Recent Refugee Research Articles

Mental Health Refugees - Difficulties from the country of origin to the receiving country – A review

IntroductionThe most recent global refugee figures are staggering, with over 82.4 million people forcibly displaced as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations. However, little is known about their long-term mental health.ObjectivesThis review aimed to assess prevalence of mental disorders and to identify the main factors associated with the development of mental disorders among refugees.Methods We searched MEDLINE databases using the key terms “refugees” and “global mental health” without language or date restriction. Articles were considered for inclusion in the review if they comprised a population of refugees. Three studies were identified.ResultsOur review showed a great heterogeneity in the prevalence of mental disorders that affect migrants showing an overall prevalence of 20% of these pathologies among them. War-related factors are more associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and post-migration-related factors (acculturation, economic uncertainty and ethnic discrimination) are more associated with mood, anxiety and substance use disorders.Conclusions Existing evidence suggests that mental disorders tend to be highly prevalent in refugees many years after resettlement. The increased risk is not only caused by the past adversities in the country of origin but also by the post-migration-related factors. Thus, there is a need for more consistent and rigorous research from a methodological point of view on the mental health of refugees, allowing to find measures to protect and promote their mental health.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

Ukraine war refugees - threats and new challenges for healthcare in Poland

Between February 2022, when the war in Ukraine began, and April 1, 2022, the number of refugees to neighboring countries reached 4,137,842 people. The majority have fled to Poland. The main challenge for the health system in Poland in this situation is how to develop effective adaptation measures. The aim of this study is to describe threats and challenges to public health related in particular to infectious diseases and to identify the resources of the healthcare system that are necessary to meet the needs of the recent war refugees and the Polish population. Scientific publications, statistical data from national and international organizations, information obtained from public institutions in Poland and Ukraine, and reliable sources of up-to-date information on the Internet were used. Key data on threats and challenges to public health were collected and presented. Differences were observed between Poland and Ukraine in terms of immunization programmes and their implementation as well as in relation to the prevalence of selected infectious diseases. The increase in demand for healthcare resources in Poland was estimated on the basis of current indicators. Both the possibilities of counteracting epidemic threats related to the current situation and possible consequences for the availability of services and the health condition of all people currently staying in Poland were presented. European countries may experience public health threats due to the influx of war refugees. The data presented could be useful for European countries while developing effective strategies to mitigate public health issues.

Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism by Marc Caplan

Reviewed by: Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism by Marc Caplan Jessica Kirzane Marc Caplan. Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021. 394 pp. Marc Caplan's recent monograph, Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism, examines the work of a small group of avant-garde male Yiddish writers working in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, in conjunction with figures working in German-language literature, critical theory, journalism, and film during the same period. Caplan limits his study to Yiddish writers in Berlin who later returned to the Soviet Union, and to German Jewish figures who identified with Jewishness and expressed their identity as an experience of "permanent exile" (20). He interprets the work of his Yiddish writers through "the aesthetic categories developed in the experimental culture of the Weimar Republic," claiming that "it is from the periphery … that modernism articulates its most productive critiques of modernity" (5). In particular, Caplan is interested in theorizing the writers he studies through the concepts of allegory, the baroque, and melancholy. Caplan's study follows his previous work theorizing peripheral modernisms through a comparative lens in How Strange the Change: Language, Temporality, [End Page 193] and Narrative Form in Peripheral Modernisms (Stanford University Press, 2011), this time taking into account the positionality of recent and temporary refugees residing and producing literature in Berlin during the interwar period. Caplan demonstrates that through their complicated vectors of allegiance and cultural context—producing work for export to the Yiddish diaspora yet situated in a European center for literary modernism—these writers managed to create literature of particular "aesthetic and emotional complexity" (7). In his work, Caplan demonstrates the formal as well as thematic components of the displacement and upheaval their writing expresses, with particular focus on their conceptions of space and time. With regard to time, Caplan is interested in the question of belatedness, a concept also recently taken up by literary scholars of Jewish modernisms such as Harriet Murav, Abigail Gillman, and Jordan Finkin. As Caplan defines it, drawing upon Walter Benjamin, belatedness is "the unsettled feeling of not coinciding with the present moment" which "prompts a longing for bygone feelings either as a means of connecting to a tradition of continuity and belonging or as a romance of previous eras … [that] provides a reproach to a current moment of mechanical, mass-produced material culture" (18). Caplan differentiates between German Jewish modes of belatedness, which he describes as "melancholic" in contrast to those of Yiddish authors, characterized by "mourning." For Caplan, "melancholy" is a condition not only of longing for home, but of having lost "faith in the concept of home as such"—a lack of connection to past or present or future (20). "Mourning," on the other hand, comes from a more rooted and specific knowledge of the home that is now obsolete, and suggests a more linear conception of time, in which the past has died and the future may yet be born. Part 1 considers David Bergelson (1884–1952) in comparison with Alfred Döblin (1878–1957). Describing Döblin's Reise in Polen (Journey to Poland, 1925) as characterized by the author's melancholic measuring of his own distance from Yiddish and Jewish tradition, Caplan argues that Bergelson shares Döblin's belief in the obsolescence of the Jewish past but is oriented toward connecting Jews, currently in an uncertain, politically impotent status, with the future of Soviet Communism. Also examining Bergelson's writing about Jewish refugee life in Berlin, Caplan further concludes that Bergelson's Berlin-focused writing about the anonymity and alienation of urban space is consistent with his shtetl writing, as both critique the modern era for trapping human subjects in circumstances in which they have no agency. Part 2 focuses on two narratives by Yiddish modernist Der Nister ("The Hidden One," Pinkhes Kahanovitsh, 1884–1950) in conversation with the stories of Hasidic storyteller Rebbe Naḥman of Bratslav (1772–1810), his German-language contemporary E. T. A. Hoffman (1776–1822), and the German film Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, 1930). These comparisons draw attention to the belatedness of Yiddish cultural production, placing a "Yiddish Baroque" proximate to...

Fear, force, and flight: configurations of intimidation and displacement in Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’

ABSTRACT While the presence and intensity of armed conflict is often understood as the logical and axiomatic causal factor of flight, this article offers a more in-depth understanding of the myriad of circumstances and factors that shape forced displacement from homes and communities. Based on extensive field research, the article schematically aggregates displacement in Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’ into three broad categories; 1. Direct intimidation 2. Indirect intimidation and 3. Mutual Arbitration. While the ‘extraordinary’ violence of burning homes, smouldering streets, and mass population movements came to symbolise something of an archetypal form of displacement in Northern Ireland, the majority of intimidation and movement during the ‘Troubles’ were the product of more tedious though no less effective forms of ‘everyday’ intimidation and threats. For many, the decision to flee was the culmination of months and sometimes years of enduring a variety of monotonous attacks and intimidation. While the turn towards rational choice within recent refugee approaches seeks to shift the emphasis from predominant narratives of disempowerment and victimhood, nevertheless, the research presented here underscores the primacy of fear and intimidation as the common determinants of forced movement. The communication of those threats, as this article demonstrates, came in many forms and complexions.

The unexpected influencer: Pope Francis and European perceptions of the recent refugee crisis

Abstract This article analyses the impact of non-informative communication on Europeans’ perceptions of European Union (EU) action on the issue of migration. We exploit the fact that Pope Francis’s visit to Lesbos Island in 16 April 2016, overlaps with the days of the interviews for a Special Eurobarometer survey, such that some respondents were unintentionally exposed to the Pope’s speech while others were not. Comparing Catholics and non-Catholics before and after the Pope’s visit in a difference-in-differences setting, we show that the papal message persuaded exposed Catholic individuals that EU action on the issue of migration is insufficient. The effect is temporary and varies according to the demographic characteristics of the respondents and by the country’s share of asylum applicants in 2015. Moreover, media exposure of the Pope’s visit, measured by the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone, was greater in Catholic countries, and this might explain the effect found.

Commentary: Nationalism and Transnationalism in Anthropological Research

Commentary: Nationalism and Transnationalism in Anthropological Research

Immigration, education and insecuritisation. School principals’ small stories on national immigration and integration policies

ABSTRACT International migration in general and the recent refugee crisis in particular are complex and much debated topics in European politics. Concurrently, education systems must operate under uncertain and unpredictable conditions. In this situation, migrant children become a group at particular educational risk of exclusion and marginalisation. This paper explores reflections of principals of schools with migrant students regarding how to navigate in those uncertainties related to how migrants are received in Denmark and whether current Danish policies on migration and integration affect the everyday practices in education. Thus, the paper looks at how problematisation and insecuritisation processes stemming from current immigration and integration policies in Denmark influence professionals’ working conditions in the field of education. Drawing on methodological perspectives from narrative theory, a selection of five out of 15 interviews with school principals are analysed, focusing on their small stories about approaching the complex processes of risk production when providing education for migrant children. The conclusion drawn from the study is that immigration and integration policies that do not stem from the field of education still influence the field of education in a way that creates complex dilemmas for school professionals when navigating in the (co-)production of risks.

Severe polyostotic fibrous dysplasia presenting as a leg length discrepancy

A 16 year old female, recent refugee, presented to the clinic with the complaint of difficulty walking. The patient had been told she had osteoporosis as a child, though did not recollect a formal diagnosis. On physical exam, the patient had good range of motion of the hips, knees, ankles, and feet; however, restricted hip abduction on the left and limited hip internal rotation were noted. The patient walked with a heel-toe gait, a short leg gait on the left, a lateral trunk lean, and a left external foot progression angle. A leg length discrepancy was measured clinically at 4 centimeters, left shorter than right. Radiography of the lower extremities revealed a large expansile lytic lesion throughout the length of the left femur (Figure 1). Radiography of the upper extremities and hands revealed similar lesions (Figure 2 and Figure 3). Genetic analysis was pursued which revealed 5 variants in 5 genes of unknown significance.

Practicing Anthropology in Greece: Knowledge, Skills and Rights in the Labour Market

In this paper we explore which kind of knowledge and skills developed by anthropology students through higher education are applied in the Greek labour market and how they are received by different professional sectors, such as central and local administration, private companies or NGOs. We also examine how professional rights of social anthropologists are being established, creating academic qualifications, lobbies and competitive relations among anthropology and other relevant disciplines. Furthermore, we illustrate the birth and establishment of practicing anthropology in Greece as it is being practiced in civil society institutions, local and international governmental and non-governmental organizations, especially since a proportionally big number of anthropologists are being employed in this field due to the recent European refugee crisis and the state of emergency that it brought to Greece and Europe. Through our analysis we wish to show that during the last three decades anthropology is gradually becoming socially and politically relevant in Greece. This process has started with the integration of the country in the core of European Union institutions and through the coexistence with diverse populations of migrant origins. The popularity of anthropology has been accelerated by the economic and refugee crisis of the last decade that multiplied the numbers of anthropologists working in the humanitarian sector. The discipline seems thus to come of age, with academic teaching and practicing anthropology being increasingly intertwined.

Personal Social Networks of Recent Refugees in Germany: Does Family Matter?

This article explores the composition of the personal social networks and their interrelation with the family context of recently arrived refugees in Germany. Using the Refugee Sample of the German Socio-Economic Panel (2017) and performing logistic regression analyses, the findings suggest that refugees living without their partner, children, or extended family in Germany are more likely to have at least one close non-kin confidant. The same holds true for inter-ethnic contacts. Moreover, the results show that also opportunity structures like the workplace or leisure-time activities matter. As male and female refugees have different family arrangements, differences by sex emerge.

Evaluation of the Surveillance System in Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement, Kiryandongo District, Uganda, April 2017

Background: Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) involves surveillance of priority diseases and conditions, and is implemented in many African countries, including Uganda. During humanitarian emergencies, public health surveillance systems such as IDSR may face challenges. We assessed the capacity of health facilities (HF) in Kiryandongo District, a district with a large and recent refugee influx, to perform IDSR core functions. Methods: We visited five HF serving refugee settlements and one serving the host community. We interviewed HF in-charges, surveillance Focal Persons, and District Health Team (DHT) members about their capacity to perform IDSR. We reviewed paper-based forms in IDSR to evaluate system attributes during April 2016-March 2017. We determined the average weekly health Management Information System (HMIS) reporting rate for weeks 1-13 of 2017. Results: All HFs were well-staffed. However, half of the 12 suspected disease outbreaks reported in the past year were not investigated. The average weekly reporting rate was 79% (target: 80%). Barriers to IDSR included absence of standard case definition booklets (50%) and updated paper forms (67%), incomplete filling of registers, and inadequate data analysis (33%). The District Epidemic Preparedness and Response Committee (DEPRC) was non-functional. Conclusion: There was low capacity of the district to conduct IDSR, which could have slowed detection of and response to outbreaks. We recommended IDSR refresher trainings in two-year cycles and supplying guidelines to all HFs. The DEPRC and DHT should be strengthened through funding, regular meetings, and supplies of essential commodities.

Engaging Vietnamese Americans in research on aging and dementia

AbstractBackgroundVietnamese Americans are a large Asian American group in the U.S. and at high risk for health disparities, partially due to their limited English proficiency, low socioeconomic status, history of war and trauma, and a lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate care. As this relatively recent refugee population continues to age in the U.S., it is important to engage them in research around Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). Yet few studies have examined their perceptions of aging, dementia, and ADRD research participation. This qualitative study examined the perceptions of Vietnamese in Northern and Southern California, the state with the largest population of Vietnamese Americans in the U.S.MethodWe conducted three focus groups with a total of 20 Vietnamese individuals in both Vietnamese and English. The focus group guide assessed participants’ attitudes and experiences with research participation, perceptions of ADRD and aging, and insights into registry outreach and recruitment. There were nine women, and the mean age was 40 years, SD = 17.74 (range 18‐73). Participants consisted of key stakeholders including community leaders, ADRD caregivers, and community members.ResultSeveral themes emerged from the analyses, including (1) Motivations to participate in research to gain knowledge: (a) for oneself, (b) for family’s benefit, and (c) for the Vietnamese American community as a whole; (2) The necessity of trustworthy and credible individuals/spokespersons to promote the research initiative; (3) Recruitment strategies that are age‐specific and culturally appropriate, and (4) Importance of monetary incentives.ConclusionResults highlight key issues that are important to Vietnamese Americans’ participation in aging and dementia research. Practical implications of these results will be discussed.

The Albanian Migration to Greece and the Refugee Crisis of 2015 from the Greek Perspective

Although migration has always been a timeless and volatile phenomenon, modern transnational movements of people have become a dominant topic of interest by constantly acquiring new characteristics that modify their evolutionary process. Europe is a geographical area that has been significantly affected by recent changes as a result of the evolution of migration flows of the last 30 years. The urgent need to initially understand and later implement evidence-based policies in order to sufficiently manage the migration phenomenon can be considered as the basic spark that led to the scientific blast of the 21st century, focusing on the gradual development of migration studies. One of the most notable efforts of the scientific community was the use of the comparison method to examine, understand, and in some cases even forecast the characteristics of specific migration case studies, thereby forming the backbone of comparative migration research in general. Greece, due to its geographical position, has been unintentionally positioned, many times, inside the so called “ring of fire”, as result of multiple factors and disastrous events that evolved mainly in its neighbouring countries, forcing massive, irregular migration flows to its external borders. The outbreak of the Albanian exodus in the early 1990s and the recent refugee flows of 2015 can be described as two major migration crises that have occurred in Greek’s contemporary history, making their comparison a fruitful example of the potential capabilities of the above-mentioned method, contributing to a holistic study of the migration phenomenon in Greece.

Solidarity in crisis? Community responses to refugees and forced migrants in the Greek islands

This article examines the question of solidarity in light of recent refugees’ and forced migrants’ arrivals on Greek island shores as the first point of entry to the European Union. It focuses on various community solidarity initiatives emerging in 2015 and how they unfolded over time, until replaced by hostility and indifference following the EU–Turkey deal in March 2016. To account for this transformation, the study, carried out between 2016 and 2018, involved ethnographic work, interviews with local populations, activists, teachers and community leaders, and participant observations primarily in Lesbos, as well as Chios, Leros, and Samos. This article also sheds light on how Greece’s severe economic crisis has compounded anti-migration politics and securitization in recent migratory movements. Drawing on Judith Butler’s ideas of embodied vulnerability and intersubjective relationality, the article theorizes how solidarity evolves when border struggles intersect with deservingness, belonging, and refugees’ and forced migrants’ precarity. It concludes by proposing a psychosocial embodied notion of solidarity as a political strategy to counteract the neoliberal predicament that threatens all life with extinction.

The dynamics of recent refugees’ language acquisition: how do their pathways compare to those of other new immigrants?

ABSTRACT Do the processes underlying destination-language acquisition differ between recently arrived refugees and other new immigrants? Based on a well-established model of language learning according to which language fluency is a function of efficiency, incentives, and exposure, this study addresses general processes of language learning as well as conditions specific to refugees. Longitudinal data on refugees (IAB-BAMF-SOEP Sample of Refugees in Germany) and other immigrants (IAB-SOEP Migration Sample) in Germany indicate that exposure to the destination language is the main driver of proficiency, followed by efficiency, whereas incentives matter less. Moreover, refugees profit substantially from structured learning in language courses, while other immigrants benefit more from informal exposure in their everyday environments. Overall, the findings suggest that language acquisition is a general process that is similar across different types of immigrants.

Political Borders Are Not Natural Orders – The COVID-19 Pandemic in Frankfurt on the Main and Its Refugees

Abstract The overall aim of this paper will be to stick to the previous researchers to get valid and impartial data from the most international city of Germany: Frankfurt on the Main. However, this research paper will try to provide answers by comparing war situations (object) where curfews are at daily basis impact on lives of people, who become gradually refugees (subject). In the recent years many refugees found their way to the global city of Frankfurt and its region of Rhine-Main. In these days if talking about the situation of the visible shutdown, lockdown and the strictly forbidden laws for an overall betterment of life, refugees have a tendency to explain to the native people about their crisis-laden past: “Resilience for Survival”. Their recent past in the war-torn countries of Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq in West-Asia, Libya in Africa or the many wars in the Balkans in the 1990s in Europe, are a case in point. Given that as a matter of fact, when individuals are leading conversations about the outbreak to the recent lockdown, especially, fugitives try to explain to the ordinary dweller of Frankfurt through what life-threatening circumstances they experienced. This described social encounter despite the imposed social distancing is the proof how our glocalized planet (global and local) effects the everyday life and every human being lives in each and every corner of the confined nation-states.

Learning to Play with the Rules

With social and ecological variation caused by climate change, cities and city residents will need to develop flexibility at the core of their structures and intheir relationships to them. Cities’ planning codes, design norms and their residents’ food and comfort habits are established upon Holocenic stability thathas been upended by the Anthropocene. So, in addition to the routine socialization that children must undertake to learn to live together in their established settings, they must now learn to embrace flexible relations to these settings and their habits. European life is now transforming with changes driven by climate change and recent refugee waves, and Germany responded to the 2015 wave by generously funding cultural integration projects with loosely defined goals. When properly situated, arts-based learning can provide a playful way for children, refugee or not, to flexibly integrate and relate to each other and to changes in cultural and architectural infrastructure towards heterogeneous conviviality. This practice-based paper describes an artistic researcher’s development of an arts-based situation, the Bauspielplatz Kunst Kammer (BKK) museum, intended for such learning. It discusses initial insights into the practice of how a situated institution can ground such learning and looks towards wider questions such a project inspires.

Problematic Content in Spanish Language Comments in YouTube Videos about Venezuelan Refugees and Migrants

On YouTube, we found extensive content relating to the recent Venezuelan refugee movement that mostly affects neighboring countries like Peru and Ecuador. While there are several studies on general hate speech on social media, only a few have focused on the online discussion of the Venezuelan migration crisis representing the Latin American perspective. Here, we analyzed via manual coding and computational text analysis 235,251 comments from 200 YouTube videos (selected according to theoretical criteria) in the Spanish language on the Venezuelan refugee crisis. In our sample, we found a high number of problematic comments in videos on Venezuelan refugees and migrants, of which 32% were offensive comments and 20% were hateful comments. The most common linguistic patterns revealed references to xenophobic, racist, and sexist content, and showed that offensive content and hate speech are not easy to separate. Only a small amount of around 8% of highly active users is responsible for about 40% of the problematic content and these users actively comment on multiple videos, indicating a network structure in our sample. Our results enlighten a much-neglected topic in the discussion about Venezuelan refugees and migrants on YouTube and contribute to an enhanced understanding of online hate speech from a Latin American perspective for better and early detection.

Impacts of political and social contexts on refugees’ experiences: A comparison between Southeast Asian refugees arriving in France in the 70’s and recent refugee migration

ABSTRACT The influx of refugees into France since 2015 has been framed as a crisis and marked by a restrictive turn in arrival and asylum policies. By comparison, in the 1970s Southeast Asian refugees fleeing from communist regimes were welcomed warmly in the country. This article compares two in-depth case studies of refugees, analysed using the biographical policy evaluation method, to retrace how the policies and collective representations of these two different historical moments affect the experiences of refugees over time. It shows that policies play a significant role in shaping refugees’ experiences in respect of their access to papers, housing, language courses and work, thus impacting, but not determining, their possibilities of reconstructing life in exile. The comparison also raises the question of how personal experiences of arrival, viewed as a rejection or a welcome, influence refugees’ life courses.

Corporate social responsibility in emerging social issues: (non)institutionalized practices in response to the global refugee crisis

PurposeCSR reporting is an institutionalized practice. However, institutionalization has been primarily examined in the context of limited social issues and largely restricted to the presence of CSR communication. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a framework to explore how institutional and organizational factors shape CSR programming in response to an emerging social issue: the global refugee crisis.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports from Global 500 Fortune corporations between 2012 and 2017. This study uses content coding and inferential analysis to examine how industry type, headquarters location, and partnership resources are related to programming in the refugee relief efforts.FindingsThe results reveal distinctive patterns from the technology sector and European corporations, with no clear patterns identified among other corporations. The findings indicate that although CSR is an institutionalized practice, CSR program reporting offers fewer insights as to how institutionalization occurs.Research limitations/implicationsResults suggest a preliminary framework for understanding how CSR programming becomes institutionalized and provide implications for how corporations may address emerging social issues.Originality/valueThis study applies an institutional, communicative approach to the context of the recent global refugee crisis, which contributes to theory development through the examination of an emerging social issue. It also extends prior research on the institutionalization of CSR by focusing on programming in response to an emerging social issue over time and suggests the limits of prior claims of institutionalized practices.