Forced Migration and Social Trauma

Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Sociology and Politics

Andreas Hamburger, Camellia Hancheva, Saime Özcürümez, Carmen Scher, Biljana Stankovic, Slavica Tutnjevic, Andreas Hamburger, Camellia Hancheva, Saime Özcürümez, Carmen Scher, Biljana Stankovic, Slavica Tutnjevic

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138361805
• eBook ISBN: 9780429778919
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Forced Migration and Social Trauma addresses the topic of social trauma and migration by bringing together a broad range of interdisciplinary and international contributors, comprising refugee care practitioners, trauma researchers, sociologists and specialists in public policy from all along the Balkan refugee route into Europe. It gives the essence of a moderated dialogue between psychologists and psychoanalysts, sociologists, public policy and refugee care experts.

Migration is connected to social trauma and cannot be handled without being aware of this context. The way refugees are treated in the transit or target countries is often determined by the socio-traumatic history of these countries. Social trauma can be collectively committed and perpetuated, leaving transgenerational traces in posttraumatic and attachment disorders, uprootedness and loss of social and political confidence. Media and cultural artefacts like press, TV and the internet influence collective coping as well as traumatic perpetuation. This book shows how xenophobia in the refugee receiving or transit countries can be caused by projection rather than by experience, and that the way refugees are received and regarded in a country may be connected to the country's cultural?traumatic history. Refugees, who are often individually and collectively traumatised, experience multiple re-enactments; however, such retraumatisations between refugees and receiving populations or institutions often remain unaddressed. The split between welcoming and hostile attitudes sometimes leads to unconscious institutional defences, such as lack of cooperation between medical, psychotherapeutic, humanitarian and legal institutions.

An interdisciplinary and international exchange on migration and social trauma is necessary on all levels – this book gives convincing examples of this dialogue. Forced Migration and Social Trauma will be of great interest to all who are involved in the modern issues of refuge and migration.

PART I

Refugees in public policy and social representation

Introduction to Part I

Saime Ozcurumez

Refugees move across borders and seek safe havens while they escape armed conflict, persecution and violence. Refugees suffer social trauma while they are in transit and in places where they arrive. The plight of refugees is complex because they may suffer different forms of trauma where they arrive, all the while aiming to avoid the trauma in their homelands. The 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol constitute the core international treaties for governing international protection. Around the world, 148 states are parties to either one or both of these international instruments. The legal and political framework for refugees is governed by international refugee law, international human rights law and international humanitarian law. States, while committed to these treaties, are constrained by their own means for providing humanitarian assistance to the arriving refugees. Nonetheless, all states provide after the initial displacement health care, food, shelter, water and sanitation. Whether the refugees are received in accommodation centres or reside in urban areas, attending to their psychosocial needs or trauma-induced ailments comes only later on the agenda of public institutions, international organisations and NGOs. Host communities also suffer from a similar oversight of their needs caused by the presence of refugees in their daily lives. This part of the book seeks answers to the question to what extent, why and how do receiving states and communities address questions around public policy and social representation. In order to do so, the chapters in Part I review the international legislation, the unfolding of legislation on international protection as implementing psychosocial support services, the discourse around trauma and healing in refugee settings, the role of the media in covering the refugee crisis in Europe and its interaction with the implementation of policy initiatives in receiving societies. Part I concludes with a review of the workshop results on public policy and social representation.

In Chapter 1 on international protection and psychosocial support services, Ozcurumez examines the extent to which such support services are linked to socio-economic integration policies through a detailed account of Syrians under temporary protection in Turkey. Ozcurumez explains the legal, administrative and institutional frameworks that support Syrians in Turkey and then discusses when and how mental health and psychosocial services became a focus for support providers. Central to the discussion on these services, Ozcurumez outlines current barriers to access, challenges to the Turkish medical system, and the shift from a perspective of temporary support to longer-term social cohesion.

Moving deeper into the subject of psychosocial support, in Chapter 2, Kumpfmüller explores the discourse around trauma and the challenges of justifying social and political trauma in a framework of supports that focuses on individual pathologies. Kumpfmüller shows that trauma occurring due to man-made or social and political events stems from a breach in the social contract. Social or political trauma, while not recognised as trauma clinically, requires that governments take social and political responsibility to find remedies.

Petrucci and Hamburger continue the discussion on trauma in Chapter 3 by examining the relevance of social trauma in relation to the legal definitions underlying refugee status. The chapter considers the clinical development of the definition of trauma with regard to its effects on the individual and society. The authors conclude that while individual trauma is not specified as a precondition for refugee status under the Geneva Convention, social trauma is still a key component in refugee status determination.

Chapter 4 by Jovičić introduces the role of visual representation of refugees in the media in Germany in 2015. Jovičić outlines how refugees were primarily depicted in large numbers, in despair, and with little material wealth or possessions, creating a singular discourse on poverty and destitution, laying out images of trauma for an audience. The discourse, however, is only as effective as it is shocking. Jovičić notes that images shown often desensitise an audience.

Two further chapters cover the role of media and the effects of reporting on public perception and refugee integration and access to services. In Chapter 5, Turudić examines the relationship between media, public perception and the policy process. Turudić explains that negative reporting on refugees in Serbia between 2011 and 2015 created a lack of public support for increasing necessary basic services for refugees. Additionally, accurate and supportive reporting, while published, had little effect on public perception after a negative tone had been set. In the Serbian case, as with other cases, the chapter shows how media affected public opinion which then formally and informally affected policy decision making. In Chapter 6, Radoja outlines the consequences of unchecked reporting by highlighting the reputation of media outlets and public trust, reinforcing the view that public perception is often shaped by media. In the case of Serbia, Radoja shows how media coverage of the most recent refugee influx in 2015 was heavily influenced by domestic politics. Radoja emphasises the central role of language in reporting and just how much “words matter”.

The summary on public policy and social representation (Chapter 7) includes notes from discussion at the expert workshop in Sarajevo entitled “Migration – Trauma in Transition. Exploring Sociotraumatic Roots of Dealing with Refugees”, 7–15 April 2017. The workshop included discussions focusing on the tensions between the varieties of individual experience and the more singular definitions utilised in public policy implementation. Experts discussed the challenges around the risks of creating a pathology of the traumatised refugee and the policy structures in first asylum and resettlement countries that aim to accommodate refugees who experienced traumatic events. Similarly, individual identity can be considered as complex and fluid, while states delivering public policy functionally consider people with more static identities such as nationality.

The discussion on public policy and social representation in migration in this part of the book asserts that there are gaps and tensions between facilitating support for the migrants’ needs and the legal and political framework informing public policy across different cases. While states seek to implement policies that alleviate the challenges experienced by migration at the individual, local and regional levels, domestic preferences and pre-existing institutions continue to shape the perspective from which those policies arise.

References

Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 28 July 1951, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 189, p. 137. Retrieved on 13 February 2018 from www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10

Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, 31 January 1967, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 606, p. 267. Retrieved on 20 January 2018 from https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%201125/volume-1125-I-17512-English.pdf

1

International protection and psychosocial support services

Saime Ozcurumez

Why is it important to study policies on mental health and psychosocial services (MHPSS) provided to refugees? The answer remains complex and context-bound. Scholars agree on the need for MHPSS in emergency settings, though they disagree on the context and content, as well as methods for delivery (Diaz, 2008; Wessells & van Ommeren, 2008; Wessells, 2009; Wietse et al., 2012). Studies accentuate a tentative scholarly consensus on emphasising MHPSS that is resilience enhancing, community oriented, culturally sensitive and focused on social cohesion. However, in receiving refugees, states responsible for the delivery of MHPSS do not have, as yet, any straightforward and enforceable national guidelines to meet refugees’ mental health and psychosocial needs. Moreover, at the international level, attention to the psychosocial wellbeing of refugees intensified mostly in the late 2000s.

Receiving states also do not have an international framework that obliges them to provide a long-term perspective for designing and implementing refugee policies beyond temporary refuge. All this is expected to change with the process of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants of September 2016, also known as the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF). The CRRF puts forward objectives for “easing the pressures on host countries, enhancing refugee self-reliance, expanding third country solutions and supporting the conditions in the countries of origin for return in safety and dignity” (United Nations, n.d.a, n.p.). The Declaration aims to overcome one significant gap in the refugee regime, by ensuring that states will aim to share responsibility in times of a mass influx of refugees and do so in a coordinated framework. While this represents a timely reinforcement of the principles of the 1951 Convention and a critical “minor miracle” (Türk, 2016) for transforming the international protection regime, there is a long road ahead for the New York Declaration to become effective beyond the present refugee reception and admission practices. The details of ‘responsibility sharing’ will be outlined with the Global Compact on Refugees (Global Compact on Refugees, 2018). Until then, the nation-states are responsible for organising and implementing humanitarian relief efforts. Providing services for the psychosocial wellbeing of all refugees has also depended on the policy choices of the host states. Then again, millions fleeing the Syrian conflict towards the neighbouring countries and beyond led to a turning point in rethinking the international protection regime. Since 2011, most of the refugees from Syria fled to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. In this time period, regional efforts for increasing coordination and the efficiency of the humanitarian response also intensified, among which the 3RP (Regional Refugee & Resilience Plan) is the most comprehensive. However, in neither of these efforts have psychosocial services been considered essential components of the relief effort to the extent that they could have been. In the 3RP plan, the psychosocial support services are only part of the protection sector (psychosocial wellbeing of children) and the health and nutrition sector (emphasis on an increased access to mental health and psycho-social support services) (3RP Strategic Overview, 2018–2019).

This chapter seeks answers to the question in what ways and to what extent are psychosocial support services provided for traumatised populations as part of the refugee policy response, and what are the reasons behind the uncertainty around the governance and the content of these services? Therefore, this chapter focuses on the case of Syrians under Temporary Protection in Turkey (SuTP) between 2011 and 2018. The reasons for the current state of affairs are twofold. First, the psychosocial wellbeing of those who have escaped a humanitarian crisis has been a less addressed need in the international protection regimes in cases of mass influx. Second, most states view the provision of mental health and psychosocial services as a priority for their own citizens, and hence do not reserve the necessary financial and human resources for times of crisis, nor do they have access to coordinated action from the international community for these emergency situations. Since states (at least until the Global Compact for Refugees is in full force) have to rely mostly on their national resources for addressing the challenges of mass influx as a result of conflict, they are constrained by their existing legal, administrative and institutional framework. An analysis of the organisation and implementation of MHPSS delivery for the SuTP in Turkey reveals findings that could inform responses to challenges and opportunities for other contexts experiencing a mass influx of refugees.

Legal, administrative and institutional framework for receiving Syrians in Turkey

For decades, Turkey has been receiving those coming from Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia and Ethiopia, seeking international protection. However, due to the ‘geographical limitation’ that Turkey adopts while applying its commitments in line with the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (also called the 1951 Convention) and its additional 1967 Protocol, Turkey had remained aloof from introducing an extensive legislative, administrative and institutional framework for the provision of services to those seeking international protection up until 2013. In the absence of a binding international legal commitment, low levels of public visibility of those seeking international protection, and low public awareness about refugees, a dispersed legal and administrative framework shaped the governance of migration and international protection in Turkey. Even when the 450,000 Iraqis arrived in the 1990s, the mass influx was received and coped with as an urgent policy problem, yet temporary in nature.

At that time, aside from the 1994 Regulation (Regulation No. 1994/6169, 1994), there were no major institutional changes introduced to the legal framework for governing international protection. Therefore, Turkey’s initial response to receiving Syrians was shaped by the historical experience of a policy problem that had required urgent mobilisation for a situation that resolved relatively quickly. Accordingly, the construction and administration of the temporary accommodation centres and the governing of the relief efforts after 2011 were centralised around the Presidency of Disaster and Emergency Management (AFAD). As years passed, however, Syrians continued to arrive and international intergovernmental agencies and non-governmental organisations became part of the policy terrain. By early 2018, Turkey was hosting around 3.5 million Syrians and others who were seeking international protection, all with different needs and legal status. In 2013, Turkey adopted the Law on Foreigners and International Protection (LFIP) (United Nations, n.d.b), and as of March 2018, the Directorate General for Migration Management (DGMM) took over from AFAD for the governance of the temporary protection centres. In this overall transformation of the legal framework and the governing structure, the approach to MHPSS delivery to SuTP was also transformed. While the MHPSS had been provided by a variety of actors from international, governmental and non-governmental agencies with mostly project-based short-term activities, the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Ministry of Family and Social Policies (MFSP) assumed an increasingly central role. The MHPSS became part of the core of discussions and policy initiatives for all actors in the shifting policy paradigm from humanitarian assistance to development, as well as from emergency management to comprehensive social integration and social cohesion.

MHPSS and the international protection nexus in Turkey

Scholars increasingly emphasise that the experience of forced migration is without spatial and temporal boundaries. Most of the time, the duration of stay in the host state is u...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the editors and contributors
• Preface by Vamik Volkan
• Preface by Ivan Krastev
• Dreams to nightmares – welcoming culture, xenophobia and social trauma along the Balkan route: An introduction
• PART I Refugees in public policy and social representation: Introduction to Part I
• PART II Trauma and migration: Psychological aspects of forced migration and mental health
• PART III Child refugees: Introduction to Part III
• PART IV Helpers, volunteers and vicarious trauma: Introduction to Part IV
• Index