Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'People seeking asylum'

This thesis examines the stories that young people tell about becoming refugees and seeking asylum. It is a qualitative study based on 42 single narrative interviews, conducted in schools, public libraries and advocacy settings. The participants originated from 19 countries and ranged in age from 12-23 years, with four participants over 18 years. Stories represent a significant resource for asylum seekers, since the process of seeking asylum relies heavily on providing narrative testimony. Whilst there is an established field of literature focusing on the experiences of young refugees, little attention has been paid to the storied aspects of their lives. Beyond this, there are also significant gaps regarding young refugees’ journey experiences and the role of time in shaping their lives. This research seeks to fill these gaps by providing an in-depth study of the stories that young refugees tell and the ways in which themes of journeys and time feature in their accounts. The findings of this thesis are divided across three substantive themes, journeys, stories and time. Firstly, by examining participants’ accounts of being uprooted and in transit, the analysis demonstrates how migration journeys can be highly significant experiences for young refugees, shaping their lives long after their physical journey has ended. Secondly, this thesis highlights the significance of stories within the asylum system and the ways in which young people’s narrative and embodied accounts can come under scrutiny. Finally, this thesis points to the ways in which young refugees can experience a sense of being governed through time as they seek asylum. This thesis has sought to provide insights for both academic and policy audiences about the multiple aspects of insecurity that young refugees negotiate. Beyond this, the findings of this thesis demonstrate the creative and adaptive ways in which young people seek to forge more secure futures within contexts of displacement.

This study concerns social work practice with unaccompanied asylum seeking and refugee young people looked after by local authority Social Services Departments under s20 of the Children Act 1989. It examines the types of assistance offered by social workers that aids resettlement. Twenty nine social workers in four authorities were interviewed in relation to thirty four young people in their care. Each was asked to tell the story of one young person they were working with. The main aim of the study was to develop a detailed understanding of resettlement practice by social workers that addressed the young people's needs for practical assistance, emotional support, and companionship over a period of time, given their solitary circumstances after arrival in the United Kingdom. The interviews revealed that the social workers were guided by the young people's needs and capabilities towards three types of helping. The first, described in this study as 'humanitarian' practice, focused on practical 'outer world' assistance. The second, described as 'witnessing', focused on 'inner world' turbulence, helping the young people to manage uncertainty and distress, related primarily to past events. The third, described as 'confederacy' focused on the development of a protective friendship with the young people that was durable, long lasting and open ended. Each of these three types of helping appeared to be carried out in a particular 'domain' of practice, referred to in this study as the domains of cohesion, connection, and coherence. Each domain and each type of practice was considered by the respondents to be valuable. In addition to their practice being guided by the young people's needs and capabilities, many of them navigated across domains and between the different types of helping using their personal and professional experiences and their local cultures of working and learning.

This thesis describes a qualitative pilot research study that examines the experiences of UASYP from the Horn of Africa exiled in the UK. It focuses on the issues of adolescence and identity, taking a psychosocial perspective. There is currently limited information concerning the identity formation and psychosocial development of these particular groups of asylum seekers, who are forced to leave their countries alone largely due to conflicts and persecution. They represent a specific section of the refugee population, being that they are forced to leave their home and families to experience the transition from childhood to adulthood in exile without their families. Once resettled in the UK their multiple needs are then met by local authorities within the context of fostering or semi-independent care. Data was gathered from multiple sources: (i) semi-structured interviews with 15 UASYP aged between 15 in 17 (ii) analysis of existing research and (iii) analysis of relevant documents. The psychosocial wellbeing and identity construction of the UASYP was investigated through the application of an overarching theoretical framework. This framework combined the traditional psychological theories of adolescence and identity development along with Erikson's psychosocial theory and Bronfenbrenner's bio-ecological model. The aim was to gain an insight into risk factors and positive influences by applying Berkowitz's model and Papadopoulos's six phases of The Refugee Trauma and The Trauma Grid (AAD). My findings confirmed resilience to be the outcome of the multiplicity of positive relationships within different settings, from the micro to macro systems wherein, primitive and protective roles are encountered and relationships established with the UASYP's a) supervising social workers, b) peers/ school/ teachers c) foster carers/ key workers and d) community affiliates. Findings revealed that the UASYP selected unique elements from their background history, language, religion and culture, which are then employed as positive factors to influence and to develop buffers to deal with the adversities of separation, loss and racism. These were transformed as catalysts by the UASYP to arouse and encourage different levels of consciousness for the retrieval of these unique elements. These are employed to counteract any negative influences. The findings indicate that the UASYP made conscious decisions to move away from their initial feelings of rejection and being ostracised amongst different groups in their new settings. They did so until they reached the point where they felt motivated and able to counteract and reinforce their own preferences, not only in how they wanted to define themselves, but also to identify where they felt that they belonged in exile. This pilot study revealed that the UASYP, preferred to use their self-assigned title or category. Thus, in this context, it is their old ethnicity, which is seemingly employed to define their new identity in exile. Findings also revealed that the UASYP are separated from the majority and minority cultures of their home country during their pre-migration phase and repositioned in their new settings where they experience changes in their socio-political contexts. During the post-migration period, the UASYP constructed their ethnic identity within their new socio-political contexts, which encouraged them to choose a more dispassionate or rather impartial positioning. This pilot study challenges the existing notion, which has suggested that individuals within a multicultural society gravitate towards the majority culture, for refugee status is likely to condemn the UASYP to a life of hostility, confusion and mental ill health. The findings confirmed that despite the challenges, the containment of the UASYP within the ecological environment of the care system provides them with the necessary support, which benefits their psychosocial development and identity construction. The findings justify the conclusion that the formation of their ethnic identity is the combination of their historical, cultural and ethnic as well as religious backgrounds, and that these interface with the cultural climate of the UK society. The data from this pilot study can now be utilised to inform and influence practitioners, policy makers and researchers and will provide a useful resource for further research in a number of related fields.

Since 2001, Australia’s increasingly securitised and exclusionary asylum policy has been legitimated through a damaging discourse surrounding people who seek asylum. This discourse, reinforced by successive Australian Prime Ministers, has been instrumental in shaping policies which have a devastating human impact. While political elites across the West are distancing themselves from a discourse of inclusive multiculturalism, Australia continues to celebrate its multicultural success despite the ongoing tension between a rhetoric of inclusion and one justifying exclusion. Since discourse is both productive and reflective of the social world, shaping discourse can be understood as a means to shape reality. This thesis explores how discourse is constructed and reproduced through framing; a discursive practice that influences how certain issues are understood. The texts analysed are those in which Australian Prime Ministers and senior political figures defend policies of exclusion against people who seek asylum by boat as part of a broader policy vision for a Safe, Secure & Free Australia. In order to contrast the frames, narratives and discourses associated with exclusion, communications promoting the policy vision of an inclusive Multicultural Australia have also been analysed. The frames identified in the material reproduce particular narratives which help to maintain the hegemonic position of discourses which present Australia as a humanitarian, welcoming and inclusive multicultural society and situate people who seek asylum by boat as illegal, seeking an unfair advantage, and as a threat to national security. By identifying frames that consistently appear in the messaging of Australian political elites, we can understand how certain narratives have come to be accepted as truth.

This thesis explores how people struggle to make livable lives in the conditions of existence of seeking asylum in the UK. The study is based on ethnographic research, conversations and participant observation, with people seeking asylum in Manchester. Grounding the research in their narratives is a contribution to decolonizing knowledge and doing justice to the sentience of people who are marginalized and pathologized. The narratives are brought into dialogue with feminist and decolonial philosophy and political theory, and with empirical studies of 'refugeedom' from a number of disciplines, to produce a new field of connection from which to map the terrain involved in theorizing livability. While the whole thesis seeks to respond to the narratives, there is a detailed focus on three dimensions which participants emphasize as crucial to livability: settlement in Manchester; the prohibition of employment; the asylum application procedures. These are moments in which livability is claimed as both ethics and practice. From the perspective of the narratives and the ethics which permeate them, livability opens up into questions of recognition, social justice and care. People claim commonality: recognition as human, equality and inclusion in social goods, and care in public settings. These are the practical and ethical supports of livability. The narratives point also towards critiques of 'refugeedom', the policies and practices that form the discursive and material conditions within which people seeking asylum attempt to make livable lives.

The main theme of the thesis is the legal protection of unaccompanied asylum-seeking and separated children in the United Kingdom asylum and social care systems. The thesis investigates if the standard of legal protection conferred upon unaccompanied asylum-seeking and separated children in the United Kingdom asylum and social care systems including durable solutions meet international law standards, protect and safeguard separated children and young persons. The research achieves this by carrying out documentary research of pertinent literature, public documents, international human rights, refugee rights and child rights treaties; and United Kingdom domestic legislation. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted to generate data on the inner workings of legal protection in the United Kingdom, with specific focus on the childhood experiences of asylum and the impact of legal protection or its lack on the childhood experiences of unaccompanied children in the United Kingdom. The research involved interviews with former separated children, experts and professionals who implement the legal protection regime and policies. The thesis analyses the international treaty benchmark standards and norms for the legal protection of unaccompanied asylum seeking and separated children and examines the compliance of the UK with their legal provisions. It establishes the domestic legal standards of legal protection, and practice of child asylum determination and social care. The thesis argues for the international legal protection of unaccompanied and separated children based on a holistic system of international protection found in key international treaties chiefly the international bill of rights, the refugee Convention, the child rights Convention and the subsidiary protection framework in Europe. This results in obligations on the part of State Parties to the above international and regional treaties in this case the United Kingdom. It argues that the asylum and social care systems are equally responsible for the international legal protection obligations and should attain the objective through a best interest determination procedure that secures legal protection that is durable, while maintaining the human dignity of the unaccompanied child throughout the entire process.

The number of children seeking asylum alone in the UK and across Europe is increasing. Previous research has focused on the support unaccompanied children receive within children’s services, and highlighted their vulnerability and isolation. Limited research exists that considers their transition to adulthood, at which time the process of leaving local authority care may coincide with a need to re-engage with the immigration system in an attempt to achieve the right to remain in the UK permanently. This thesis therefore focuses on unaccompanied young people as they transition to adulthood. Focusing holistically on the social networks of the young people, this study is concerned with understanding the process of transition and its impact on the social worlds of the young people. Taking the life-course approach as iits conceptual framework, issues of time, space, structure and agency are emphasised. Based on interviews with both unaccompanied young people and professionals (accessed through statutory and voluntary services in one large urban local authority in the north of England) the findings suggest that unaccompanied young people’s social networks are active, complex and diverse, yet may be negatively impacted by uncertain and temporary immigration statuses. The findings illuminate previously unexplored aspects of unaccompanied young people’s social networks, including their continued embeddedness in multi-sited family networks. The findings also challenge current constructions of unaccompanied young people as vulnerable recipients of support, and repositions them as young people who provide care and support to others as they begin to develop adult identities.

Children and young people’s right to participate in the decisions made about them is enshrined in national and international Acts and Charters: the Children Act 1989 and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1999. This right takes on particular importance for Looked After Children and Young People, a frequently excluded group, as it concerns major decisions about their lives. This study sought to explore the views of 10 young people between the ages of 16 and 19 in looked after care on decision making in review and planning meetings. A critical realist grounded theory was deemed to be the most appropriate methodology for the research, partly because it allowed interviews and research directions to be led by the participants. Interviews and analyses yielded interesting and novel results but also reflected many themes that have been found in previous research. The core category generated by the research was the ongoing process of Pushing and Decision Making. The main categories that comprise that core category were: Becoming Active and Involved, Wanting more than just ‘Good Enough’, Making Oneself Heard and Coming of Age in the Care System. The core and four main categories are discussed with reference to other research into participation and decision making, and in terms of the young people getting their needs met within the context of the care system and corporate parenting.

Psychological research on the experiences of asylum seeking people has been predominantly focused on trauma and psychopathology, locating the distress within the individual. Exploring contextual factors may be a more appropriate approach to understanding distress generally, but particularly for asylum seeking people struggling with distinctive social-political issues. Theory and research on social capital has provided one particular understanding of the way in which social factors, such as social networks and features of social engagement, can influence psychological health and wellbeing. The aims of this study were to explore the social contexts of asylum seeking people, and more specifically social capital, in relation to psychological health. Nine Eritrean asylum seeking people were interviewed on their lived experience in the UK; seven of these interviews were carried out with an interpreter. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used in the exploration of shared themes in the accounts of participants. Six superordinate themes were outlined in the analyses. The themes encompass the impact of overarching social and legal restrictions on power in day-to-day lives and social experiences of the participants. Their lived experience in the UK is influenced by various social disadvantages that 'asylum-seeker' status places them in, factors related to positive well-being, known to function as buffers against psychological stress, such as a lack of access to marital and family relationships, lack of employment and financial resources for their social welfare, and other civic freedoms and rights. However their capacity to develop and access collective resources, such as social capital, and personal resources, including faith and spirituality, were also apparent from this study. Psychological approaches to support and intervention that are able to integrate social, material and political factors, are highlighted. Reflecting on the role of psychologists in relation to human rights abuses and social injustice is also suggested.

Asylum seeking provokes strong responses in political and social discourse. Churches in the UK are supporting those seeking asylum in a variety of ways. There has been little critical theological reflection on these practices to date and this thesis presents fragments to fill this gap. Situated methodologically within the field of Practical Theology, it explores the encounters between churches and people seeking asylum by creating a new interdisciplinary conversation between Forced Migration Studies, Biblical Studies and Theology. Asylum seeking in the UK is set within the context of the global migration-asylum nexus and a pervasive 'ecology of fear' is recognised as a significant underlying reason for the difficulties experienced by asylum seekers. Two distinct strands of biblical response to strangers are then identified. The first, exemplified in Ezra-Nehemiah, represents responses made from within an ecology of fear. The second, exemplified in Ruth and the pericope of the Syro-Phoenician Woman, represents responses made from within an alternative 'ecology of faith'. This thesis argues that understanding the ecology of fear and performing an ecology of faith challenges churches to continue, deepen and alter a range of their current practices.

My thesis on asylum dispersal is written within an emotionally charged atmosphere concerning immigration, asylum, multiculturalism and Islamic extremism. In this climate of unreasoned attitudes towards asylum seeking generally, my main aim was to qualitatively uivestigate, via one case study area - Romantown - the persistent policy and political problem of where to place asylum seekers.

Systematic Literature Review: Nine papers pertaining to the experiences of unaccompanied asylum-seeking youth in England and Ireland were critically reviewed. An interpretative meta-synthesis identified three main analytical themes: Ubiquity of threat, impacting on powerlessness and security; Tensions and resistance, highlighting assets and means of countering threat; and Growth and future (framed by loss), pointing to the role of loss as the young people acted forwards into their futures. A rigorous quality assessment of reviewed studies found important contextual factors tended to be neglected. Implications are discussed in terms of how clinical practice might best attend to how young people seeking asylum alone are attuned to multi-level and persistent threats inherent to the post-migratory environment. Research methodologies employing reflexive, contextualised frameworks are discussed as offering utility. Greater attendance to the impact of context, particularly immigration status and access to social capital, is needed. Research Report: Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to explore the sense-making of four young Afghan men during interviews focused on experiences of turning eighteen whilst subject to UK immigration control. Three super-ordinate themes were presented: 'It's on me: The push and pull of control', highlighting tensions and contradictions of power; 'The threat of having nothing and being no-one', pointing to experiential loss of meaning and purpose; and 'Finding a place for struggle and resistance', attending to purposeful responses to threat. Implications are discussed relating to the need for therapeutic endeavour to be cognisant of, and responsive to, broad contextual factors when working with this group, rendering visible aspects of power and bearing witness to moments of resistance in the face of ontological insecurity. Critical Appraisal: A reflexive overview of the research project contextualised.

Sweden, like Europe, has had an increased influx of people seeking asylum in recent years, instigating restrictive measures within the Swedish asylum regime. Simultaneously as the sustainability of settlement and housing policies for people seeking asylum has been the subject of large political debate, restrictive methods such as a minimum rights approach has been adopted, putting the Swedish asylum regime at the edge of the European Convention. In 2019, 25 years after its implementation, Sweden’s refugee reception system was amended. As of then, people seeking asylum who choose their own housing (EBO) in certain municipalities over assigned housing in accommodation facilities (ABO) are no longer entitled to state subsidies. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s discourse theory and Carol Bacchi’s policy analysis, What’s the Problem Represented to be, this thesis examines how the political discourse on refugee reception and EBO settlement has changed from the implementation of the LMA Act in 1994 to its amendment in 2019 by observing how the motifs of the implementation and amendment have been expressed, what underlying presumptions or assumptions such expressions hold, and what effects such discourse has. The study shows a discursive shift represented in the political discourse, portraying EBO settlement as contributing to societal degradation and in need of restrictions through reprisals. The main findings show that the discourse constructs an imagery of people seeking asylum as responsible for, and a threat to, Swedish welfare and societal structure. Moreover, the analysis displays a conceptualization of social sustainability as a matter of meeting the interest of the state, rather than the needs of the individual. In sum the study contributes in part to a deeper understanding of how political discourses shape the knowledge and conceptualization of people seeking asylum, the restrictive trajectory of Swedish asylum policy, and highlights the consequences of restrictive state bureaucracies for people seeking protection within Swedish borders.

Building on a small body of research that conceptualises unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people (UASC) as "active survivors" despite their vulnerability, this study aimed to: 1) investigate processes by which UASC develop and maintain resilience within the specific context of a rural county; and 2) develop understanding of the context-dependent nature of resilience, in terms of interactions between UASC coping styles and environmental variables. A narrative approach was adopted to explore UASC experience and meaning making. Three male UASCs aged 17-19 years participated in narrative interviews and completed The Resiliency Scales self-report questionnaires. Transcripts were subject to detailed thematic and structural narrative analysis. Five coping strategies were identified in UASC narratives: appreciating the positive; cultural distancing; suppression of reflection; externalising locus of control; and seeking personal agency (which itself included negotiation, non-compliance, being proactive, perseverance and having ambition). Key environmental influences were: school and relationships (which itself included social support and key adults). Two key findings were the interactions between agency and relationships, and between suppression and coherence. Recruitment and sample issues in research with 'hard to reach' groups are highlighted. Implications for professional practice with UASC based on an increased understanding of dynamics of resilience are discussed.

The purpose of this thesis is to understand how Danish and Swedish news media and governments framed “the refugee crisis” in the context of the Swedish implementation of border controls in 2015 and the removal of external border controls in 2017. We operationalize framing theory (Entman 1993) to understand the differences and similarities in the framing of "the refugee crisis” in Denmark and Sweden. While the main focus is media representations, policy documents are included in the study to deepen the analysis and understand the similarities and differences across migration policies. Through a quantitative content analysis of 259 newspaper articles from eight Danish and Swedish newspapers, a framing analysis of ten policy documents and a qualitative framing analysis of the overall frames in the news articles and policy documents, we identified a dialectic relation of power between media and political discourse in both countries. We found that issues defined and represented in policy documents tend to reflect the challenges that news media define and the other way around. Even though Danish and Swedish newspapers and policy documents highlight similar problems, our data indicates clear differences in migration policies, in the two countries, in terms of the framing of asylum seekers, refugees and political events in 2015.