COVID-19 Impact on International Migration

COVID 19 created many problems around the world and it affected everybody including migrants and immigrants. Many countries halted asylum seeker procedure in order to stop COVID 19 spreading but some countries restarted asylum seeker procedure since many people were in dangerous situation and they needed protection. Migrants and immigrants are highly vulnerable and can be infect by COVID 19. Many organizations especially international Organization played and are playing very important role to protect them against COVID 19. Migrants are working in frontline, they are in contact with other people, and the risks are very high to infect by COVID 19. Many of them hit globally very hard because of the COVID 19 especially due to the economic shut downs for example food, accommodating and personal services. Many countries closed their borders and they halted asylum seeker procedure. The number of restrictions and measures that imposed on migrants and immigrants reached 4600 around the world. Many countries have imposed travel ban especially on new comers.

Protesters at the news gates: An experimental study of journalists’ news judgment of protest events

Media attention is a key political resource for protesters. This implies that journalists are a crucial audience to which protesters seek to appeal. We study to what extent features of protest, of journalists, and of news organizations affect journalists’ news judgment. We exposed 78 Spanish journalists to vignettes of asylum seeker protests. Four features were systematically manipulated: protesters’ worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment (WUNC). The experiments scrutinize the extent to which journalists consider a protest newsworthy (presence) and the likelihood that a protest is featured on a newspaper’s front page (prominence). Our results show that in terms of media presence, high turnout is key. Highly unified protesters, in contrast, are considered less newsworthy. Regarding prominence, strongly committed demonstrators more easily make it to the frontpage. Individual characteristics of journalists have no direct effect on news judgment. Journalists’ editorial status and ideological (outlet) placement only moderate the effect of some of the protest features, although in terms of front-page placement a more potent adversary versus ally effect is distinguished.

Practitioner competencies for working with refugee children and young people: A scoping review

Research indicates that refugee and asylum seeker children and young people often require specialised psychological support. Competencies have been established as helpful in guiding the training, education and ongoing professional development of practitioners working in specialised areas. To date there has been no comprehensive review of the literature concerning practitioner competencies for working with refugee or asylum seeker children and young people. This scoping review therefore aimed to synthesise all literature regarding practitioner competencies that are considered important for working in the area of mental health with refugee and asylum seeker children and young people. Literature was sourced from PsycINFO, Scopus, and PubMed. Studies were included if they: a) were published in peer-reviewed journals, b) were published in English, c) were published in the last 25 years, d) collected primary data, e) related to children and/or young people (defined as aged under 25) with refugee or asylum seeker backgrounds, and f) discussed practitioner competencies (in relation to refugee or asylum seeker children or young people). Nine articles met criteria and a deductive thematic analysis identified six key competencies: 1) knowledge of the complexity of needs of refugees; 2) use of holistic approaches; 3) ability to work in co-ordination with others in the child's network; 4) ability to build therapeutic relationships; 5) seeking feedback; and 6) cultural competency. Further empirical research that directly aims to identify practitioner competencies, from both the practitioner and client perspective, will support the challenging work done by practitioners working with refugee and asylum seeker children and young people.

Beyond Diagnosis: Adding a Psychodynamic Dimension to the Mental Health Asylum Evaluation

Medical-legal asylum evaluations, conducted by experienced clinicians, are one of the most important parts of an application for successfully being granted asylum. Over two-thirds of these are mental health evaluations. Customarily these evaluations are summarized and drafted as diagnostic statements, providing the attorney with clear, corroborative testimony demonstrating that the patient suffers from psychological sequalae directly related to the individual's previous experience of persecution in their home country. However, these medical-legal evaluations are usually devoid of a more holistic description of the asylum seeker. We propose addressing this deficiency, with several redacted examples from affidavits previously used in immigration court.

Aikuisten turvapaikanhakija- ja pakolaisasiakkaiden terapeuttisissa keskusteluissa tekemät ongelmanmäärittelyt

Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin sitä, kuinka kuusi aikuista turvapaikanhakija- ja pakolaisasiakasta kuvasivat ongelmiaan terapeuttisissa keskusteluissa. Tutkimuksen kohteena ja tiedon lähteenä olivat asiakkaiden tekemät ja tulkkien suomeksi välittämät ongelmia kuvaavat ilmaukset. Terapeuttisia keskusteluita analysoimalla pyrittiin tavoittamaan ensisijaisesti se, mitä ongelmia asiakkailla on ja lisäksi se, miten nämä ongelmat heihin vaikuttavat ja mikä ongelmat aiheuttaa. Tutkimusmenetelmänä käytettiin aineistolähtöistä laadullista sisällönanalyysia. Ongelmat koskivat kotimaassa koettua epäoikeudenmukaisuutta ja kotimaassa koettujen traumaattisen kokemusten aiheuttamaa ahdistusta, tulevaisuuteen liittyviä huolia ja pelkoja, huolta läheisten tilanteesta ja siihen liittyvää syyllisyyttä sekä toimijuutta, pystyvyyttä ja elämänhallintaa. Ongelmat aiheutuivat niin kotimaassa koetusta kuin maahantulon jälkeisistä asioista. Ongelma oli yleensä monen tekijän summa. Tämän tutkimuksen löydökset eivät puolla terapeuttiseen keskusteluun mallia, jossa keskityttäisiin kategorisesti vain joko aiemmin kotimaassa tai maahantulon jälkeen koettuihin asioihin. Ongelmien koostumus vaihteli eri asiakkailla. Huoli kotimaahan palautetuksi joutumisesta tuotti yleisesti pelkoa. Kotimaassa koettu epäoikeudenmukaisuus ja petetyksi tuleminen oli kaikille asiakkaille erityisen raskas asia. Sitä oli vaikeaa tai mahdotonta unohtaa ja antaa anteeksi. AbstractAdult asylum seeker and refugee clients’ problem definitions in therapeutic conversations This study examined how six adult asylum seeker and refugee clients express their problems in therapeutic conversations. This study aimed to find out primarily what kind of problems the clients present, and also how these problems affect them and what caused the problems. The research method was inductive qualitative content analysis. Therapeutic sessions of the six clients were videotaped and the problem formulations given by the clients and as expressed by an interpreter were extracted as units of analysis. Five problem categories emerged from the analysis: experiences of injustice in home country; anxious ideations originating from past traumatic experiences; fear for the future; worries and feelings of guilt concerning relatives; and problems of self-agency, self-efficacy and life management. Both pre-migration and post-migration factors caused problems. Most often problems were caused by several interacting factors. This study do not support therapeutic conversation formats that focus solely to the issues either related to pre-migration or to post-migration stage. Different clients had different sets and compositions of problems. Fear of deportation was a common cause for fear to clients. Experiences of injustice and betrayal in the home country caused extreme distress to all clients. Such experiences were hard to forget and hard to forgive. Key words: asylum seeker, refugee, therapeutic conversation, problems, explanatory models Authors:Olli Snellman, MA, Psychotherapist, Head of Section, Finnish Immigration Service,Reception UnitJaakko Seikkula, PhD, Professor, University of Jyväskylä, Department of Psychology, Psychotherapy Training and Research CentreJarl Wahlström, PhD, Professor, emeritus, University of Jyväskylä, Department of Psychology, Psychotherapy Training and Research CentreKatja Kurri, PhD, Researcher, Psychotherapist, University of Jyväskylä, Department of Psychology, Psychotherapy Training and Research Centre

Exploring the Use of Hip Hop-Based Music Therapy to Address Trauma in Asylum Seeker and Unaccompanied Minor Migrant Youth

There are numerous young asylum seekers and unaccompanied migrant minors around the globe. A comprehensive literature review revealed that post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the most common disorder that affects the asylum seeker youth and migrant minor populations. Many of these individuals struggle with PTSD and show resilience in their daily lives while also learning, discovering, and surviving. Accordingly, therapeutic interventions directed to them must be trauma-informed, phased, engaging, empowering, and impactful to support the needs of these young people. A seven-month-long music therapy intervention experience that was applied to young asylum seekers in Spain, and found that the most effective intervention tools were Hip Hop Therapy-related interventions. This study resulted in a new intervention model, The Integral Hip Hop Methodology. This paper highlights the importance that intervention models be engaging and considerate to the necessities and preferences of the addressed population and presents The Integral Hip Hop Methodology as an example.

Women Victim of Trafficking Seeking Asylum in Italy An Ethnographic Perspective on the Regularisation Processes

This study, drawing on ethnographic observations of the regularization processes of two migrant women victim of human trafficking and who claimed for international protection in Italy, aims at contributing on the debate on the intersection between the asylum system and the anti-trafficking projects, focusing on how it concretely works in a specific local context and highlighting open challenges and critical issues. The first woman is hosted in a reception centre for asylum seekers, the second one in a shelter of the anti-trafficking project in North-East Italy. During their migratory trajectories, both women were recruited and transported in order to be sexually exploited and both (self-)identified, at different stages of their regularization process, as victims of trafficking. In our analysis, we will focus both on the positioning of the asylum seeker women and on the perspective of the operators, trying to understand in which situations these perspectives converged or diverged, in term of choices, power hierarchies and strategies of resistances.

Within and Against Racial Segregation

The pandemic brought migrant farm workers into the limelight once again, as has happened repeatedly in the last three decades, in Italy as in many other parts of the world. Here I examine how intersecting and sometimes conflicting discourses and interventions, that have this biopolitically conceived population as their object, decide upon these subjects’ worthiness of attention, care, and sympathy through criminalizing, victimizing, and humanitarian registers. I reflect on some of the affective dynamics that sustain both the governmental operations through which these populations were (sought to be) managed and reactions against them from a situated perspective, as an accomplice to many of the forms of struggle in which migrant farm workers have engaged in the last decade in Italy. The stage for many such occurrences is what I have elsewhere defined as the “encampment archipelago” that many such workers, and particularly those who migrate from across West Africa, inhabit—labor or asylum-seeker camps, but also slums or isolated, derelict buildings, and various hybrid, in-between spaces among which people circulate.