Refugee Identity Research Articles

Predictors of symptom change in the mental health of refugees and asylum seekers (MEHIRA) study examining the effects of a stepped and collaborative care model – A multicentered rater-blinded randomized controlled trial

BackgroundPredictors of symptom improvement are an essential starting point for tailoring psychological treatments to each individual and, in turn, increasing treatment efficacy overall. However, such research regarding refugees/asylum seekers from Arabic-/Farsi-speaking countries is lacking. The current study aimed to characterize predictors for symptom improvement in the Mental Health in Refugees and Asylum Seekers (MEHIRA) study, one of the most extensive multicentered controlled trials on a nationwide stepped and collaborative care model compared to routine German mental health care. MethodsVariables characterizing symptom change were chosen using backward elimination and inserted into logistic regression models for two depression endpoints, namely the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and the Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS). ResultsSix variables were found to be at least marginally significantly associated with symptom decrease in both outcomes: baseline depressive symptom load, comorbid post-traumatic stress disorder, identifying as a refugee, years of schooling, physical health, and post-migration social status difference. Additionally, psychological health and resilience were marginally significant for one of the models. LimitationsSome predictor constructs - such as social support - were not adequately measured to replicate previous findings. Additionally, the study was underpowered for symptom change prediction of individual treatments beyond the group intervention. ConclusionsThese outcomes indicate that trauma-related elements as well as content on refugee identity and post-migration social status changes should be included in depression interventions for refugees. Further, recommendations for future outcome prediction studies are made.

Examining the Refugee Identity and the Ethics of Hospitality in Richard Powers’ Generosity (2009)

ABSTRACT Richard Powers’ (2009) Generosity delves into the pursuit of the elusive “happiness gene” and its associated bioethical dilemmas. The narrative centres on Thassadit, an Algerian refugee in the USA, whose profound happiness contrasts with her traumatic past in post-colonial Algeria. This analysis argues that Thassa is not recognized as an individual but is instead defined by preconceived notions of refugee identity and becomes an object of scrutiny for scientists and media grappling with the paradox of post-colonial trauma and happiness. Employing a critical post-colonial lens, the study explores the portrayal of the “stranger” and associated stereotypes, the roles of the colonial and scientific gazes, and finally, the construction of the refugee identity in relation to Derrida’s ethics of hospitality. It examines identity construction through narratives of labelling, fixity, and belonging, exposing the intertwined neocolonial gaze, biased scientific discourse, and media sensationalism as oppressive forces that mutually reinforce orientalist and objectifying practices.

Refugee Identity of women in novel with military campside town

Refugee Identity of women in novel with military campside town

Finding the archival traces of “misery trains”: Early accounts of train transport before the Holocaust

This article analyses a collection of eyewitness accounts by survivors of Nazi persecution gathered in the mid-1950s by the Wiener Library in London, narratives that were elicited about lived experiences of railway transport and trauma, as well as the implication of railway personnel and structures in resistance activities. The accounts provide an opportunity to interrogate early postwar narratives that reveal emerging constructions of refugee identity, agency, and survival through key memories deemed particularly “valuable” to the Library, an institution created by Jewish refugees who fled Nazi persecution. Through a case study approach framed by Ketelaar's distinction between archivalisation and archivisation, this paper argues that narratives of trauma, displacement and resistance associated with deportation by train were of special interest to Library staff already in the 1950s. This is striking due to a lack of scholarly focus on these themes until decades later. The recent publication of the collection as a digital resource has the potential to further expand and recontextualise “tacit narratives” of transport embedded in the collection.

An integrated conceptual model for enhancing refugee education

AbstractThis paper introduces a unified conceptual framework for understanding refugee identity construction within educational contexts, drawing on theories of social justice (Fraser, 2008), affective relations (Lynch, 2012), the resumption of ordinary life (Kohli, 2011) and ecological systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1977). Addressing a gap in the existing scholarship, the model emphasises the importance of affective relations in shaping refugee identities in education alongside other factors. The study examines the macro constructs of redistribution, recognition, representation and relational affect, highlighting their impact on refugee children's educational experiences. Further, it considers the micro constructs of safety, sense of belonging and success in integration and attainment in educational environments. The constructs are examined across various levels of Bronfenbrenner's ecological system, demonstrating the complexity of refugees’ needs. This model aims to facilitate a holistic, justice‐oriented approach to refugee education, which is crucial given the rise in global displacement. The study has significant implications for refugee education research and policymaking, potentially informing targeted interventions and programmes that foster academic success, overall well‐being, and practice in refugee education.

Two researchers’ journeys towards healing and safety doing community-engaged scholarship with immigrant and refugee populations

ABSTRACT In conducting qualitative research, scholars often grapple with positionality. Researcher positionality refers to how various social identities (i.e. gender, race, class, ethnicity, ability, geographical location) influence research methods. It examines the impact of researchers’ social identities on their understanding of the research design, question, context, process, and participants . Scholars of colour who research their own communities have added complexity in this research process, including having to address the question of being an insider-outsider. This duality sometimes has an emotional toll. Two community-centred researchers asked What is the emotional labor that goes into conducting research with our own communities? Gerardo Mancilla immigrated to the United States when he was seven years old. He was undocumented and grew up in the U.S. with this identity for more than 20 years. Phitsamay Uy came to the United States as a child refugee at the age of six. Her refugee identity influenced her understanding of U.S. schools. In this paper, the two scholars of colour share their methodology and experiences of becoming academics who study their own communities. They discuss commonalities in their shared stories: Being Accidental Academics, Utilising a Relational Approach, Developing Reciprocity with Our Communities, and Experiencing Radical Healing.

Engendering Care in the Politics of the East Bengali Refugee Identity: A Reading of Bengal Partition Narratives Through the Lens of Ecological and Culinary Citizenship

The ‘politics of care’ has become an essential dialectical discourse within the field of ecofeminism with the intervention of theorist Sherilyn Macgregor. The engendering of care has politicized the figure and the status of the woman within and beyond the domestic space. Further, this discourse has gone beyond the cultural domain of domesticity to realign itself with the understanding of care work in the light of ecological citizenship. In the light of this my paper proposes to revisit South Asian partition historiography to look at the figure of the refugee. I wish to look at the Bengal Partition of 1947 and discern how the East Bengali refugee maneuvers their identity vis-à-vis their claim of ecological and culinary citizenship. Sunanda Sikdar’s novel A Life Long Ago, translated by Anchita Ghatak for Penguin and the recipient of the Ananda Puraskar 2010 award, is a memoir that reproduces the anxieties that are part of the division of Bengal and the subsequent interruption, creation, preservation of the notion of citizenship and the instituting and the drawing of the national border that separates India from Bangladesh, erstwhile East Pakistan. Meanwhile, the anthology edited by Bashabi Fraser, Bengal Partition Stories: An Unclosed Chapter, contains multiple stories that problematize the notion of national borders specifically by challenging these political lines vis-à-vis the culinary code. Through selective stories from the anthology mentioned and Sikdar’s memoir, the paper seeks to address the issue of citizenship and national borders through the realm of the kitchen, food consumption and domesticity and how the gastronomic experience is informed by the ecofeminist rhetoric of the ‘politics of care’. I would also look at Bhaswati Gosh’s debut novel Victory Colony 1950, and Madhushree Ghosh’s culinary memoir Khabaar: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory, and Family, which threaten and dismantle the gender binaries embedded within the discourse of care politics.

Dimensions of refugee identity in Dina Nayeri’s Refuge

The article concentrates on Dina Nayeri’s novel “Refuge”. The focus of this article is on the processes of formation of refugee’s identity of the main character, Niloo. It has been argued that the construction of her agency is based on the continual dialogue between her and her father as well as between her and the exiled Iranians in Amsterdam. The main character’s initial reluctance to support connections with her father and, in a broader sense, with her native country is transformed during the novel’s diegesis. In the end, Niloo admits that she needs to embrace her Iranian self and establish a dialogue with her past. The second part of the article deals with the notion of the refugee community and the idea that exiled collective identity is constructed on the primal injury of oppression and exclusion. Niloo’s meetings with her people stimulate her to reconsider that part of herself she was trying to suppress. Moreover, the reconciliation with her former neglected self becomes possible after meeting the Iranian immigrants. The diegetic narrator tries to make sense of her life and construct her agency through negotiations with others. It is concluded that the refugee’s past experience cannot be forgotten or refused during the formation of an exiled identity. Instead, it must be integrated and acknowledged by a forced migrant.

A Requirement of Shame: On the Evolution of the Protection of LGB Refugees

Abstract The particular difficulties that lesbian, gay, and bisexual refugees face when applying for asylum are in constant flux. As one issue is removed, another takes its place. This article provides a historical overview of these developments and shows how attempts to include lesbian, gay, and bisexual people and their experiences have transformed shame into an implicit legal requirement in certain countries, in particular, Sweden and the Netherlands. While the implementation of the Difference, Stigma, Shame, and Harm (DSSH) model aimed to promote open-ended conversations about the fluidity of sexual orientation, in the contexts examined in this study, it has arguably led to a set of legal requirements that emphasize suffering and internalized homophobia. Further, the article argues that, as developments in refugee law have centred the procedural focus on the credibility of the applicant and have formulated sexual orientation as a fixed identity, this identity has become a decisive requirement in the bureaucracy of border control. In addition, the understanding of this lesbian, gay, or bisexual refugee identity has, in turn, been influenced by colonial perceptions of homophobia and sexuality.

Language ideologies and stancetaking in refugee identity negotiations: exploring multilingual refugees’ narratives of language use in Turkey

ABSTRACT This study investigates the identity negotiations and language ideologies among/around Syrian refugees residing in Turkey by concentrating on the case of two multilingual, Syrian graduate students who have been forcedly displaced from Syria and resettled in Turkey. The study particularly explores participants’ metalinguistic narratives of their language choices, multilingual repertoires and identity positionings. We argue that everyday talk about migration and migrants either within the migrant communities or in the majority society needs to be conceptualised with reference to a language ideological framework combined with a stancetaking approach. Our analysis reveals that the participants’ linguistic practices and identity positions are heavily invoked by/through their engagements with the Turkish language and community and influenced by the highly nationalist anti-refugee discourse prevailing in Turkey. The participants negotiate their self-identity with respect to and in sharp contrast with widely- circulating negative discourses of refugee representations. Language choice and code-switching appear as major discursive and interactional strategies indexing stancetaking in the construction of narratives within the interview context.

글로벌 시대의 서발턴: 제3세계 여성난민들

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid and How I Became a North Korean by Krys Lee are refugee novels set in different regions and cultures; however, they both expose the subaltern status of refugee women from the Third World. The protagonists of both works are two refugee women, Nadia and Jangmi, who, as women, are hopeful for sexual liberation and the liberation of the First World. However, while they are only viewed as vulnerable subjects and victims of local patriarchy, their other identity as refugees from the Third World lacks agency and suffers from alienation when they are subjected to prejudices against refugees. In other words, the new society is an ambivalent space for them that, on the one hand, affords them as women to enjoy greater sexual liberation and freedom than the society they came from. On the other hand, as refugees from Third World countries, however, they are expected to remain mute in the face of discrimination, prejudiced language, and hostile looks. To avoid experiencing worst-case scenarios such as deportation, their best option is to express inexhaustible gratitude for what they have been given and strive to be flawlessly assimilated subjects, while ignoring their refugee identity, which suffers from injustice. Being exposed to the dilemma of having to live with their divided selves and being unable to speak about their problems, Nadia and Jangmi share the question Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak raised about the Third World woman: Can the subaltern speak? This paper endeavors to contextualize the refugee experiences of Nadia and Jangmi in relation to Spivak’s question about the Third World woman. The paper will then contend that refugee women from the Third World are invisible subalterns as the symbol of the world’s inequality which still exists in the so-called more equally globalized world.

“Refugees in the Amphitheatre”: An Intercultural Action Research on Co-Educating Student Teachers and Peer Refugees

The contribution of action research to teacher education as well as to refugee education has been highlighted in the international literature. Through action research, teachers can link educational theories with everyday school practices. In addition, the participation of refugees in action research, especially in cooperation with members of the dominant ethnic and cultural group, could play a significant role in their empowerment and social inclusion. This article describes the content and the results of an action research, which took place in the context of an academic course in a Greek University. The aim of the action research was the interaction between students and peer refugees and, through it, the development of intercultural competence and empathy. The action research developed in three cycles, featuring the students and refugees’ participation in intercultural routes–walks. The action research findings showed that the participation in the abovementioned walks supported the intercultural communication and interaction among the group members, as well as the reflection on refugee identity stereotypes.

Violence by any other name: constructing immigration crises, the threat of the sick refugee and rationalising immigration detention through moral panic

This article is concerned with the employment of pathologising discourses of mental health and trauma by the mainstream media as they pertain to the treatment of migrants in detention in Canada. Using critical discourse analysis, this research contrasts mainstream media coverage of four major publications on immigration detention. It explores the media’s role in the (re)creation of refugee discourse, and as a purveyor of racial ideology, which problematises people of colour and demands state intervention in the form of mental health aid. The resulting discourse pathologises the refugee identity and simultaneously obscures the socio-political conditions and violence that necessitates their departure from their home countries. As refugee discourse is infused with biomedical understandings of mental health, it also legitimises the nation state’s practice of coercive social control for these populations through detention.

Well-Founded Fear of Algorithms or Algorithms of Well-Founded Fear? Hybrid Intelligence in Automated Asylum Seeker Interviews

Abstract Growing numbers of asylum seekers across Europe have created heightened pressure on governments to employ technologies to assist immigration systems in meeting humanitarian standards of international law. This article analyses the potential of hybrid intelligence (HI)—a machine learning (ML) utility supervised by and supervising human intelligence—for assisting both asylum seekers and immigration officers in performing fair and just assessments, while addressing theoretical underpinnings of what hybridity entails from the perspective of stakeholders and humanitarian systems. While aspects of ML demonstrate promise in reducing bias in immigration decisions, such technology itself suffers from various inherent biases. In addition, technological mediation poses several unforeseen, unintended, and subtle threats to humanitarian missions. By analysing ML algorithms currently employed in refugee status determination pilot programs and immigration control, this article synthesizes universal complications of using assistive technology in Refugee Status Determinations, with special focus on evaluating resultant theoretical refugee identity reconfigurations. Conceptually, this article expands on the theoretical model of what has been termed ‘ID entity’ by biometrics researchers and ethnographers by analysing potential latent consequences from technological mediation in asylum cases, while addressing use cases such as German and Canadian immigration services’ pilot programs, along with automated pilot border screening projects such as Iborderctrl, among others. In addition, several hypothetical scenarios are presented to concretize and further theoretical inquiry of using HI in asylum seeker interviews, with special focus on the requisite criterion of possessing a well-founded fear of persecution.

Between Remembering and Confession: A Refugee Narrative in Dina Nayeri’sRefuge

AbstractThis article focuses on the retrospective narrative in the Iranian American novelist Dina Nayeri’sRefuge(2017). We argue that the novel’s interpretations of acts of remembering, which presuppose confession and re-evaluation, define the ways of constructing the refugee identity of the main character, Niloo. Within the discourse of retrospection, the self appears in the mode of reflection over past events, and thanks to temporal distance, the self can verbalize changes in perception of the past self. Thus, retrospection becomes a psychological and narrative endeavor during which identity is created through the experience of re-evaluation. The interaction between then and now as well as their final convergence in the end of the novel result in the continuity of experience and coherence of identity. Niloo’s ontology of becoming is possible through the re-living of the past, its interpretation, and its integration into the present. In other words, the possibility of reflection over experience is the very condition for her becoming. The main character concentrates on her meetings with her father in different cities (Oklahoma City, London, Madrid, and Istanbul) and her re-evaluation of her emotional experience during those meetings. These moments of re-evaluation explicate the dynamics of her identity construction, which shifts from a rejection of her past to an embrace of it.

Syrians’ experiences of waiting and temporality in Turkey: Gendered reconceptualisations of time, space and refugee identity

In recent years, the number of refugees has increased considerably throughout the world, and the difficulties they experience have become more visible in political and social science research. Refugees wait for uncertain amounts of time to cross borders, to obtain legal status and papers, and to establish their lives in a new country, where they try to find suitable housing and jobs, and to benefit from health care and educational services. This article explores how Syrian refugees in Turkey reconceptualise time and place when they narrate these periods of waiting as a way of managing its disadvantageous aspects. It argues that they acquire agency through creating narratives of waiting in their own terms, which also help them to redefine their refugee identities, subjectivities and senses of belonging. It suggests that Syrians in Turkey attribute new gendered and embodied meanings to temporality and spatiality in order to cope with their past traumas and the disempowering effects of waiting. Through their narratives, they aim to gain a sense of control over time in cognitive and emotional terms, maintaining their hope to establish new lives despite structural inadequacies and discrimination.

Forced Migration and the Plight of the Chakma Refugees in Arunachal Pradesh: ‘Citizenship’ as a Bone of Contention

Abstract The present paper explores the persistent and contentious issue of citizenship of the Chakma community in Arunachal Pradesh. The Chakmas were originally uprooted from the Chittagong Hill Tracts of former East Pakistan and were resettled in Arunachal Pradesh, formerly known as the North East Frontier Agency (nefa). The forced migration of the Chakma community has implications at different levels and raises critical questions about exclusion, belongingness, citizenship and the various rights which comes with it. The article explores the relationship between refugee identity and citizenship rights to see how this relationship is mediated through denial or extension of state entitlements. Examining the nature of citizenship within this context may help to further uncover how the concept of citizenship is both understood and used today.

Borders, Belonging, and Refugee Memory since the Greco-Turkish War and Population Exchange

What cultural, historical, institutional, and legal paradigms have the Greco- Turkish War and Population Exchange bequeathed to national and trans-national practices of border-making, border-crossing, and heritage-claiming over the past century, and how have subsequent experiences reshaped the original paradigm? We approach this question through four distinct categories: namely, the historical trajectory of refugee identity and its different political and cultural legacies in Greece and Turkey; the racialization of religion, which has helped to rewrite the boundaries of citizenship and belonging over the past century; the paradigm of peacekeeping by partition that the Population Exchange handed down to the international diplomatic norms of subsequent decades, along with the widespread regime of unseeing on which it depends; and, finally, memory practices that establish templates for remembering refugee pasts as well as making sense of contemporary crises.

Refugee Identity and Integration in Germany during the European “Migration Crisis”: Why Local Community Support Matters, and Why Policy Gets It Wrong

Although the 2015 “refugee crisis” dominated Europe’s policy-making agenda, little research was actually conducted with refugees. Using focus groups, interviews and photovoice, this study explores the identity and integration processes of 20 refugees, in two German towns, in 2017. While previous scholarship has rightly emphasized the importance of secure legal status for integration, this study highlights the critical role of community support by national citizens in fostering a greater sense of belonging and integration. The study calls into question new integration policies, like Germany’s, which absolve national citizens of any responsibility for integration.

Rescaling Resettlement: Local Welcoming Policies and the Shaping of Refugee Belonging

Abstract This paper brings together scholarship on race, place, and legal status to examine how local context mediates the outcomes of federal refugee resettlement policy. Over the past several decades, local actors across the United States have developed initiatives to “welcome refugees” that interact with and extend beyond the formal federal program to shape refugee incorporation. Drawing on a comparative study of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Atlanta, Georgia, I show that these initiatives construct different aspects of refugee identity as socially valuable. Refugees learn about these valuations as they seek access to resources and recognition, in turn amplifying desirable aspects of their identity to claim belonging and to distance themselves from racialized and stigmatized others. In Pittsburgh, refugees emphasize their ethnic identity and membership to ethnic groups, while refugees in Atlanta claim belonging by emphasizing their legal and humanitarian status as refugees. This paper contributes to scholarly understandings of refugee resettlement as a racialized process mediated by the institutional and socio-cultural dynamics of local context. Moreover, this paper extends calls to rethink the immigrant/refugee distinction by revealing the variable salience of the refugee status across subnational space.