Refugees demonstrate high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychological disorders. The recent increase in forcible displacement internationally necessitates the understanding ...of factors associated with refugee mental health. While pre-migration trauma is recognized as a key predictor of mental health outcomes in refugees and asylum seekers, research has increasingly focused on the psychological effects of post-migration stressors in the settlement environment. This article reviews the research evidence linking post-migration factors and mental health outcomes in refugees and asylum seekers. Findings indicate that socioeconomic, social, and interpersonal factors, as well as factors relating to the asylum process and immigration policy affect the psychological functioning of refugees. Limitations of the existing literature and future directions for research are discussed, along with implications for treatment and policy.
Wars, conflict, and persecution have forced more people to flee their homes and seek refuge and safety elsewhere than at any time since the end of World War II. As displaced people and other migrants ...increasingly move out of the conflict-ridden and less developed regions of their displacement and into relatively rich and stable regions of the world, the countries of destination are increasingly working to contain and even stem the migration flow before it reaches their shores. Perversely, countries that have developed generally rights-sensitive standards and procedures for assessing protection claims of asylum seekers within their jurisdictions have simultaneously established barriers that prevent migrants, including asylum seekers, from setting foot on their territories or otherwise triggering protection obligations. Consequently, those who would otherwise have been able to avail themselves of asylum procedures, social support, and decent reception conditions are often relegated to countries of first arrival or transit that have comparatively less capacity to ensure protection of human rights in accordance with international standards.
This article responds to dual calls for researching and theorising everyday social phenomena in postcolonial studies on the one hand, and serious engagement with the postcolonial within the ...discipline of sociology on the other. It focuses on the everyday lives of asylum seekers living on asylum seeker welfare support in the UK. Asylum seekers offer a good case study for exploring the postcolonial everyday because they live in poverty and consequently experience daily harms at the hands of the state, despite the UK fulfilling its obligations to them under human rights law. The article proposes a conceptual framework drawing together sociologies of the everyday, necropolitics and slow violence in tracing how hierarchical conceptions of human worth impact on the everyday.
This article addresses the question of how to theorize the relation between uncertainty and governmentality with regard to displacement and its consequences. It explores the experiences of asylum ...seekers in Turkey and the bureaucratic processes of refugee status determination, local dispersal, and third country resettlement, illustrating two main points throughout. First, 'protracted uncertainty', characterized by indefinite waiting, limited knowledge, and unpredictable legal status, is a central element of the experience of being an asylum seeker in Turkey. Second, this uncertainty serves to demobilize, contain, and criminalize asylum seekers through the production of protracted uncertainty, which in turn is normalized as a necessity of bureaucracy and/or security. The article invites readers to question the governmentalities of asylum and border regimes that not only discipline refugees' everyday movements but also determine the uncertainty of 'refugeeness'.
This article considers the relevance of the notion of ontological security – a sense of order, stability, routine and predictability to life – to contemporary conceptualisations of wellbeing. Drawing ...on in‐depth interviews with unaccompanied young people seeking asylum in the UK, it demonstrates how a positive sense of self and being able to visualise a place and role in the world into the future were integral to their notion of wellbeing, offering an important counter to the pervasive sense of living in limbo. The article argues that this fundamental need for a projected self is largely neglected in contemporary discussions on wellbeing. To date the idea of security as a determinant of wellbeing has been primarily constructed around the notion of protection from harm and the provision of the requirements for physical, emotional, economic and social wellbeing in the here and now. Findings from this research suggest that those providing services and support to young people who have experienced trauma need to consider how they might best nurture in them a sense of place, belonging and security into the future. Equally, they have implications for how we conceptualise and operationalise wellbeing more generally.
Nothilfelager sind Orte innerstaatlicher Grenzziehungen im europäischen Grenzregime. Sie schließen abgewiesene Geflüchtete ein und damit aus der Gesellschaft aus. Simone Marti analysiert in einer ...ethnografischen Studie die herrschende »politische Rationalität« von Migrationsbehörden bei der Etablierung und Legitimierung des Nothilfe-Regimes. Im Fokus stehen dabei die Nothilfelager, die sie als totale Institutionen beschreibt. Zentral sind zudem die Bewältigungsstrategien abgewiesener Geflüchteter gegen die Demütigungen und Entwürdigungen, die der institutionellen Logik der Nothilfelager innewohnen.
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