Resilience of young refugees: photographs tell a story
Siurola, Miia (2020)
2020
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https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020110822370
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020110822370
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ABSTRACT
Miia Siurola
Resilience of young refugees. Photographs tell a story
80 Page, 3 attachments
October 2020
Diaconia University of Applied Sciences
Master’s Degree in Global Health Care
Master of Health Care
World today is facing a refugee crisis never seen before. Millions of people are forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or impossible conditions to live due to climate change. Migration, eighter voluntary or forced poses a potential threat to the mental health and overall well-being of a person. Legacy of war has been connected with a range of psychological, physiological and social problems, as well as medical conditions like cardiac diseases. However, according to studies only a small proportion of refugees receive appropriate help.
Despite vulnerabilities not all refugees develop mental health disorders but instead survive and cope without psychopathologies, remain functional and even bounce for-ward from the experience. This complex construct and a phenomenon of positive and successful adjustment and adaptation to adversity has been defined as resilience. Scientist from different disciplines have studied underlying factors, mediators and moderators of resilience for years, but still many questions remain on why some people come out better than expected from adverse experience.
Purpose of this study was to find out sources of resilience of young refugees, this way shed a light into how young refugees perceive their new surrounding society, and from where they seek and gain strength. Aim was to increase understanding of the situation of these young refugees and produce knowledge that can help build more holistic and sustainable programmes on integration and support the coping and resilience of young refugees settling into new country. Sources of resilience of participating young refugees was investigated by using autodriven photo elicitation interview (PEI) method, and an inductive content analysis was performed from the narratives produced by the participants.
The results of this study gave valuable insight to the time, context and culture specificity and the elasticity and diversity of resilience. Photographs and narratives revealed six (6) sources of resilience from individual, familial, and broad socio-ecological level. In this study the individual factors played the most significant role. It seems that although strongly connected to environmental and social resources, it was in the ability of the participants to utilize those resources to benefit their well-being.
Keywords: Resilience, sources of resilience, young refugees, photo elicitation
Miia Siurola
Resilience of young refugees. Photographs tell a story
80 Page, 3 attachments
October 2020
Diaconia University of Applied Sciences
Master’s Degree in Global Health Care
Master of Health Care
World today is facing a refugee crisis never seen before. Millions of people are forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or impossible conditions to live due to climate change. Migration, eighter voluntary or forced poses a potential threat to the mental health and overall well-being of a person. Legacy of war has been connected with a range of psychological, physiological and social problems, as well as medical conditions like cardiac diseases. However, according to studies only a small proportion of refugees receive appropriate help.
Despite vulnerabilities not all refugees develop mental health disorders but instead survive and cope without psychopathologies, remain functional and even bounce for-ward from the experience. This complex construct and a phenomenon of positive and successful adjustment and adaptation to adversity has been defined as resilience. Scientist from different disciplines have studied underlying factors, mediators and moderators of resilience for years, but still many questions remain on why some people come out better than expected from adverse experience.
Purpose of this study was to find out sources of resilience of young refugees, this way shed a light into how young refugees perceive their new surrounding society, and from where they seek and gain strength. Aim was to increase understanding of the situation of these young refugees and produce knowledge that can help build more holistic and sustainable programmes on integration and support the coping and resilience of young refugees settling into new country. Sources of resilience of participating young refugees was investigated by using autodriven photo elicitation interview (PEI) method, and an inductive content analysis was performed from the narratives produced by the participants.
The results of this study gave valuable insight to the time, context and culture specificity and the elasticity and diversity of resilience. Photographs and narratives revealed six (6) sources of resilience from individual, familial, and broad socio-ecological level. In this study the individual factors played the most significant role. It seems that although strongly connected to environmental and social resources, it was in the ability of the participants to utilize those resources to benefit their well-being.
Keywords: Resilience, sources of resilience, young refugees, photo elicitation