Promoting psychosocial well-being in unaccompanied asylum seeking young people in the United Kingdom

Unaccompanied minors looking for asylum in industrialized nations come with a host of psychosocial needs associated with separation and settlement. They are also resourceful, and willing to make the best of themselves in their new environments. This paper reviews literature concerning vulnerability and resilience that has emerged from refugee related studies, and those from social work with children looked after by local authorities. In combining these two areas of enquiry, the paper tests the messages they contain in reference to the work of a young asylum seekers project run in the United Kingdom. It confirms the view that unaccompanied minors are children first and foremost, exhibiting understandable vulnerabilities associated with separation and trauma, as well as being carriers of capacities that can help them to recover and settle after arrival. In this paper, it is proposed that promoting psychosocial well‐being for unaccompanied minors involves entering the young people's inner and outer worlds with therapeutic care, to aid the processes of self‐recovery. It also involves finding ways to regenerate a lost sense of belonging and of being in charge of their lives. Examples from the project's work with the young people are used to illustrate the complexity of helping them find a sense of home within their new territories.     

The Sound Of Silence: Listening to What Unaccompanied Asylum-seeking Children Say and Do Not Say

Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are noted at times tobe silent or circumspect about their origins and circumstanceswhen faced with authority figures, including social workers.Using some key ideas from ethnography and narrative therapy,this article examines existing literature on silence in thelives of unaccompanied minors, and on how the choices they makeabout talking and not talking can hinder or facilitate resettlement.It then describes a small research study within which interviewswere undertaken with local authority social workers to elicittheir responses to unaccompanied minors in such circumstances.These revealed that practitioners understood the children’ssilence in varied ways, and that they could be practically helpful,therapeutically minded and reliable companions, accompanyingthe young people towards resettlement, with or without knowingthe detailed ‘truth’ about their past     

The comfort of strangers: social work practice with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people in the UK

Unaccompanied children and young people seeking sanctuary as political refugees are increasingly visible within many industrialized nations, where several studies confirm their vulnerability and needs. These studies also highlight what appears to be the poor quality of social work services and practices that these minors encounter. This paper examines some of the details contained in such reports of deficiency and seeks to place them within a more optimistic appraisal of social work practice. Based on a small research study, it suggests that resettlement for unaccompanied minors is complex and contains different types of loss as well as gain. It also asserts that practice by some social workers shows they have a grasp of this complexity as they offer practical assistance, therapeutic care and companionship to the young people to help them resettle in new environments.     

“If they misbehaved,we took a stick to discipline them”: Refugee mothers' struggles raising children in the United States

Although there are compelling examples of stress put upon refugee families, there is little systematic attention placed upon how the refugee women themselves view child‐rearing. In this exploratory research, refugee women's narratives concerning their understanding and perceptions of child‐rearing in the United States are studied. Seventeen refugee women raising children living in the Greater Portland region in Maine were interviewed. While resettling in the United States, the participants shared being overburdened by the loss of social structures that supported their parenting beliefs and strategies back home. They perpetually encounter cultural conflicts in the United States that result in a continuous process of contradictory interpretations and negotiations while rearing and disciplining children. Recommendations are provided for service providers working with this population. Professionals have to be cognizant of the hierarchical decision‐making and retributive strategies used by refugee families when disciplining children. Tools, that is, explaining, teaching, and rewarding children for coping with parenting challenges without resorting to punitive discipline methods can be introduced to refugee families. Professionals need to focus on providing refugee families with basic needs and addressing social and emotional challenges so that they can better integrate with the new communities as they rebuild their lives.     

Migration and foreign trade: Further results

In this note, we use the production-theory approach to immigration in an open-economy setting to investigate the role of nonresident workers in Swiss aggregate production. Unlike earlier work in this area, exports are explicitly taken into account. Indeed, a statistical test for global separability between inputs and outputs reveals that exports and products intended for domestic use cannot be aggregated. Our results show that immigration tends to stimulate imports and to shift the output mix towards nontraded goods, thereby impacting negatively on the trade account. Received: 24 March 1999/Accepted: 4 January 2001     

Are government deficits the prime cause of inflation?

We argue in this article that if government bonds are counted as part of private wealth, government budget deficits are a major cause of inflation, and the method chosen to finance the deficits (e.g., borrowing or monetary expansion) is of secondary importance. To illustrate this point we use a simple portfolio model that is then incorporated into a model of the Australian economy. The full model is specified in continuous time, and it is estimated by the full information maximum likelihood method (FIML) it is then used to simulate a number of fiscal shocks.     

Unpacking internalized racism: teachers of color striving for racially just classrooms

Within racial inequitable educational conditions, students of color in US schools are susceptible to internalizing racism. If these students go on to be teachers, the consequences can be particularly detrimental if internalized racism influences their teaching. Framed in Critical Race Theory, this article investigates the process pre-service teachers of color took in unpacking their internalized racism as they strive for racially just classrooms. In-depth interviews and focus groups were conducted with black (four) Latina (four) and Asian American (four) women enrolled in a social justice-oriented urban teacher education program in California. Data revealed that participants in this study: (1) had experienced racism and internalized racism in their K-12 education; (2) had done self-work prior to enrolling in their teacher education program to begin the process of unpacking internalized racism; and (3) felt that critical dialogues about internalized racism within teacher preparation was essential to develop pedagogy that challenges racial inequality. This study adds to the field by taking a cross-racial approach to understanding the struggles of teachers of color with internalized racism in their own lives. It additionally outlines an important process many teachers of color go through to develop racially just classrooms.