Reunification Process Research Articles

Living in Two Worlds: An Institutional Ethnographic Study of the Family Reunification Process among Unaccompanied Minor and Young Refugee Girls in Norway

Living in Two Worlds: An Institutional Ethnographic Study of the Family Reunification Process among Unaccompanied Minor and Young Refugee Girls in Norway

Navigating Transnational Separation and Reunification: Resilience in Low-Income Chinese Immigrant Mothers

AbstractThe present study examines the experience of low-income Chinese immigrant mothers managing the reunification process with their young children after a prolonged transnational separation—either due to reverse migration separation (children born in the US but sent to live in China, then returned to the US later) or serial migration (the mother came to the US first, and the children followed years later). Grounded in a feminist family therapy and resilience framework, this qualitative study aims to understand the mothers’ experience through a strength-based perspective and a cultural lens. A phenomenological approach was used in this study to obtain qualitative data from interviews with nine Chinese immigrant mothers. Data were analyzed using the deductive approach of thematic analysis. Results highlighted mothers’ resilience in providing for the families’ needs, utilizing familial and community support, and their strategies to overcome adversities and parenting challenges. The participants demonstrate motivation to improve their children’s well-being by utilizing a range of public, school, and community resources and support from other Chinese parents. Areas where these mothers still needed support were also identified. Lastly, implications for clinical service with Chinese immigrant families are discussed.

Emperor Menelik’s Attempts of Decentralized Governance

Abstract Emperor Menelik’s expansion was by and large a reunification process. After the first expansion, Ethiopia was parcelized due to internal and external factors, which resulted Menelik’s reunification process. After the reunification process, Menelik’s governance structure followed a decentralized system. This article looks into the evidences whereby the policies and actions of the emperor attest this. In this regard, the imperial authority was exercised through the annual collection of tribute rather than by means of direct intervention in local administration. Emperor Menelik pursued a policy of peacemaking even with the objectors against him and letting them remain on power. Menelik’s policy of tolerance and reconciliation was also demonstrated in the North-east Shoa area. The Emperor also allowed provincial governors to form their own local authorities. As a result, the article concludes that the policies and actions of the emperor was tantamount to the devolution dimension of decentralization and therefore analogous to a federal system.

SOCIAL WORK MAKING REPATRIATION A REALITY: A CASE STUDY FROM THE STATE OF PUNJAB

Children’s homes play a crucial role in providing a safe and nurturing environment for vulnerable children. However, several challenges including managing children from diverse backgrounds, addressing the specific needs of children at different developmental stages etc. persist in children’s homes that may compromise the quality of care and the potential positive outcomes for the children. The study examines pertinent issues within children`s homes, drawing attention to systemic flaws, staffing shortages, language barriers, and procedural discrepancies. This study also focused on evaluating the pivotal role of social workers, as they directly engage with the children and act as the primary facilitators for rehabilitation and family reunification processes. The study analyzed secondary data received through a RTI from children home in Hoshiarpur. This data was analyzed to identify trends related to age demographics and the impact of social workers` interventions on these children. The study`s implications extend to policy formulation, practice enhancement, and future research endeavors, advocating for holistic approaches that prioritize children`s rights, needs, and familial connections within the context of child care institutions.

I am home. The circle is complete: The reunification of fostered/adopted relatives

AbstractObjectiveThis study examined the underlying, unseen meanings accompanying the progressive verification of the reunification process experienced by American Indian fostered/adopted relatives who were separated from family of origin as children.BackgroundReunification is most often explored as an outcome (i.e., a result) and few studies examine the process of reunification (i.e., what happens or what facilitates it) or the underlying meaning of the reunification process for American Indian fostered/adopted relatives.MethodA secondary data analysis was conducted on survey data from the Experiences of Adopted and Fostered Individuals Project. The sample consisted of 70 American Indian relatives who were fostered/adopted as children and reunified as adults. Thematic analysis was conducted on open‐ended survey data.ResultsFour themes emanated from the data including: (1) searching, (2) facilitating, (3) calling home, and (4) repatriating. Participants searched for their families of origin using information and records (i.e., names of birth family, birth/adoption records). Reunification was facilitated by agencies, hired professionals, courts, and tribes. Relatives were called home by family, tribe, and ancestors. They repatriated through mail, phone, social media, and registries.ConclusionThis study contributed to the literature by using place identity theory to understand the progressive nature of the perceptions and comprehensions experienced by American Indian relatives during the reunification process. Place identity verification undergirds the process of reunification for American Indian fostered/adopted relatives including the underlying, unseen meanings that accompany the reunification process.

Placement stability and family support after government-mandated rapid return: A two-year follow-up

During the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple governments around the world implemented directives that mandated residential care providers to rapidly reunite thousands of children and youth with their families. Organizations were faced with expedited timelines for the reunification process, limited ability to prepare children and families, and restricted capacity to support and monitor families in-person due to lockdown measures. As such, there was significant concern regarding stability of placements, and well-being of the children and families affected by the abrupt and unprepared reunification process. This study examined data from 16 non-government organizations (NGOs) impacted by rapid return mandates in six nations (Kenya, Uganda, India, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Mexico). NGOs were serving 15,978 children in residential care at the time of the mandates. NGOs had an average of 21.87 days ( SD = 9.87) to return children to families. Most NGOs felt children and families were inadequately prepared for reunification. After two years, NGOs were in contact with 90% of the children who had been rapidly returned. Of those children, 56% remained in their family placement. Families who received more types of family strengthening services were more likely to remain intact. Concerningly, 2 years following the rapid return mandates, the NGOs in this study were collectively serving a higher number of children in residential care than prior to rapid return mandates. This suggests that rapid return mandates did not seem to decrease the number of children in residential care long-term. Data-informed recommendations for practice are discussed.

«КУЛЬТУРНОЕ ОГРАБЛЕНИЕ» УКРАИНЫ РОССИЕЙ В УКРАИНСКОЙ ИСТОРИЧЕСКОЙ МИФОЛОГИИ

The article examines the myth of the historical cultural and educational superiority of the Ukrainian community over the Great Russian community in the Middle Ages and in Modern Times, and the cultural "colonization" of "Turkic Muscovy" by Ukraine. According to this pseudo-historical construction, Russia stole the Ukrainian cultural and educational potential in the reign of Peter the Great, when prominent Ukrainian educators were taken from its territory to Moscow. This concept is detrimental to historical truth, since it perverts the true causes and nature of real events dating back to the processes of reunification of Ukraine with Russia in the 17th–18th centuries and the formation of a single religious and cultural space.

Impact of Immigration Laws on Family Reunification: Narratives from Affected Families

The increasing complexity of immigration laws globally has profound effects on family reunification processes, often resulting in significant emotional, legal, economic, and social challenges for immigrants. This study aims to explore the impact of these laws on family reunification, specifically examining the personal narratives and experiences of affected families. The objective is to understand the multi-dimensional consequences of immigration policies on family dynamics and well-being. This qualitative study employed semi-structured interviews with 22 participants who have directly experienced the family reunification process under current immigration laws. Participants were selected through snowball sampling and outreach via immigrant advocacy groups, ensuring a diverse representation in terms of age, gender, and origin. Data collection aimed for theoretical saturation and was analyzed using NVivo software to identify themes related to the impacts of immigration laws on family reunification. Four main themes were identified: Emotional Impact, Legal and Administrative Barriers, Economic Consequences, and Social and Cultural Integration. Emotional impacts included stress, anxiety, loss, resilience, and effects on children. Legal and administrative barriers highlighted the complexity of legal processes, issues with accessibility of resources, and the implications of frequent policy changes. Economic consequences focused on financial strain, employment challenges, and housing instability. Social and cultural integration covered challenges related to cultural adaptation, community support, discrimination, stigma, and family dynamics. The study reveals that immigration laws intricately affect the emotional and psychological health, economic stability, and social integration of immigrant families. The findings underscore the need for policies that consider the profound human impacts of immigration laws, advocating for reforms that facilitate smoother and more humane family reunification processes.

Phantom Pain

The paper introduces the oeuvre of Kurt Drawert and analyzes, by which means and with which aims the contemporary history of German Reunification is reflected critically in his essays, poems and prose. Drawert’s work circles around carefully recorded absences that the author himself has experienced and which are possibly reflected more extensively due to his relocation to federal West Germany in 1993. Such absences are shown to be ruinous for post-Soviet individuals in the unified society. But at the same time, they are constitutive for Drawert’s poetics, written from the passage through the non-places of his (former) country. Reading his oeuvre from this perspective means comprehending a meticulous measurement in his poetics of the absent: of Heimat, causing an atopian perception (including the increase of retrotopian nationalistic thinking); of speech that has been and still is ‘injured’ or even lost, causing a not only political aphasia (allegorized by the Kaspar-Hauser-figure); and absence of time, as past is lost with the belated and declined East—and the present suffers from a global acceleration, causing an asynchronia in transformation that further reduces the society’s ability to design the future. Drawert’s engagement does not cease with a melancholic exploration of a collective phantom pain, stating a persisting disintegration. Out of the analytical measurement of such ‘left-overs’ of the reunification process in Germany there evolves a harsh criticism of the contemporary situation surrounding the individual in the global digitized society. A related mission of literature reveals the (always fragmented) truth to the reader—prolonging a political kind of criticism whose methods trail back to GDR-opposition. Thus, any ‘valid’ political change would depend on the influence of a common language and maturity.

Die Wohnzeitschrift als Wäʼende-Moderatorin

This paper deals with the ›Wende‹ volume (1990) of NEUES WOHNEN, a GDR home design magazine, having previously operated as kultur im heim for many years. The aim is to show how during the ›Wende‹—the period following the Peaceful Revolution of 1989—the sphere of East German housing, rarely focused on by media at that time, was negotiated in a printed periodical during the process of the GDR-dissolving German reunification. Doing so, the journal’s gaze is a specifically ›East German‹ one, confronted with new epistemic ingredients and actors when opening GDR-specific ways of negotiation. With special attention to the print order and semantics circulating between the issues, individual magazine sections are selected to demonstrate two aspects: how the magazine faces problems of providing home design models in which Eastern German identities can be lived out as Federal German ones; and how, through these very efforts, the restitution of the value ›bourgeois‹ (›bürgerlich‹) becomes important for the journal’s self-understanding after the ›Wende‹.

The Perplexing Bilateral Relations between Two Koreas: Finding Peace in Korean Reunification Through Critical Theory's Perspective

Despite being formerly homogeneous in terms of history, culture, language, and nation, the separation of the Korean people has led to significant contrasts in political, economic, and cultural aspects between South Korea and North Korea. Conflict resulting from these differences eventually leads to war. However, since World War II, the two Koreas have been seeking reunification in three different ways: "reunification through war," "reunification through revolution," and "peaceful reunification." These Three Concepts of Korean Reunification was driven by the distortion of the term peace. This research employed a case study method to analyze a specific historical event to gain a comprehensive understanding of peace related to the three different concepts of Korean Reunification. Peace is essential for the realization of the reunification of separated nations. The Korean reunification program is affected by the research finding that given their common ethnicity, culture, familial ties, economic complementarity, international diplomacy, humanitarian concerns, and nuclear disarmament, the reunification process between North and South Korea has the possibility for peaceful reconciliation. However, a distorted understanding of peace has created challenges in Korea Reunificationwhere peace was built on mutual distrust and fear, making achieving a positive and sustainable peace exceedingly difficult, and meaningful reunification has yet to occur.

The activities of Priest Peter Nortamo on the reunification of the Finnish and Russian Orthodox Churches

Russian Orthodox Diocese of Finland, taking advantage of the church and international policy, illegally transferred to the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1923 and its relations with the Russian Church were interrupted for two decades. At the end of the Great Patriotic War, a movement for the reunification of the two churches began, but there was no unity within the Finnish Church on this issue, and the efforts of the Moscow Patriarchate’s hierarchy led to limited results. The article reveals the history of the participation of Petter Nortamo, a Finnish pastor who converted to Orthodoxy and tried to speed up the process of the return of the Finnish Archdiocese to the Russian Orthodox Church, unknown to Russian scientists. One of the characteristic features of his activity was the active involvement in this process of political parties and associations of socialist orientation, as well as the press (in particular, the Democratic Union of the People of Finland). The article disputes the reading of this story by the Finnish historian Juha Riikonen, who sees this primarily as a political background. Nortamo’s active contacts with Metropolitan Grigory (Chukov) and Patriarch Alexy I, his ordination to holy orders in Leningrad indicate that the church component was decisive in his activities. However, Nortamo’s efforts were not enough to solve the problem of the relationship between the Finnish and Russian Orthodox Churches, and his death coincided with the end of such attempts. The Patriarchate of Constantinople played a significant role in freezing the process of church reunification. To this day, the figure of Nortamo remains unknown in Russian historical science.

A look inside family reunification for children with attachment difficulties: An exploratory study

Stability of care among vulnerable children is the primary goal following out-of-home placement. While family reunification is the preferred option for child placement when a return to the home of origin is conceivable, it is not a guarantee of stability and quite often fails. It is known that many children who experience out-of-home placement develop attachment difficulties stemming from the ruptures or instability that they have experienced within their primary attachment relationships. Reunification is therefore a very sensitive period for these children as they are at-risk of experiencing another rupture in attachment bonds in the case of a re-placement. To better understand the reunification process for children identified with attachment difficulties, this exploratory study investigates the association between the history of placement, contacts with the parent prior to reunification, services offered during the reunification process and child and parental functioning issues among children identified with and without attachment difficulties. The sample consists of 146 families who experienced reunification. Results indicated that in comparison with children without attachment difficulties, children identified with attachment difficulties during the reunification process spent more days in out-of-home care, were offered more services and presented greater cumulative difficulties than their counterparts. These results suggest that children with attachment difficulties have a distinct profile and underscore the importance of considering both individual and relational characteristics when supporting these families through the reunification process.

The seeds of reform; the evolution of the alternative care system in the Maldives

This article will present the evolution of alternative care provision in the Maldives. The Maldives is a small island nation located in the Indian Ocean, with a population of around 530,000. Since the signing and ratification of the UNCRC in 1991, there have been many improvements in children’s lives; for example, progress has been made in school attendance, improved child literacy rates and infant mortality has been reduced significantly. However, the country still faces several challenges in terms of child welfare, including internal child trafficking, child abuse, neglect and child marriage. There are currently 187 children living apart from their families in alternative care, which accounts for 0.02% of children in the country. The predominant form of alternative care provision remains institutional, which is typified by large numbers of children cared for by relatively low numbers of care staff. The article will explain, how historically, when a child was unable to remain with their parents, informal kinship care was the predominant form of provision. Often this would result in grandmothers, aunts and the wider family/kinship groups looking after children. However, with the establishment of a large reformatory school Islaahiya in Male Atoll in 1979, residential care was created as an option for boys who were described as having behavioural issues. It remained a key alternative care provider in the country until it closed in 2013. In 2004, the state-run institution Kudakudhinge Hiya was established to care for 45 boys and girls from 0 to 9 years old. Then in 2016 with the support of the Qatar Foundation, the state built another institution Fiyavithi, which still cares for 80 children under 13 years of age. The article will conclude with an overview of the most recent developments in the Maldives’ alternative care system. It will highlight how the Child Rights Protection Act (2019) has sown the seeds of care reform with primary legislation enacting regulations for family-based provision. This has formalised the previously established foster care panel that was set up in 2012. There are now 18 registered formal foster carers across the Maldives who are caring for 16 children. Furthermore, in 2020 whilst waiting for the growth in foster care, the state government started to shift from large-scale institutions by establishing nine smaller institutions, located across the atoll, each caring for no more than 25 children. The ministry has also embarked on processes of family reunification. The article will critically discuss these developments, highlight the challenges experienced during these recent reforms and provide key messages for policy and practice going forward.

Selected Aspects of Internationalization in the Liberec Region and the Free State of Saxony

Internationalization is a widely discussed topic analysed from various points of view. In our paper, we have decided to measure this trend in two border regions in former Eastern Germany and in Czechia, namely in Saxony and the Liberec region in the time period 2013-2020. Both areas belonged to the Eastern bloc before 1990. Saxony experienced a rapid reunification process within the early 1990s and Czechia a transformation process competed in 2004 by the EU accession.
 In our paper, we have decided to test three hypotheses. First, we tested if Saxony is more internationalized in terms of human resources (1) and secondly with regard to export output (2). Then, we conducted the same tests on the Liberec region. Our assumption was that, due to the rapid reunification and favourable geographic proximity of lucrative Western markets, the position of Saxony would be more advanced.
 Finally, we tested the hypothesis (3) that the rising number of foreign workers contribute to the rising export volumes. We correlated the indicators of employed foreigners and exports per head in both regions from 2013 to 2020.

Métapsychologie de la création musicale : vers une clinique de l’artiste musicien

ObjectiveThe metapsychology of musical creation elaborated from the direct clinical approach of the musician-artist is rarely explored within the psychoanalytical literature. The aim of this article is to explain how clinical listening to musicians allows us to posit some specificities related to musical creation and to suggest the need to elaborate a particular practice of listening. In doing so, clinicians can respond in an adapted way to the requests for psychic care that are addressed to them. This subject calls for interdisciplinarity: identity and practice of musical art, theories and practices of the analytical clinical practice. In view of this complexity and amplitude, this essay also aims to be synthetic and circumscribed. MethodThe article is based on a selection of works by Freud and D. Anzieu dedicated to artistic creation. From our intra-textual critical reading, correspondences are established. Other theoretical contributions are inserted in filigree in our proposal as a complement. All of this is articulated with our clinical observations resulting from psychotherapeutic work with conservatory-trained professional musicians. ResultsFreud expressed his distance and reservations concerning the understanding of musical art and this position is generally thought of in terms of a-musicality. However, the weaving of his research associated with that of D. Anzieu, as well as the metapsychology of music and the collection of our clinical data, allow us to identify the particularities of the psychic reality involved in musical creation. It is a question of almost constant and neuralgic anxieties. These last ones relate, on the one hand, to the mechanisms of regression constituting one of the psychic properties of music, which stems from the status of sound as an extension of the intra-uterine environment, and on the other hand, to the mechanisms of psychic dissociation strongly mobilized in performance situations. The musical training frequently committed to in childhood, even early childhood, and the repression, denial, or revelation of its socio-affective context by the musician-patients received in my consultation complete this clinical picture. These particularities shed analytical light on the nature of the complaint and symptoms at work in certain musicians. They also inform the encounter between the clinician and the musician, precisely the transferential dimension, when this is loaded with resistance. Moreover, it appears that the treatment of psychological suffering is most often oriented in the first instance towards supportive psychotherapy, within the framework of adapted devices, without ruling out the possibilities of analytical psychotherapy and a typical cure. One of the therapeutic stakes would consist essentially in regulating the anxieties of loss relating to the movements of constant coming and going between the mechanisms of dissociation of the self and the processes of reunification of this authority. DiscussionOur proposal is situated in the register of the metapsychology of musical creation. It has therefore circumscribed our approach to the musician-subject in her/his links to this cultural object. However, the reading of the requests for psychotherapy emanating from professional musicians can be completed by existing research that explores the register of the suffering at work. ConclusionThe requests for care addressed to the clinician coming from musician-subjects reveal the need to pursue existing research on the metapsychology of musical creation. Further research could explore the sense of the clinical implications – both on an individual and a group level – for vocal or instrumental ensembles as well as for cultural institutions.

The participation of parents in the protection system: The case of the Spanish legislation

AbstractWorking with the families of origin of children and adolescents (CA) who are in the CA protection system is essential to achieve reunification, which is the ultimate objective when planning foster care; it is a scientific, social and professional challenge that must be included in the legislation of each country. For this, it is essential that the laws consider and regulate the participation of families in decision‐making during foster care and subsequent reunification processes. We analysed 22 laws enacted through Spanish legislation, both national and regional, that regulate the protection of children. The study focuses on analysing how the Spanish legislation contemplates the participation of parents during foster care and subsequent reunification. The Spanish legislative texts do not expressly, clearly and effectively include the participation of parents. They are limited to the punctual recognition of acts of notification and hearing and, where appropriate, of opposition to certain resolutions. Spain lacks a general legal framework that supports and guarantees the necessary participation of the family in the protection system. The focus on the recognition of the rights of CA in laws as a result of international pressure has relegated the legal protection of the rights of parents, mainly in their right to be heard.

‘Do not disturb’: patience, social control and good citizenship in the Canadian family reunification process

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the Canadian spousal reunification process and its specific bureaucratic temporality, in relation to citizenship and mechanisms of social control. Based on ethnographic research in a Facebook support group of Canadian women married to a non-Canadian man, I examine the role of online communities in reinforcing compliance to immigration slow temporalities at the expense of group members’ urgent love temporalities. Spousal reunification applicants were recommended not to intervene as long as their file was still within official processing times. Those who acted too soon showed low compliance with government regulations and were called back to order by other applicants. The promotion of discourses that valorise both patience and proactivity deployed at the ‘right time’ – when delays are expired – constitute mechanisms of social control and contribute to shaping ‘good’, ‘informed’ and thus deserving citizens, in the context of marriage fraud suspicion. This article builds on the literature on waiting in immigration processes and articulates it with concepts of good citizenship. It reflects on how online immigration support groups become spaces in which applicants police and discipline each other along gendered lines.

The Implementation of Group Intervention Programs: A Tool to Promote Collaboration between Services in the Child Protection System

There are many agents involved in the family reunification processes of the child protection system, which requires rethinking collaboration between services. A mixed-method design including a quantitative survey (n = 93) and 14 qualitative focus groups (n = 43) was applied to investigate the attitudes of the protection system professionals towards the implementation of a group intervention program for family reunification. The results indicate the need for collaboration between the protection system services and highlight the elements that professionals identify as key to developing this collaboration.

The South Korea—North Korea Peaceful Reunification Initiative: An Analysis

The South Korea-North Korea relation has always been full of tensions since the end of the Second World War. Those tensions can turn into military conflicts any time which might me detrimental to regional stability and international peace. In such a situation South Korea and North Korea have been negotiating for a peaceful reunification for the previous two decades. But the South Korea-North Korea relation has not been normalized yet. In addition, North Korea has been continuously increasing nuclear weapons reserves and long-range missiles production. As a result, the South Korea-North Korea relation remains full of tensions. The objective of this research is to study the real scenario of South Korea-North Korea peaceful reunification initiative. This research study identifies the progress and limitations of the South Korea-North Korea reunification process. It is evident from the present research study that both of South Korea and North Korea want a peaceful reunification in the Korean peninsula. But there are many domestic, regional and international challenges. The South Korea- North Korea peaceful reunification is plausible if those challenges are resolved.