Trauma Events, Residence in Refugee Camps, and Educational Attainment as Predictors of Trauma Symptoms of Albanian Refugees in Macedonia

Adult members of 79 Albanian families who had fled from Kosovo to Macedonia during the immediate postwar period (June–August 1999) were interviewed. In conjunction with therapeutic intervention, the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ) and the General Health Questionnaire (GTQ) were administered. Trauma symptoms as measured by the HTQ and psychological distress as measured by the GHQ were highly correlated. The best predictor of psychological distress was severity of the trauma experienced. Refugees with high educational attainment had fewer trauma symptoms than those with lower educational attainment. Refugees who lived with host families in towns showed fewer trauma symptoms than those who lived in camps, but they were also more highly educated. The results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses suggested that educational attainment may mediate the effect of place of residence. Educational attainment may be an indicator of resourceful and effective coping strategies that ameliorate the effects of trauma.     

Origins and destinies: Immigration to the United States since World War II

Contemporary immigration to the United States and the formation of new ethnic groups are the complex and unintended social consequences of the expansion of the nation to its post-World War II position of global hegemony. Immigrant communities in the United States today are related to a history of American military, political, economic, and cultural involvement and intervention in the sending countries, especially in Asia and the Caribbean Basin, and to the linkages that are formed in the process that open a variety of legal and illegal migration pathways. The 19.8 million foreign-born persons counted in the 1990 U.S. census formed the largest immigrant population in the world, though in relative terms, only 7.9% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, a lower proportion than earlier in this century. Today's immigrants are extraordinarily diverse, a reflection of polar-opposite types of migrations embedded in very different historical and structural contexts. Also, unlike the expanding economy that absorbed earlier flows from Europe, since the 1970s new immigrants have entered an hourglass economy with reduced opportunities for social mobility, particularly among the less educated, and new waves of refugees have entered a welfare state with expanded opportunities for public assistance. This paper seeks to make sense of the new diversity. A typology of contemporary immigrants is presented, and their patterns of settlement, their distinctive social and economic characteristics compared to major native-born racial-ethnic groups, and their different modes of incorporation in—and consequences for—American society are considered.     

Identity,security and the nation: understanding the South Korean response to North Korean defectors

From the Cold War era of the ‘veteran heroes’ to the present view of escaped North Koreans in terms more akin to ‘refugees’ and sometimes even just ‘migrants’, perceptions of North Korean defectors in South Korea have changed as swiftly as the number and origins of Northerners entering the South have expanded. At the same time, government policy for these ethnic ‘brethren’ has evolved considerably, particularly as South Korea has seen fundamental shifts in its independent identity, with important repercussions for the way its citizens view themselves as a collective. This article explores some of the key influences behind changes to policy and perceptions regarding North Korean people in South Korea over the period from 1997 to 2012, by applying international relations theory on national identity and its role in policy formation and change through the need to secure different parameters within that identity.     

The Impact of Authoritarian Regimes on Families … and on Therapists

Repressive powers require not only obedience on the part of the oppressed but also denial of the oppressive nature of their submission. While authoritarian governments are the focus of this article, this applies to any oppressive relationship. There is a slippery slope from experiencing the imposed nature of the oppressive rules to adapting to them to denying both internal and external evidence of their existence. To prevent that declining process becomes an urgent priority when totalitarianism appears on the political and interpersonal horizon, as it is to help people coming out of tyranny – therapists included – to recover the words and the agency lost in their previous experiences.     

Trading numbers vs. rights? Accounting for liberal and restrictive dynamics in the evolution of asylum and refugee policies

ABSTRACT

The recent evolution of asylum and refugee policies in developed countries has been characterised by two apparently contradictory dynamics. Efforts to limit the number of asylum applicants have coincided with the strengthening of rights for asylum seekers and refugees inside existing protection systems. The ‘numbers vs. rights’ model seeks to explain such counter-veiling trends as a trade-off, as the result of attempts to manage costs within given budget constraints. The model suggests that high numbers of migrants will tend to go hand in hand with attempts to restrict their rights, while low numbers will typically be associated with more rights. This paper provides a critical analysis of the model when applied to asylum and refugee policies and examines its explanatory purchase through the analysis of longitudinal data on visa and asylum statistics. We argue that while the model provides an interesting framework through which to analyse executive decisions in this field, it underestimates the opportunities and constraints provided by the institutional context in which policy choices are made. We argue that ‘over-time’ variation in the influence of non-majoritarian institutions (in Europe, increasingly those operating at the EU level) provide a more compelling account of the dynamics of asylum and refugee policies over time than the political economy predictions of a ‘number vs. rights’ trade-off.     

The struggle of autonomy and authenticity: framing the savage refugee

James Hathaway has described refugee law as ‘fundamentally oriented to the promotion of autonomy’. Borrowed from the Kantian roots of liberal rights theory, this theme has come to the fore as refugee advocates decry increasingly draconian experiments in deflection and deterrence. But what exactly does it mean for a refugee to exercise autonomy? And how is it connected to that other popular refrain – that those who arrive irregularly by boat in Australia, despite high recognition rates, are not ‘genuine’ refugees? By examining the assumptions underpinning autonomy as a contemporary political value, and working within the theoretical construct that identifies a state's ‘recognition’ of autonomy with authenticity, this article explores tensions within both public discourse on refugees and the discipline of refugee law itself. It considers how and why the refugee exercising ‘authentic’ moral agency by boarding a boat is depicted not just as a threat, but as inherently irrational (and thus not ‘authentically’ autonomous) and less ‘genuine’ (and thus virtuous) than the ‘passive’ refugee languishing in a camp overseas, awaiting ‘our’ redemptive touch. Finally, it asks whether refugee law similarly suffers from the contradictory moral promise of human rights law which places autonomy at its heart while in practice requiring that humanity be split between victim, savage and redeemer.     

‘Becoming’ a possible threat: masculinity,culture and questioning among unaccompanied young men in Sweden

A debate on masculinity and immigration rose across Europe in 2015 after an incident with sexual harassments taking place in Cologne, Germany. The incident refuelled a debate positioning unaccompanied young men as a possible threat. This article is based on a research project where we during this time ethnographically followed 20 young men, having arrived in Sweden as ‘unaccompanied’ minors. The aim is to examine how the young men themselves talk about, reflect on and negotiate masculinity and gender during this period. The article concludes that masculinity cannot be approached as something stable easily being inherited or transferred from one’s origins. One difference for ‘unaccompanied’ young men is how conflicts or tensions emerging in relation to issues of gender and masculinity tend to be interpreted differently, and publicly, putting the young men in a ‘gendered situation of questioning’.     

Mothers' perception of their relationship with their children during displacement: A six month follow-up

The data presented in this work were gathered within the framework of the psychosocial assistance programme for families with children in one of the oldest displacement shelters in Croatia. Over a period of 6 months, the mothers (N = 58) assessed the psychosocial adjustment difficulties of their children and how displacement affected their relationship with their children (N = 109). The study revealed that as time passed in displacement, mothers talked significantly less with their children and were generally more nervous. The most common difficulties manifested by children were appetite disorders, night fears, sleeping disturbances in general, increased sweating, fear of separation from their mother, despondency and general fearfulness. Over time the reported incidence of stress-related reactions in children significantly decreased. However, after a year spent in displacement, 12% of the children still manifested five or more stress symptoms. Children with a higher incidence of disorders had mothers whose adaptation to displacement was poorer and whose relationship with their children was less favourable. Their families were more often separated. Particularly apparent was the importance of providing psychological assistance for mothers and children who are unable to cope with the stress of displacement.     

‘All Those Stories,All Those Stories’: How Do Bosnian Former Child Refugees Maintain Connections to Bosnia and Community Groups in Australia?

Abstract

This article draws on oral histories from my PhD research to explore how six teenagers, now adults, remember their arrivals in Australia as child refugees from Bosnia. It examines their relationships with other people from Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia, including community groups, and how these relationships have changed over time. In examining these narratives, issues of intergenerational differences are highlighted, with interviewees positioning their experiences in relation to both their parents and their second-generation peers. Finally, it explores how former refugees maintain their relationships with family and friends in Bosnia, suggesting that these transnational connections provide them with as much familiarity and comfort as they do feelings of alienation.     

Jewish power and powerlessness: Prague Zionists and the Paris Peace Conference

This article explores how perceptions of Jewish power shaped the negotiations between Czechoslovak leaders and Jewish minority representatives at the time of the Paris Peace Conference. In the aftermath of the First World War, Prague-based Zionists embarked on a mission to convince Czechoslovak elites that attacks on Jews were detrimental to the internal stability of the new state and to Czechoslovak interests abroad. As Edvard Bene?, the head of the Czechoslovak delegation in Paris, worked to cultivate an image of the new state as more “Western” and “civilised” than other successor states – a strategy meant to garner international support for Czechoslovak territorial demands and its projected absorption of large minority populations – Jewish activists encouraged his uncertainty with regard to Jews' influence on Western audiences and statesmen. They did so in order to convince him to accept their demands for special protection clauses for the new country's Jews. The paper thus shows that the unprecedented victimisation of Jews and the upsurge in antisemitism during and after the war coexisted with a new bold and public Jewish activism. Yet, Jewish leaders did not in the end have the ability to convince Bene? and his colleagues to give in to international Jewish demands for special protection. Instead, they sought to cultivate a strategic alliance between the state's Czech elite and the Jewish minority which centred on the claim that Czechoslovakia was a particularly welcoming and tolerant place for Jews, an image that would evolve into a significant component of the myth of Czechoslovakia as an island of democracy in Eastern Europe.