scholarly journals Confined in Waiting: Young Asylum Seekers Narrating In and Out of Temporary Shelter

Young ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-80
Author(s):  
Maria Petäjäniemi ◽  
Mervi Kaukko ◽  
Maija Lanas

This research considers the waiting and confinement experienced by young asylum seekers during and after their stay at a temporary shelter in Finland. The data for this research consists of interviews and ethnographic ‘hanging out’ with nine young asylum seekers throughout their asylum process. In order to generate new knowledge about the situated and fluid experiences of young adult asylum seekers’ confinement, this article focuses on four in-depth interviews with two young men, Kokab and Mahammed. They arrived in Finland in 2015, and are, at the time of writing this article, still waiting for their final asylum decisions. The results show, first, that while the time in the temporary shelter resembles physical, punitive confinement, it is also experienced as warm and social time. Second, the article argues that the confinement of young asylum seekers extends beyond the physical confinement, as they are for years confined in forced movement, indefinite waiting and othered as a number in the system.

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-70
Author(s):  
Randa Khair Abbas ◽  
Eman Abu Hanna Nahhas ◽  
Khawla Zoabi ◽  
Ibtisam Marey-Sarwan ◽  
Hanadi Abu Ahmad

This case study explored the real-time experience of participants in the Arab Academic College for Education in Haifa, Israel, during the coronavirus pandemic. Twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with management, administrative staff, faculty and students. Participants' stories reveal that feelings of stress and isolation gave way to new learning and self-discovery, a new relationship with time, and the creation of new knowledge on the personal and institutional levels. Strong, coordinated leadership, combined with legal and financial security, facilitated the transition to online learning and allowed the college to emerge from the crisis successfully. Implications are drawn for dealing with future crises.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-101
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Patterson ◽  
Koen Leurs

Upon arrival to Europe, young migrants are found grappling with new language demands, cultural expectations, values, and beliefs that may differ from global youth culture and their country of origin. This process of coming-of-age while on-the-move is increasingly digitally mediated. Young migrants are “connected migrants”, using smart phones and social media to maintain bonding ties with their home country while establishing new bridging relationships with peers in their country of arrival (Diminescu, 2008). Drawing on the feminist perspective of intersectionality which alerts us socio-cultural categories like age, race, nationality, migration status, gender and sexuality impact upon identification and subordination, we contend it is problematic to homogenize these experiences to all gay young adult migrants. The realities of settlement and integration starkly differ between desired migrants – such as elite expatriates and heterosexuals – and those living on the margins of Europe – forced migrants and lesbian, gay, trans, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) migrants. Drawing on 11 in-depth interviews conducted in Amsterdam, the Netherlands with gay young adult forced and voluntary migrants, this paper aims to understand how sexual identification in tandem with bonding and bridging social capital diverge and converge between the two groups all while considering the interplay between their online and offline entanglements of their worlds.


2020 ◽  
pp. 088626052095797
Author(s):  
Ahmad Al Ajlan

This study explores how violence occurs among young adult asylum seekers in collective accommodations in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. It provides an insider perspective to understand a phenomenon related to non-European people who were forced to leave their countries to seek asylum. Based on 16 qualitative interviews with young adult male asylum seekers from Syria and some African countries, seven interviews with social workers, and one interview with a German psychological therapist, the author finds that the asylum procedure in Germany as a total institution catalyzes violence among young adult asylum seekers in collective accommodations. The present study shows that collective accommodations are unhomely places, where “inmates” lack privacy and autonomy. In addition, the asylum procedure deprives them of essential human needs, such as the right to work and to have full access to the health care system. These circumstances make them uncertain and desperate, which leads to violence among them. The author calls for more attention towards the human needs of asylum seekers, rather than making them related to the granting of asylum, which can ultimately take years.


2020 ◽  
pp. 0192513X2096797
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Aranda ◽  
Elizabeth Vaquera ◽  
Heide Castañeda

The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program enabled undocumented immigrant young adults to more freely participate in U.S. society. Guided by family systems theory, which emphasizes that individual actors are interdependent with others within family units, we analyze the experiences of young adult DACA recipients while members of their families remain deportable. We draw from 44 in-depth interviews with DACA recipients who are part of mixed-status families to answer three questions: How were the benefits of DACA distributed within mixed-status family units and discrepancies interpreted by recipients? How did obtaining DACA change recipients’ roles and responsibilities within their families? And to what extent did obtaining DACA shape young adults’ envisioned futures? We discuss potential results of the program, including changes in familial relationships, conflicting roles, and challenges in recipients’ efforts at individuation from their families.


Author(s):  
Suzanne Franzway ◽  
Nicole Moulding ◽  
Sarah Wendt ◽  
Carole Zufferey ◽  
Donna Chung

This chapter is focused on the challenges of researching gendered violence. Here, the chapter presents the empirical foundation and design of a large-scale national study conducted across Australia; which included a major survey, in-depth interviews, and constructed life histories. This chapter also considers some of the challenges faced when conducting and participating in gendered violence research in the context of the politics of ignorance and sexual politics. Given the risks that can flow from participating in and conducting research into gendered violence, it was particularly vital that the study was tightly conceptualised and methodologically sound, so that the benefits of participation by contributing to the development of new knowledge clearly outweighed any risks. The research study outlined here aimed to reveal the breadth and interconnected nature of the impact of intimate partner violence on women's citizenship as part of challenging wilful ignorance about violence and its relationship to gender inequality. As such, this research was an inherently political project that involved balancing a number of key considerations.


2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathrine Filstad

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate how political activities and processes influence sensemaking and sensegiving among top management, middle management and employees and to examine its consequences for implementing new knowledge. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected in a Norwegian bank using in-depth interviews with middle managers and financial advisers. Observations of meetings, informal conversations and verbatim notes were also used in data collection among top managers. A practice-based approach was used as an analytical lens. Findings – Top managers' political activities of excluding others from the decision process affect their sensemaking and resulted in sensegiving contradictions between spoken intent and how to change practice. Middle managers' political activities were to accept top managers' sensegiving instead of managing themselves in their own sensemaking to help financial advisers with how to change their role and practice. As a result, middle managers' sensemaking affects their engagement in sensegiving. For financial advisers, the political processes of top and middle managers resulted in resistance and not making sense of how to change and implement new knowledge. Research limitations/implications – A total of 30 in-depth interviews, observations of five meetings and informal conversations might call for further studies. In addition, a Norwegian study does not account for other countries' cultural differences concerning leadership style, openness in decisions and employee autonomy. Originality/value – To the author's knowledge, no studies identify the three-way conceptual relationship between political activities, sensemaking and sensegiving. In addition, the author believes that the originality lies in investigating these relationships using a three-level hierarchy of top management, middle management and employees.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-128
Author(s):  
Ido Weijers

This article explores the role of partners and parents of young adult repeat offenders in the process of desistance from crime. First, we conducted in-depth interviews with 22 young adults who had been involved in persistent criminal activity since adolescence but had since stopped. Some, but by no means all of them, stated that their partner had played an important role in this. In contrast, hardly any of them had any doubt about the importance of their parents’ role. We then investigated whether the same views were also found among young adult offenders where it was unclear whether or not they had desisted from crime. Based on in-depth interviews with 21 young adults, we conclude that this was indeed the case except for a minority who continued to offend. This article throws new light on the role of both partners and parents in the process of desisting from crime.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 8-29
Author(s):  
Galina I. Osadchaya ◽  
Igor A. Seleznev ◽  
Egor Y. Kireev

The article analyzes the features of the formation of historical memory and a sense of social time among the youth of the countries participating in the Eurasian integration. The article is based on the data of a sociological study (qualitative comparative analysis of the results of in-depth interviews). The object of the study is representatives of young generations (the generations Y and Z) of citizens of States that have joined or intend to join such associations as the EEU and the CSTO. The subject of the study is the historical memory of these youth social groups about the Great Patriotic War, the general and the special in their perception of these historical events


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-263
Author(s):  
Magda Pischetola ◽  
Clio Sozzani

The article aims to investigate the relation between migration and digital technologies, in particular the way in which connectivity contributes to new forms of social inclusion. The study presented explores asylum seekers’ digital connections in relation to affective belonging, focusing on how social media enhance new forms of relationship between the homeland and host countries, as well as across migration flows. The research draws from the humanities and social sciences, proposing a qualitative methodology based on in-depth interviews with five migrants from the Middle East and Africa, who are hosted in a temporary camp for asylum seekers in Italy. It focuses on the way in which they remain connected to their home countries and how they try, at the same time, to create new relationships in the host country. The results outline how different forms of communication and digital networking impact on the migrants’ settling into new lives at the local and transnational level.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document