Articulations and Repercussions of Violence in Refugee Reception and Settlement
This project explores articulations and effects of violence in the lives of refugees who have been granted legal protection.
Factsheet
- Schools involved School of Social Work
- Institute(s) Institute for Social and Cultural Diversity
- Strategic thematic field Thematic field "Caring Society"
- Funding organisation SNSF
- Duration (planned) 01.06.2023 - 31.01.2025
- Head of project Dr. Carolin Fischer
- Project staff Manuel Insberg
Situation
It is widely assumed that violence ends once refugees arrive at their destination and are granted protection. This masks the fact that refugee reception and settlement are not only protective but also marked by experiences of destitution, legal precariousness, dependency, hostility, xenophobia and sometimes overt physical harm. Such experiences can also be framed as violence, which is a multifaceted and established concept in social research. Origins and consequences of such experiences, however, have not yet been examined from perspectives of vio-lence. To start filling this gap, this project aims to explore articulations of violence, which con-tinue to affect refugees even after they were granted protection. Focusing on refugee reception and settlement it investigates how and with what effect different actors perceive and are involved in articulations of violence, including refugees themselves, state authorities and representatives of civic support structures. In particular, the project seeks to uncover how persons who have been granted protection, experience violence and how experiences of violence affect images of the self and aspirations for the future.
Course of action
The project is based on multi-sited ethnographies among refugees in Norway and Switzerland. It involves persons of different national origin who received refugee status, subsidiary protec-tion or a temporary residence permit. Complementary expert interviews, focus groups and document analysis are additional data sources. Norway and Switzerland represent interesting but little explored contexts of refugee reception and settlement. Both countries are known for their wealth and high levels of life satisfaction, which sets them apart from many other Euro-pean countries, besides their non-membership in the EU. However, they are also marked by right wing populism, instances of xenophobia and increasingly restrictive asylum regimes. Systems of refugee incorporation are rooted in different welfare state traditions. These similarities and differences are important features of contexts in which articulations and experiences of violence among settling refugees are embedded. Following people over an extended period of time and to multiple sites of significance to their everyday life yields insights to peoples’ trajectories in countries of settlement. It illuminates how present experiences of physical, structural, epistemic and symbolic violence are related to both the individual past and the current structural context. The project examines how different forms of violence are interlinked and uncovers how refugees exercise agency by acting upon experienced violence.
Result
The findings from our project leave little doubt that persons who have been recognised as refugees in Norway and Switzerland experience their protection status as an essential basis to continue living their lives. Legal protection promotes relief from the immanent threats they experienced in their countries of origin or en route. It also grants people a capacity to aspire in the sense that they can develop desires and expectations that often remain suppressed under conditions of even more acute hardship. Yet, given the legal guarantee of freedom from persecution, the desires and expectations of our research participants were rarely restricted to the wish to stay and be safe in the receiving country. Rather they were oriented towards the future, including social and professional fulfilment and personal recognition. The conditions constraining the desires and expectations which people develop in the light of legal protection, promote a situation of continuous crisis. Much of what we identify as drivers of a continuous crisis is closely related to the principles of refugee governance and the way refugees remain stuck in the position of a perpetual other. These findings urge us to reconsider the self-image of liberal states as safe havens and to work towards lasting transformations of the structures and associated power relations that create and uphold the identified limitations of legal protection and that turn asylum into a condition of continuous struggle.
Looking ahead
For refugees, recognition of their need for legal protection is a first step toward living in safety. However, as the results of the Violent Safe Havens project show, legal protection alone does not create comprehensive safety in everyday life. To promote this, recognition must be broadened to include personal experiences and goals as well as professional qualifications. In addition, it is important to improve the mental and physical health of refugees through additional social support and psychiatric care services. This involves recognizing structural and epistemic experiences of violence in the context of flight, arrival, and asylum, and promoting ways to overcome them.
