Health, integration and agency: Sport participation experiences of asylum seekers

Author(s):  
Clemens Ley ◽  
Felix Karus ◽  
Lisa Wiesbauer ◽  
María Rato Barrio ◽  
Ramon Spaaij

Abstract Politicians, scholars, and practitioners have drawn attention to social and health benefits of sport participation in the context of forced migration and refugee settlement. This study aims to progress conceptual and practical understandings of how asylum seekers’ past and present experiences shape their sport participation. We present an instrumental case study drawn from the Movi Kune programme to discuss the experiences of an asylum seeker holistically, in a particular context in time and space. The findings illustrate how pre-migration, migratory, and present experiences of living in prolonged uncertainty and liminality all strongly affect sport participation and its health and integration outcomes. The results further show that sport participation was an opportunity to perform agency, experience mastery, coping, and social recognition, promoting positive self-efficacy beliefs, health and social connection over time. Our findings extend the literature by indicating that sport practices can enhance human agency to cope with health issues and distressing past and present experiences during the asylum-seeking process.

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 616-639
Author(s):  
Duduzile S. Ndlovu

Abstract:Migration debates tend to focus on the numbers of people moving, whether they are economic migrants or asylum seekers, deserving or not of protection. This categorization usually rests on national identity, necessitating simplified one-dimensional representations. Ndlovu uses a case study of Zimbabwean migrants memorializing Gukurahundi in Johannesburg to highlight the ways in which migration narratives can be more complex and how they may shift over time. She presents Gukurahundi and the formation of the MDC in Zimbabwe, along with xenophobic violence in South Africa, as examples of the ways that the meanings of national and ethnic identities are contested by the migrants and influenced by political events across time and space.


Sociology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Mayblin ◽  
Mustafa Wake ◽  
Mohsen Kazemi

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.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akino Thahir ◽  
◽  
Risye Dwiyani ◽  
Saut Sagala ◽  
Linda Darmajanti ◽  
...  

Forced migration trend around the world is increasing. UNHCR estimated that more than 65 million people are forcibly displaced in 2015, representing about 26% of all international migrants. In relation to forced migration, secondary cities are also impacted, with many of such cities attract forcibly displaced migrants who view them as more accessible and 'friendly' compared to primary cities. Many secondary cities support the needs of migrants as a first point of entry, shelter, asylum and informal employment. In Indonesia, UNHCR recorded almost 14,000 person-ofconcerns in 2015. They are present in about 13 cities, with at least four is considered secondary cities. Although small, the number of forced migrants in Indonesia is expected to increase slowly along with the increasing trend of forced migration around the world. The study explores the capacity of secondary cities in Indonesia in accommodating the influx of refugees and asylum seeker, with Makassar as a case study, using a simplified City Resilience Framework developed by Arup International Development (2015) as a framework. By understanding the system and how it affects displaced people, it is expected that the focus for future improvement that contributes to the city resilience can be identified.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Palillo

For asylum seekers, masculinity is often a site of conflict, negotiated through competing discourses and public narratives about what it means to be an asylum seeker. Here, the male ‘genuine refugee’ is often depicted as a feminised, passive victim who ‘deserves’ humanitarian protection on the base of his vulnerability. Focusing on the crossing of the desert to Libya, this article analyses asylum seekers’ positioning of themselves as ‘men’ through their own narratives as well as the ways in which they engage with vulnerability, victimhood and agency in their storytelling. In particular, the focus lies on two cases, of Hakeem and David, selected from within 36 life history interviews with asylum seekers, refugees, and international protection holders collected in Sicily. For these men, the refugee journey is narrated as an accomplishment not only in terms of receiving asylum, but also in terms of their masculinity, exalting qualities such as endurance, courage, and competence. Two images, of the soldier and the hero, are presented as imaginary positioning of the self. This positioning appears to resolve performative tensions around masculinity/refugeeness, contesting the dominant image of the passive, feminized, helpless subject at the heart of ‘the genuine refugee’ public narrative. This might also be read as a strategy to reconcile profound questions about identity, the self, and experiences related to trauma and the loss of masculine status in the context of forced migration. 


2021 ◽  
pp. 106648072110063
Author(s):  
Jerome Visperas Cleofas ◽  
Ma. Cristina SC. Eusebio ◽  
Ellen Joy P. Pacudan

Cognizant of the nature and type of family as factors that affect the experience and coping of its members, this study sought to examine the impact of the pandemic on overseas Filipino workers’ (OFW) families using a qualitative instrumental case study of four OFW families. Three themes emerged from the analysis: (1) worry over the conditions of the distant family members, (2) disruptions in plans and family relationships, and (3) monitoring and caring from a distance. From these findings, it could be reflected that despite the negative effects of the pandemic, OFW families can recreate patterns over time to retain their familial relations and routines and protect members from coronavirus and its consequences.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
T Dowling ◽  
Somikazi Deyi ◽  
Anele Gobodwana

While there have been a number of studies on the decontextualisation and secularisation of traditional ritual music in America, Taiwan and other parts of the globe, very little has been written on the processes and transformations that South Africa’s indigenous ceremonial songs go through over time. This study was prompted by the authors’ interest in, and engagement with the Xhosa initiation song Somagwaza, which has been re-imagined as a popular song, but has also purportedly found its way into other religious spaces. In this article, we attempted to investigate the extent to which the song Somagwaza is still associated with the Xhosa initiation ritual and to analyse evidence of it being decontextualised and secularised in contemporary South Africa. Our methodology included an examination of the various academic treatments of the song, an analysis of the lyrics of a popular song, bearing the same name, holding small focus group discussions, and distributing questionnaires to speakers of isiXhosa on the topic of the song. The data gathered were analysed using the constant comparative method of analysing qualitative research.


Author(s):  
Pia Liv Russell

This interdisciplinary case study explores information literacy policy in Ontario’s public education system. Using interviews with policy makers and a rhetorical analysis of information literacy policy documents, it finds Ontario’s current information literacy policy inadequate to the task of providing equitable student access to opportunities for information literacy development.Une étude cas interdisciplinaire explore la politique de littératie informationnelle du système d’éducation publique de l’Ontario. En utilisant des entrevues avec les décideurs et une analyse rhétorique des documents sur la politique de littératie informationnelle, il est démontré que la politique de littératie informationnelle actuelle de l’Ontario est inappropriée pour la mission qui vise à offrir aux étudiants un accès équitable aux possibilités de développement de la littératie informationnelle. 


2002 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul D Anderson ◽  
John C Zasada ◽  
Glen W Erickson ◽  
Zigmond A Zasada

A white pine (Pinus strobus L.) stand at the western margin of the species range, approximately 125 years of age at present, was thinned in 1953 from 33.5 m2 ha-1 to target residual basal areas of 18.4, 23.0, 27.5, and 32.1 m2 ha-1 . Repeated measurement over the following 43-years indicated that the greatest total volume production and the greatest number of large diameter trees occurred in the unit of highest residual density. Over time, the distribution of stems was predominantly random although mortality between 1979 and 1996 resulted in a tendency for clumping in the 23.0 and 27.5 m2 ha-1 treatments. DNA analysis indicated that thinning intensity had little effect on the genetic diversity of residual white pine. This study suggests that mature white pine stands in northern Minnesota may be managed at relatively high densities without loss of productivity. However, regardless of overstory density, there was little or no white pine regeneration occurring in this stand. Key words: thinning, growth, genetic diversity, molecular markers, spatial pattern, regeneration


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110249
Author(s):  
Peer Smets ◽  
Younes Younes ◽  
Marinka Dohmen ◽  
Kees Boersma ◽  
Lenie Brouwer

During the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe, temporary refugee shelters arose in the Netherlands to shelter the large influx of asylum seekers. The largest shelter was located in the eastern part of the country. This shelter, where tents housed nearly 3,000 asylum seekers, was managed with a firm top-down approach. However, many residents of the shelter—mainly Syrians and Eritreans—developed horizontal relations with the local receiving society, using social media to establish contact and exchange services and goods. This case study shows how various types of crisis communication played a role and how the different worlds came together. Connectivity is discussed in relation to inclusion, based on resilient (non-)humanitarian approaches that link society with social media. Moreover, we argue that the refugee crisis can be better understood by looking through the lens of connectivity, practices, and migration infrastructure instead of focusing only on state policies.


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