Caroline Lenette

Everyday resilience: Narratives of single refugee women with children

This article offers a critical exploration of the concept of resilience, which is largely conceptualized in the literature as an extraordinary atypical personal ability to revert or ‘bounce back’ to a point of equilibrium despite significant adversity. While resilience has been explored in a range of contexts, there is little recognition of resilience as a social process arising from mundane practices of everyday life and situated in person-environment interactions. Based on an ethnographic study among single refugee women with children in Brisbane, Australia, the women’s stories on navigating everyday tensions and opportunities revealed how resilience was a process operating inter-subjectively in the social spaces connecting them to their environment. Far beyond the simplistic binaries of resilience versus non-resilient, we concern ourselves here with the everyday processual, person-environment nature of the concept. We argue that more attention should be paid to day-to-day pathways through which resilience outcomes are achieved, and that this has important implications for refugee mental health practice frameworks.

Visual ethnography and refugee women: nuanced understandings of lived experiences

Purpose – This paper aims to reinforce the significance of visual ethnography as a tool for mental health promotion.Design/methodology/approach – Visual ethnography has become an established methodology particularly in qualitative studies, to understand specific themes within participants’ everyday realities. Beyond providing a visual element, such methods allow for meaningful and nuanced explorations of sensitive themes, allowing richer sets of data to emerge rather than focussing on conversations alone. The participants in this study evaluated how far they had come by exploring complex circumstances using visual ethnographic means.Findings – Research with single refugee women in Brisbane, Australia, demonstrates how discussing photographs and creating digital movies yielded a sense of achievement, pride and accomplishment, health and wellbeing, and ownership for some women, while for others it was a burden.Originality/value – Studies with single refugee women have been scarce with limited use of visual ...

Don't Silence "The Dinosaurs": Keeping Caution Alive with Regard to Social Work Distance Education.

Distance education (DE) in social work programs and studies on its comparable effectiveness with face-to-face education continue to increase. Yet not all faculty are convinced of the results, and this study explores why. Three case studies indicate that reservations center on valuing the process of learning and nonverbal communication. Issues regarding duty of care to families to be served by future social workers primarily educated in a virtual classroom also matter significantly. The trend toward DE may be inevitable, but this does not mean that educators should not voice their concerns; their skepticism has merit, and they have a responsibility to be vocal.

‘Some viewers may find the following images disturbing’: Visual representations of refugee deaths at border crossings

The emotional reaction and outrage following the publication of photographs of Alan Kurdi who drowned while crossing borders in September 2015 highlighted the major impact visual representations of refugee deaths at border crossings can have on public opinions and political will. The impact of these photographs also shows that depictions of deaths as a result of border crossings are relatively rare in the media; analyses of such representations and their potential impact on policy are also neglected in the literature. This article offers a commentary on the key themes linked to visual representations of refugee deaths at border crossings by considering three recent examples, and argues for further interdisciplinary discussions on such images. It focuses on two points: that depicting refugees alone has a greater impact on viewers and is more likely to trigger sympathy or outrage; concurrently, that anonymity can reduce viewers’ ability to connect with the tragedy. This discussion adds to the body of literature on the links between media representations and policymaking, and on the mediation of human vulnerability through visual means. The themes outlined here have much currency in contemporary discussions on refugee deaths at border crossings.

Media coverage of refugees and asylum seekers in regional Australia: a critical discourse analysis

Despite significant research into media and political coverage of refugees and asylum seekers, and ongoing Commonwealth policies to resettle refugees to regional areas, analysis of the regional press is lacking. We reviewed articles from four regional newspapers using quantitative content analysis and qualitative content analysis to examine some initial trends in how regional newspapers represent refugees and asylum seekers. Despite the dominant negative framing of refugee issues at the national level, the regional media used positive, humanising frames and a broader range of sources in articles on local topics such as refugees’ personal stories. This reflects the community-building role of local journalism and challenges the familiar boundaries of the debate. However, there was a compelling distinction between articles on local and national topics, with the negative national discourse and dominance of government sources reflected in articles on national topics such as legislation and events.

Mistrust and refugee women who are lone parents in resettlement contexts

The theme of mistrust in resettlement contexts is largely overlooked in refugee discourses. Through a qualitative inquiry of post-migration experiences of four women raising children alone in Brisbane, Australia, this paper outlines how the presence of mistrust could at times create difficult resettlement circumstances for these women, who then needed to negotiate additional obstacles in everyday life. The definition of social mistrust used here is a form of deliberate and ongoing suspicion about lone refugee women’s choices and lifestyles from other community members. Importantly, the women achieved a sense of well-being despite experiencing mistrust, both in inter-group and intra-group contexts, indicating that they conceptualised access to and benefits from social networks with different emphases on trust. Sociocultural narratives of mistrust, particularly gender-specific perspectives can enrich refugee discourses and challenge established notions of trust inherent to understandings of social networks in resettlement. The findings discussed in this paper contribute to debunking the ‘myth’ of homogeneity in relation to refugee groups and demonstrate the diversity of experiences among sub-groups of refugee women. The theme of mistrust, particularly among women, is an oft-neglected aspect and requires further attention.

“Will there be music for us?” Mapping the health and well-being potential of participatory music practice with asylum seekers and refugees across contexts of conflict and refuge

Background: This paper draws on existing literature across the fields of community music and health promotion to map the potential for participatory music practices to support health and well-being outcomes for asylum seekers and refugees across contexts of conflict, liminality and refuge. As such, the paper provides a foundation for future empirical work in the field of music and health for asylum seekers and refugees. Methods: The paper reports on the outcomes of a “scoping” literature review of the benefits of participatory music-making across three different contexts: “conflict” settings, refugee camps and resettlement settings. Results: The scoping review provided a new synthesis of existing knowledge and empirical work on the health and well-being outcomes of participatory music for asylum seekers and refugees across contexts. In particular, the review highlighted the different roles that music can have in peoples lives as they move away from home countries towards resettlement settings. Conclusions: When coupled with broader evidence from the fields of health and well-being research, growing empirical research on music and well-being for asylum seekers provides a strong foundation for both further research and investment in music (and the arts more generally) as a key positive social and cultural determinant of health for this group.

University Students from Refugee Backgrounds: Why Should We Care?.

In resettlement countries like Canada, the United States and Australia, research suggests that higher education is vital to ensure well-being, greater socioeconomic integration and inclusion, and s...

Contributions of Loss Events to Loss Distress and Trauma Symptoms in Recently Resettled Refugee Women at Risk

ABSTRACT This research examined contributions of loss events to loss distress and trauma symptoms (accounting for trauma events) for refugee women at risk. Participants (N = 104) responded to the Multidimensional Loss Scale (loss events and distress) and Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (trauma events and symptoms). Loss events contributed uniquely to loss distress (explaining additional 50.8% variance), and made a unique contribution to trauma symptoms (explaining additional 5.2% variance) approximately equal to trauma events. Appropriate response to psychic distress in refugee women at risk requires assessment of both loss and trauma and consideration of cultural differences in ways loss is expressed and meaning ascribed to symptoms.

Beyond Compliance Checking: A Situated Approach to Visual Research Ethics

Visual research methods like photography and digital storytelling are increasingly used in health and social sciences research as participatory approaches that benefit participants, researchers, and audiences. Visual methods involve a number of additional ethical considerations such as using identifiable content and ownership of creative outputs. As such, ethics committees should use different assessment frameworks to consider research protocols with visual methods. Here, we outline the limitations of ethics committees in assessing projects with a visual focus and highlight the sparse knowledge on how researchers respond when they encounter ethical challenges in the practice of visual research. We propose a situated approach in relation to visual methodologies that encompasses a negotiated, flexible approach, given that ethical issues usually emerge in relation to the specific contexts of individual research projects. Drawing on available literature and two case studies, we identify and reflect on nuanced ethical implications in visual research, like tensions between aesthetics and research validity. The case studies highlight strategies developed in-situ to address the challenges two researchers encountered when using visual research methods, illustrating that some practice implications are not necessarily addressed using established ethical clearance procedures. A situated approach can ensure that visual research remains ethical, engaging, and rigorous.