Being in limbo or learning to belong? – Telling the stories of asylum seekers in a mill town (original) (raw)
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Landing in a rural village: home and belonging from the perspectives of unaccompanied young refugees
Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 2015
This article explores how unaccompanied young refugees living in a rural village in Sweden make sense of home and belonging. From a poststructuralist approach, belonging and home are understood as ongoing processes that are negotiated with others, and via processes of othering and racialisation. This article demonstrates that the form of housing available, together with experiences of social exclusion in the village, may contribute to othering and thus challenge their feelings of home and belonging. However, they do construct some kinds of belonging and feelings of home based on social relationships and places that they have access to.
Daily Life Experiences of Asylum Seekers in the Context of Disaffiliation and Social Contacts 1
River Flowing North Migration Generating Geographies and International Irregular Migrations, 2020
In this chapter within the framework of discussions on disaffiliation, it is attempted to shed light on the asylum seekers’ contact and interaction with the local people in the everyday lives and on the power relations reproduced during these everyday life experiences.In short, as the product of state-centric understanding, the notions of asylumseeker and refugee normalize the state. In this context, citizenship is presented as the only way for existence in a geographically bound nation-state which deepens the distinction of “we” and “the other,” “normal” and “abnormal,” namely “citizen” and “non-citizen” in the society. In this way, states can reproduce the dominant nation-state ideology by accepting the individual either as a citizen or as an “abnormal” in need of protection. Therefore, official refugee definitions and asylum practices actually aim to prevent the threat posed by non-citizen foreign individuals against the homogeneity of member citizens. Within this theoretical framework, it can be inferred from the narratives of asylum seekers coming from Iran, Afghanistan and sub-Saharan African countries and waiting in Eskişehir to be settled in third countries, that the distinction of being citizen/ foreigner is decisive in the participants’ everyday life experiences, in their social conditions and in their contacts with local people. This decisiveness indicates a sort of power relation based on state affiliation that is built upon citizenship In general, the main areas that the participants problematize in times of interaction with the locals are being subject to questions posed by strangers, the way they perceive the questionings and the exclusionist reactions that the participants say they face during these contacts. Even though these moments of individual experiences of social exclusion are referred to as exceptional cases by some of the participants, it can be suggested that these moments constitute a significant place in the worlds of meaning of the participants and also influential in the lack of sense of belonging to the society they are currently living in. Another important point that emerges in the narratives of the participants is the continuous state of liminality as reflected in their discourses. Participants have expressed their state of liminality in various forms during the interviews such as being in-between the future and the past, trauma and nostalgia, uncertainty and hope, and to leave and to stay. The way the participants narrate the past by praising what they have left behind followed by the narratives of experiences of oppression and threat, the way they complain about uncertainty right after they share their plans for the future can be evaluated as a manifestation of liminality.
2012
The imaginary of globalization is obsessed with mobility and wandering and in the global space, people cross borders routinely. At the same time, the ones who are actually forced into transit by travelling outside law often ignite discomfort, if not despise, among the passportapproved 'global' citizens. Through ethnographic qualitative fieldwork among a group of young refugees in and around Copenhagen, I explore how displacement and belonging are reflected upon and expressed among these actors. As non-citizens and as youth, the refugees are confined to a doubled liminal zone which intrigues my study: If we build our knowledge and understanding of the world from our place in it, how is this experienced when one does not have a juridical right to belong to the place one inhabits, as in the case of the refugee? I guide my research focus on how these young refugees reflect upon and express a sense of belonging, while negotiating with the boundaries that confine their daily living in the Danish asylum system, through the concepts of belonging, displacement, boundaries and nationormativity, a term I introduce to address how belonging is framed as a normative rationality in the modern nation-state bound to national territory and citizenship. My empirical findings show that activity, freedom as well as social and lingual connection with their Danish surroundings are central factors for my informants' ability to belong to a place and 'localize' in Denmark. While belonging to their Danish setting is a repeated will and wish for my informants, their confinement within the asylum system as well as their continuous forced displacement around the country severely disrupts this process. Reflecting upon the refugee's liminal position as a form of abnormality produced by the nation-state that defines us as citizens before human beings, I use the concept of natio-normativity to understand how refugees' movement does not transcend borders, but rather is chained within them. Thereby, I take the case of young refugees in the natio-normative landscape of Denmark to argue how movement in a globalized era simultaneously enforces and challenges national boundaries. This project has been made possible first and foremost because Red Cross Denmark has welcomed me into their network of asylum work. In this connection, I want to thank educational leader at Red Cross' HCØ-school Birgitte Steno, in particular, for kindly inviting me to participate in the education and borrow the school's facilities. I owe teacher at the HCØ-school Lene Kastrup special and warm thanks for introducing me to some very inspiring young people, without whom this project could not have been conducted, and for her encouraging approach to my project. I thank Danish Red Cross Youth for letting me participate in their volunteer youth club. Besides, I want to thank the Trampoline House and all the people involved in their network for providing a much needed and extremely uplifting platform for refugees. I am grateful to Jörgen Hellman from School of Global Studies at University of Gothenburg for indispensable and instructive academic counseling on this thesis. Lastly and most importantly, I thank the participants in this project and their families for inviting me into their homes and lives and sharing their stories with me.
Geographica Helvetica
This article addresses unaccompanied minor asylum seekers' (UAMs) educational experiences in Switzerland. Drawing on ethnographic research we explore what it means for UAMs to get an education and how having access or not having access to particular forms and spaces of education plays a part in the process of their subject formations. We get insights into such processes in diverse spaces of education and in phases of transition between them. We point out how educational arrangements can produce feelings of belonging and non-belonging and highlight that these feelings are entangled with life experiences and the responsibilities of UAMs in their daily lives in Switzerland. We argue that although at first glance the category <q>unaccompanied minor asylum seeker</q> seems to dominate and determine the formation of a possible educational subject and feelings of belonging for UAMs, the subject formation and feelings of belonging in the highly regulated field of UAMs' e...
Creating a bridge: An asylum seeker’s ideas for social inclusion
Journal of Occupational Science
Background: Asylum seekers often experience social exclusion, beyond work and productivity. For this group, social inclusion is needed in order to participate in their new society and regain control over daily life and occupations, as well as prevent health problems. Social inclusion has been discussed within occupational science, and a collaborative approach such as the Participatory Occupational Justice Framework recommended to be followed. However, there is still a lack of understanding of the asylum seekers' perspective on social inclusion, which this article begins to address through the lived experience of one participant. Method: Framed as a phenomenological study, data were collected through interview and articles written by the asylum-seeking participant. The data were analysed using Giorgi's method as modified by Malterud (2017). Results: The participant's ideas revolved around the components of Bogeas and colleague's (2017) description of social inclusion and revealed the problems that he experienced daily in the asylum centre. His suggestions for change and social inclusion included the need for asylum seekers to take part in the daily work in the centre, establishing channels of information, and a residents' council to support collaboration with the local population. The participant stressed that social inclusion should be a two-way process, with both sides taking responsibility for working with the challenges. Conclusion: Although there are objective conditions that might limit social inclusion, a collaborative and participatory approach offers the opportunity for social inclusion and participation in occupation. Employing such an approach would facilitate the health, well-being, and inclusion of asylum seekers; and promote occupational justice for an otherwise marginalised population.
Migration Experiences and Narrative Identities.pdf
Critical Hermeneutics, 2018
This paper addresses the ethical challenge of hosting the stranger that is implicit in the work of biographical research with migrant popula-tions. It analyses the tasks faced by this dialogical and narrative re-search that is put forward both in social sciences and the Humanities. Drawing from ethnographic work conducted among different groups, the paper presents the method of biographical workshops, in which voluntary participants bring or produce testimonies about their experi-ences as migrants. Another goal of the paper is to analyse the radical alterity at play in the narratives of migrants and refugees. Hospitality is here understood as an ethical and civic skill that human beings can develop as a response to the hostility characterizing the general ten-dency of migration policies for exclusion and surveillance. The Ric-oeurian concept of narrative identity is used to examine the plasticity of alterity in the methodological context of biographical research among migrants and refugees.
A Place Called Home: The Meaning(s) of Popular Education for Newly Arrived Refugees
Studies in Continuing Education, 2020
In this article, we direct our focus on some of the recent activities undertaken by popular education institutions in Sweden in relation to the refugee challenge in 2015. The aim is to analyse how these popular education activities are shaped as specific communities of practice, through the ways they are described by those who organised these, and what meaning newly arrived refugees create regarding their participation in these practices. Drawing on a socio-cultural understanding of participation and learning, we analyse interviews with newly arrived refugees, principals, managers, teachers and study circle leaders. Our analysis illustrates how popular education emerge as specific communities of practice different compared to the regular education system; how these practices are shaped as practices of stability and learning; and how newly arrived refugees construe these practices as important in their current engagement across a range of communities in the role as newcomers.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2018
Refugees often find themselves in a protracted situation of temporariness, as applications for asylum are processed, deportations negotiated and possible extensions of temporary protection status considered within the context of increasingly restrictive governmental policies across Europe. Through the case of a young Sri Lankan woman who arrived in Denmark as an ‘unaccompanied asylum-seeking minor’ and spent five years within the Danish asylum system, this article explores how she experienced moving through different legal categories and the institutional settings associated with them. I argue that, by engaging in social relations in the localities where she was situated, she developed places of belonging that could serve as ‘anchoring points’ providing some measure of stability in her otherwise unpredictable and precarious life situation. This case suggests that, even under conditions of protracted temporariness and legal uncertainty, individuals are able to create important anchoring points and develop communities of belonging that can serve them in a difficult process of belonging to Denmark.
Everyday Rituals of Migration: Constructing Relatedness and Agency among Young Refugees in Denmark
Ethnos, 2019
This article examines how young unaccompanied refugees living together within the confines of an asylum centre in Denmark construct different kinds of social relations and the meanings attached to these relationships. By investigating their routinised practices of everyday life as 'rituals', I analyse how young refugees negotiate different kinds of relatedness that enable them to exert agency. The ethnography points to the progression and expansion of different modes of relatedness to include friendships as well as consociate relationships, both with peers with whom they create a sense of community, and with adults who help them navigate the asylum landscape. The study underscores the deeply social nature of the young refugees' agency. I argue that in the intensity of living together they transform weak ties into strong ties, described through idioms of friendship and kinship, that express the profound meaning of these relationships in the context of the uncertainty they face.