The last four decades have seen a marked surge of interest in genocide studies. This surge, led by scholars such as Adam Jones, Henry Huttenbach, Alex Alvarez and Phil Clark, has illuminated previously unconsidered areas of study, such as the Holocaust’s place in a continuum of genocide (Huttenbach 1988), the challenge of transitional justice after genocide (Clark 2010), gender and genocide (Jones 2012), climate change as genocide (Alvarez 2017) and genocide as a state crime (Alvarez 2001). This interest has partly been driven by the increase in the number of states which are willing to use genocidal violence in order to gain power, for example, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and the gassing of the Kurds in Iraq (Totten and Parsons 2012). It has also been driven by new developments in technology that have resulted in the news about such events being heard more widely and more quickly; consider those who have used Twitter and other social media sites to inform the world what has been happening in Syria. Whilst a considerable amount of literature has been published that relates specifically to the Holocaust, especially by scholars such as Dan Stone (2018), studies of other genocides are also developing significant literature bases as a result of the work of people such as Philip Gourevitch (1999, 2014) and Elizabeth Neuffer (2002) on Rwanda and Bosnia, respectively, and Alexander Hinton (2005) on Cambodia. These and other studies have shed light on how genocide occurs (Bauman 1989; Shaw 2003; Straus 2006), the stages of genocide (Stanton 2019) and how the perpetrators are dealt with following genocide (Clark 2010; Arendt 2006; Karstedt 2018). Despite this burgeoning field of interest, however, little attention has been paid to what happens to genocide survivors after genocide, especially those who migrate to a different country.
In the main, studies that examine genocide come from a historical or psychological viewpoint, either chronicling the historical events that happened or concerning themselves with the motivations of perpetrators or bystanders. Until recently, the crime of genocide has been virtually ignored by all of the social sciences, with sociology largely ignoring genocide until the late 1970s (Fein 1990; Owens et al. 2013). Kaufman (1996) suggests that this neglect was due to epistemological limitations such as dispassion and value neutrality that the scientific method places upon sociology and sociological discourse. Fein (1990) suggests that there may have been some reluctance to study genocide due to the disciplinary and psychological barriers of the researchers but also that sociologists may have had concerns about upsetting or further traumatising survivors of genocide. Indeed, Gerson and Wolf suggest that sociology is marked by a “profound silence” in relation to the Holocaust. “Few sociologists, regardless of their religious or cultural identity, have focused their academic work on the Holocaust or post-Holocaust life” (2007, 3).
This lack of focus is also problematic in relation to migration, and Hoffman (1989) suggests that migration is a strangely ignored aspect of studies on the Holocaust. Migrants can carry with them a particular set of vulnerabilities and disadvantages. These vulnerabilities or disadvantages can interact with the other social statuses that they occupy, such as the vulnerability of being a ‘victim’ of torture in their home country, but being seen as an immigration ‘offender’ in the UK (McDonald and Erez 2007). Equally, qualifications which are not recognised in the host country are a disadvantage to the migrant (McDonald and Erez 2007).
Criminology, as a newer discipline, has focused until recently on ‘volume’ and ‘traditional’ crime such as burglary and individual rape and murder offences, and there is a growing recognition of the importance of the life afterwards in relation to offenders’ desistance of such crimes (Maruna 2017). Furthermore, victims’ recovery from ‘traditional’ crime has a significant literature base, particularly in relation to burglary (Maguire 1980; Coupe and Griffiths 1999) and gender-based crimes such as rape and sexual violence (Westmarland 2015). However, many victimological approaches are not appropriate for the study of genocide survivors; for example, positivistic approaches which consider the role of victims in their own victimisation (e.g. Amir 1971) would be wholly inappropriate for the study of genocide survivors. Equally, approaches that examine the routine behaviours of either offenders or victims are also inappropriate as these again seek to examine the behaviour of victims and consider who is most likely to be victimised. Both approaches are problematic because those who experience genocide have been targeted because of their identity (i.e. who they are, or whom they are thought to be). Therefore, the theories and concepts of such approaches would not aid our understanding of the experiences of genocide survivors in any meaningful way.
Using a different approach, some authors, such as Alex Alvarez (Alvarez 2001) and Dave Kauzlarich and others (Rothe and Kauzlarich 2014), have applied a criminological lens to the study of genocide, with Rothe and Kauzlarich, in particular, considering the victims of genocide. This research tends to come under the umbrella of what has become known as ‘Supranational Criminology’, dealing with not only genocide but crimes against humanity, people trafficking and state crimes. This interest, whilst positive, has been focused on the victims of genocide (i.e. those who died) and the event itself rather than those who survived and their life afterwards. These analyses of genocide have focused on attempting to explain the occurrence, timing or severity of genocide and mass killing (Owens et al. 2013) or defining the act of genocide (Straus 2001), the individual cases of genocide and why they happened (Bauman 1989; Browning 1998; Des Forges 1999) and how the aftermath is managed in relation to justice (Clark 2009, 2010). Arguably, this has been at the expense of survivors of genocide who often remain the subjects of research only in terms of the psychological effects of genocide, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Kellerman 2001).
Focusing on only the psychological effects of trauma ignores the wider context which may well influence how people react to trauma (Schwartz Lee 1988). Therefore, it is important that the life afterwards be examined from a sociological point of view as, whilst psychology can aid understanding of the individual pathology of the survivor, a sociological approach can uncover further knowledge and understanding of how the individual sees himself/herself in society and how society responds to the individual. Meierhenrich (2007) suggests that ‘cultural trauma’ operates alongside psychological trauma, with the concept of cultural trauma recognising the collective manifestation of trauma and underlining the distinction between individual experiences of trauma and the processes and mechanisms which are involved in the social construction of trauma. In discussing the genocide in Rwanda, Meierhenrich argues that “the trauma of the genocide was not simply inherent in the events of 1994, but to a large extent created in its aftermath, when it was subject to manipulation by social actors” (2007, 559). For that reason, an exploration of the wider context in relation to genocide survival is essential. More specifically, sociological theory can illuminate the processes by which survivors of genocide re-establish their lives and resettle into new communities. Often, survivors who migrate to the UK arrive with nothing except the clothes they are wearing, and on their own with no or little social network available to them. Furthermore, many survivors come from countries which are linguistically and culturally very different to the UK (Kushner 1999); therefore, as forced migrants, they arrive into a wholly new culture with no preparation. Yet despite this, the vast majority of survivors appear to rebuild and recover remarkably well. Ayalon et al. (2007) acknowledge that there has been little attempt to understand how and why the majority of Holocaust survivors were able to rebuild these adaptive lives and this can be applied to genocide survivors more broadly.
Furthermore, approaches that consider how social structures can affect the recovery of genocide survivors, and those that examine the responses of the state or powerful bodies to victims, could illuminate genocide survivors’ experiences. In particular, those which consider how individuals recover and rebuild their lives using social networks, and where power lies within those networks, could aid understanding of the process of the re-establishment of life following genocide. Hence, the idea of social capital—that is, the ability of the individual to draw upon those resources available through his/her social network—has value. There are three key thinkers on social capital: Robert Putnam, James Coleman and Pierre Bourdieu. Putnam’s and Coleman’s perspectives share many similarities and are concerned with social capital and community, and the nature of networks in communities and how they facilitate the success or otherwise of a community. In this context, success is seen as low crime rates, high educational performance and high economic productivity. However, as the issues of language acquisition, cultural and structural acculturation, and ‘ways of talking’ (i.e. the different ways in which stories are told) may be just as important for re-establishing lives after genocide as those strong social networks, it is argued that Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas of field, habitus and social capital may be useful as a lens through which to understand genocide survivors’ experiences.
Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’ (Bourdieu 1993) allows for an exploration of how survivors create networks to begin with, how they may struggle for dominance in certain networks and why this struggle for dominance is important. Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu 1977) is the individual’s way of being and his/her understanding of his/her place in the world and how to act in it. Both of these concepts are the building blocks of Bourdieu’s theory of social cap...