Talking about Refugees: 'problems' and 'resilience' and what this means for services and practice for refugee parents and children

Pauline Guerin, Julian Grant, Yvonne Parry

    Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

    Abstract

    Children in families with parents from refugee backgrounds are often viewed as a vulnerable group with increased risks of developing physical or social problems. The refugee experience and resettlement in a western country often results in children being parented solely by women. There is very little research regarding the strategies that these women might use to parent their children in a new country while they also manage the interrelated challenges of poverty, social isolation, maternal stress and mental ill health that often go along with resettlement. Overall, single mothers are among those who are likely to be most under resourced. This is compounded when single mothers are fleeing war torn countries, have experienced trauma or torture, or are from culturally distant societies, that is, are visible minorities in their host country. While this may pose social and health problems for new arrival single mothers and their children, there are also numerous strengths associated with this complex situation. Competing discourses of the ‘problems’ associated with resettlement and ‘resilience’ of individual refugees (be they adults or children) pose interesting dilemmas in the development and delivery of various programmes and services. In this paper we will explore these competing discourses and dilemmas as they relate specifically to single refugee mothers and parenting in a new country and the impacts on children in these families. Implications for policy and practice guidelines will be discussed.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages41
    Number of pages1
    Publication statusPublished - 2011
    EventInternational Society of Critical Health Psychology (ISCHP) 7th Biennial Conference -
    Duration: 18 Apr 2011 → …

    Conference

    ConferenceInternational Society of Critical Health Psychology (ISCHP) 7th Biennial Conference
    Period18/04/11 → …

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