomitant epidemiological survey, representing both genders and a range of nationalities and ages. Data were thematically analysed to identify emergent patterns and categories using NVivo 11. ResultsThe refugees overwhelmingly reported experiencing uncertainty and lack of control over their current life and future, which caused psychosocial distress and suffering. The passivity of life in refugee camps aggravated feelings of meaninglessness and powerlessness. The disruption of key social networks and absence of interactions with the surrounding Greek society led to feelings of isolation and being unwelcome. ConclusionsRefugees in Greece experience psychosocial distress and social suffering as a consequence of their uncertain and disrupted lives and the loss of social networks. Faster and transparent asylum procedures, the development of meaningful and empowering activities, and fostered social interactions with the surrounding society would contribute to alleviating their psychosocial suffering.

‘“Do the right thing”: encounters with undocumented migrants in contemporary European Cinema’

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes the encounters between European citizens and undocumented migrants in three European migration films – Eternity and a Day (Theo Angelopoulos, 1998, France/ Italy/ Greece/ Germany), Welcome (Philippe Lioret, 2009, France) and Terraferma (Emanuele Crialese, 2011, Italy/ France) – in order to explore a paternalistic tendency in European cinema’s representation of migration from the 1990s and onward. As these films shot by European filmmakers raise awareness about the predicament of child-migrants, the challenges of life in refugee camps, and quotidian forms of discrimination, they also utilize the Other-in-need as an avatar in order to construct a compassionate European identity, one firmly devoted to humanitarian ideals. In these Southern European films, migrant characters and their agency are taken down to he goal of survival facing extremely dangerous situations to make it to a utopian space in Northern Europe. While spectators observe the magnitude of the migrants’ plight, victimization disenfranchises their communities and reinforces their status as precarious subjects fated to permanently orbit the borders of Europe.

Saharawi Women - Educators and Promoters of Peace

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of Saharawi women as educators and promoters of peace. The study includes published research on the topic, as well as two interviews conducted with a Paz Martín Lozano, a Spanish politician who is an expert on Saharawi issues, and Jadiyetu El Mohtar, a Saharawi activist and representative of the National Union of Saharawi Women (UNMS) who was well known by the Spanish media due to the hunger strike that she went on at the Lanzarote Airport in 2009. Despite the unbearable extreme conditions, Saharawi people were able to organize their political, economic and social life in refugee camps in the middle of a desert, mainly thanks to the incredible Saharawi women who educate their children to fight for the liberation of the territory of Western Sahara in a peaceful and non-violent way. They are striving for the recognition of the Saharawi cause at the international level and raising awareness of their right to self-determination through a free and fair referendum. They provide an excellent example for their children and transmit the values of peace, non-violent resistance, and not despairing in the face of difficult circumstances.

Daily stressors, trauma exposure, and mental health among stateless Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

The Rohingya of Myanmar are a severely persecuted minority who form one of the largest groups of stateless people; thousands of them reside in refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh. There has been little research into the mental health consequences of persecution, war, and other historical trauma endured by the Rohingya; nor has the role of daily environmental stressors associated with continued displacement, statelessness, and life in the refugee camps, been thoroughly researched. This cross-sectional study examined: trauma history, daily environmental stressors, and mental health outcomes for 148 Rohingya adults residing in Kutupalong and Nayapara refugee camps in Bangladesh. Results indicated high levels of mental health concerns: posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, somatic complaints, and associated functional impairment. Participants also endorsed local idioms of distress, including somatic complaints and concerns associated with spirit possession. The study also found very high levels of daily environmental stressors associated with life in the camps, including problems with food, lack of freedom of movement, and concerns regarding safety. Regression and associated mediation analyses indicated that, while there was a direct effect of trauma exposure on mental health outcomes (PTSD symptoms), daily environmental stressors partially mediated this relationship. Depression symptoms were associated with daily stressors, but not prior trauma exposure. These findings indicate that daily stressors play a pivotal role in mental health outcomes of populations affected by collective violence and statelessness. It is, therefore, important to consider the role and effects of environmental stressors associated with life in refugee camps on the mental health and psychosocial well-being of stateless populations such as the Rohingya, living in protracted humanitarian environments.

Economic Life in Refugee Camps

Summary We analyze economic life in three Congolese refugee camps in Rwanda and the interactions between refugees and local host-country economies within a 10-km radius around each camp. Refugees in one of the three camps received food aid in kind, while in the other two camps they were given cash via cell phones provided by the UN World Food Programme. We find that refugee economies arise inside each camp, and the structure of these economies reflects the economic context around the camps. Despite undergoing forced migration and often living in destitute conditions, refugees actively interact with host country economies. Interactions with the host country result in a divergence of refugee households’ income from the assistance they receive. A shift from in-kind to cash aid appears to increase refugee welfare while strengthening market linkages between camp and host economies. This finding is potentially important for refugee policies as well as for other types of development assistance, as donors find themselves under pressure to shift from in-kind to cash aid.

La literatura de los emigrantes políticos eslovenos después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial en Argentina

La literatura de los emigrantes políticos eslovenos después de laSegunda Guerra Mundial en Argentina

Scattered but Connected: Karen Refugees' Networking in and beyond the Thailand-Burma Borderland

The cross-border movements of Karen people in search of asylum have been taking place sporadically in the Thailand-Burma borderland since the late 1940s. Unlike the focus of most existing literature on the refugees inside a particular refugee camp, this paper examines how refugee camps are connected, the key roles played by a central camp and a nearby town in linking the refugee camps, and how linkages extend to both sides of the Thailand-Burma borderland. Findings from the study reveal that although the Karen live a precarious life in refugee camps, they devise and maintain connections with refugees in other camps, and with people beyond the boundaries of refugee camps. This study suggests that being a refugee does not necessarily connote spatial incarceration. Paying attention to the mobility of refugees gives a better understanding of their lives.

Towards a Culturally Appropriate Mental Health System: Sudanese-Australians' Experiences with Trauma

Australia is fortunate to welcome approximately 13,000 humanitarian entrants per year, most of whom have experienced protracted violence, hardship and life in refugee camps. The majority of humanitarian migrants were raised in cultural contexts very different to that of Australia, contributing to the increasing diversity of this region. With this diversity comes a responsibility to ensure every Australian receives culturally appropriate mental healthcare. Those who are forced into migration have experienced trauma and the stress of acculturation often compounds this trauma. This study investigated the experience of trauma from the perspectives of Sudanese-Australians. Grounded theory methodology was employed to extract themes from interviews with 15 Sudanese-Australians aged between 19 and 49 years. Results demonstrated four overarching themes: support, religion, strength and new possibilities. The data within these themes are compared and contrasted with previous literature that has examined notions of trauma, distress and growth in western populations. Conclusions drawn from these results highlight the need to build inclusive practices that support diversity into existing trauma services in Australia.

Preparedness for Natural Disaster-Associated Infections

Whether or not infections follow a large scale natural disaster depends on the type of disaster, the timing of its occurrence, geographic characteristics of the stricken, and the social infrastructures in place. Moreover, prolonged reconstruction of the affected areas will increase the risk of further expanding the areas hit by endemic diseases as well as emerging or reemerging infections, causing international public health problems. The spread of an infection depends on the following elements in an intricate manner: 1) increase of a bioagent which becomes an infection source, 2) route of transmission changing both in quality and quantity as time elapses, and 3) changes in the sensitivity of individual hosts. Infections caused by bacteria/rickettsia/fungi include meningococcal infection, tuberculosis, cholera, shigellosis, typhoid fever, salmonellosis, plague, anthrax, melioidosis, leptospirosis, tetanus, coccidioidomycosis, typhus, and tsutsugamushi, etc. Those caused by viruses include hepatitis A, hepatitis E, measles, polio, rabies, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile fever, yellow fever, chikungunya fever, and hantavirus infection, etc. Those caused by protozoa include malaria, amoebic dysentery, cryptosporium, and giardia, etc. Infections after natural disasters fall into two categories, one resulting from the direct damage sustained in disasters and the other from migration and life in refugee camps. Soon after a major natural disaster strikes, the World Health Organization coordinates dialogues between public health authorities of the affected country and various assistance organizations regarding countermeasures against infections. Medical needs change at the scene of the disaster as time elapses, changing the type and scale of activities carried out by the various support organizations. In analyzing the epidemiological data from disasters, one must be careful in interpreting the voluntarily reported information. We need to consider the possibility of victim relocation, as well as the period and context of activities offered by various organizations,. Aid provided by experts from international organizations is essential to the disentanglement of the chaos that follows disasters, and cooperation among the organizations under normal circumstances is very important.

TC2C USE OF CANNABIS IN A EAST-LONDON FIRST EPISODE PSYCHOSIS SAMPLE: DATA FROM THE GAP — GENETICS AND PSYCHOSIS — STUDY

In 2015, an estimated 856,723 refugees, predominantly from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq arrived in Greece as an entry point into the European Union. The border of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia closed in March 2016, blocking a popular route for refugees through Europe, and left around 60,000 people stranded in Greece.A mixed-method study was conducted among refugees in the regions of Attica, Epirus, and Samos between November 2016 and February 2017. The epidemiological survey showed that depending on study sites between 73% and 100% of the refugees suffered from anxiety disorder. The explanatory qualitative study aimed to understand refugees' mental health and narratives of social suffering in regards to experienced violence, the effect of current border closures, and the lack of an onward journey.The explanatory qualitative study included 47 in-depth interviews and five focus group discussions with refugees purposely recruited through the concomitant epidemiological survey, representing both genders and a range of nationalities and ages. Data were thematically analysed to identify emergent patterns and categories using NVivo 11.The refugees overwhelmingly reported experiencing uncertainty and lack of control over their current life and future, which caused psychosocial distress and suffering. The passivity of life in refugee camps aggravated feelings of meaninglessness and powerlessness. The disruption of key social networks and absence of interactions with the surrounding Greek society led to feelings of isolation and being unwelcome.Refugees in Greece experience psychosocial distress and social suffering as a consequence of their uncertain and disrupted lives and the loss of social networks. Faster and transparent asylum procedures, the development of meaningful and empowering activities, and fostered social interactions with the surrounding society would contribute to alleviating their psychosocial suffering.

Anthropology & Sociology - Laura C. Hammond. This Place Will Become Home. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. 2004. xii + 257 pp. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. $45.00. Cloth.

Anthropology & Sociology - Laura C. Hammond. This Place Will Become Home. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. 2004. xii + 257 pp. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. $45.00. Cloth. - Volume 49 Issue 1