Journal articles on the topic 'Post-resettlement evaluation'

As natural disasters have occurred frequently in recent years, disaster-induced migration has become inevitable. People normally attach great importance to the speed and results of post-disaster reconstruction while ignoring the subjective well-being (SWB) of disaster victims, which represents their quality of life and emotional conditions. Based on a questionnaire survey of 256 respondents from Yancheng’s 17 centralised resettlement communities established after a hurricane in 2016, we used ordinal logistic regression models to discuss the SWB of disaster-induced migrants and its main influencing factors. We found that the SWB of disaster-induced migrants is influenced by resettlement housing conditions and community built and social environments. In light of the housing resettlement conditions, the findings show that disaster migrants are likely to feel happier if they are satisfied with the housing resettlement allocation mode, housing resettlement quality and the living space, and the more housing expenditure related to the resettlement is, the less happy they tend to be. In regard to the community environment, it is found that disaster migrants’ evaluation of community facilities and participation does not have a significant impact on their happiness, but the more highly rated community hygiene and the cadre–mass relationship are, the happier they tend to be.

In September 1983, a joint-funded occupational therapy post was established as a pilot project by Wandsworth Health Authority and Wandsworth Social Services to bridge the gap between discharge from hospital to resettlement home. In February 1986, a project was undertaken to determine the value of this post in the light of the new community emphasis on health care. This highlighted the importance of the existing service and the need to develop it further through the establishment of five similar posts.

Monitoring the living and production standards of resettlers due to hydraulic engineering is at the core of the evaluation of the effectiveness of resettlement and providing post-relocation support. In the past two decades, 0.196 million individuals were relocated outside of the reservoir area (out-resettlers) because of the construction of Three Gorges Dam. In 2019, large-scale tracking and monitoring of resettlers in 1371 households in 122 villages and 12 provinces was conducted by using the methods of stratified sampling, equidistant random sampling, and simple random sampling. The status of out-resettlers from the Three Gorges Reservoir area was compared with that of local residents in resettlement areas and nearby-resettlers based on the production–living–social security–social integration–satisfaction perspective. The results show that the living and production conditions of out-resettlers have significantly improved, and their income and consumption were positively correlated with the development level of the resettlement area. More than 90% of out-resettlers have adapted to local languages, cultural customs, and living habits. Out-resettlers have the highest satisfaction with infrastructure construction and public service facilities, at more than 90%, and the lowest satisfaction with the availability of arable land, at approximately 80%. This study can provide a reference for follow-up work on the Three Gorges Project.

This article is about women caught in the cycle of persistent offending, breach and recall. We consider the resettlement challenges faced by this group of women and the extent to which these challenges can be met by the criminal justice system. We reflect on the impact of the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 and of statutory post-sentence supervision on the speed of the revolving door between custody and the community. The article draws on some data from an ongoing evaluation of a supported accommodation project for women leaving prison to illustrate its argument. We also question the extent to which the probation service alone has the tools needed to reduce the likelihood of recall and return to prison and identify the importance of factors such as sentencing law and policy and the provision of housing and health services.

An objective evaluation of users’ long-term satisfaction with the post-disaster permanent housing provided is important for judging the successes or failures of housing reconstruction programs. Focussing on four resettlement sites built via the REKOMPAK program after the 2010 Merapi eruption, this paper examines the users’ long-term satisfaction with the provided housing, and explores how their satisfaction level relates to their demographic characteristics and level of participation in the reconstruction processes. The results show that the households are in overall satisfied with the present housing. Their overall satisfaction level is statistically positively associated with household income, but not their level of participation and other demographic characteristics. These findings provide evidence on a satisfactory outcome in the long-term for the REKOMPAK, a community-based reconstruction program that was implemented in Indonesia since 2004, and a useful insight for local authorities, humanitarian and other agencies involved in post-disaster reconstruction program.

BackgroundRefugee children have often experienced traumas and are at significant risk of developing mental health problems, such as symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety, which can continue for years after resettlement. The Accompanied refugeeS In Sweden Trial (ASsIST) aims to evaluate a community-based intervention, called ‘Teaching Recovery Techniques’ (TRT), for accompanied refugee minors experiencing PTSD symptoms.Methods/designA cluster randomised controlled trial will be conducted in which participants will be randomly allocated to one of the two possible arms: the intervention arm (n=113) will be offered the TRT programme and the waitlist-control arm (n=113) will receive services as usual, followed by the TRT programme around 20 weeks later. Outcome data will be collected at three points: pre-intervention (T1), post-intervention (T2; c.8 weeks after randomisation) and follow-up (T3; c.20 weeks after randomisation).Ethics and disseminationEthical approval was granted by the Regional Ethical Review Board in Uppsala (Ref. 2018/382) (24th February 2019). Results will be published in scientific journals.Trial registration detailsISRCTN17754931. Prospectively registered on 4th June 2019.

BackgroundThe transition from prison to community is difficult for prisoners with mental illness. Critical time intervention (CTI) is designed to provide intensive support to meet health, social care and resettlement needs through close working between client and key worker pre, and up to 6 weeks post, release.ObjectivesTo establish whether or not CTI is effective in (1) improving engagement of discharged male prisoners who have mental illness with community mental health teams (CMHTs) and (2) providing practical support with housing, finance and re-establishing social networks.Trial designA multicentre, parallel-group randomised controlled trial, with follow-up at 6 weeks and at 6 and 12 months. A subset of prisoners and case managers participated in a complementary qualitative study.SettingEight English prisons.ParticipantsOne hundred and fifty adult male prisoners, convicted or remanded, cared for by mental health in-reach teams and diagnosed with severe mental illness, with a discharge date within 6 months of the point of recruitment.InterventionParticipants were randomised to either the intervention or the control (treatment as usual). The intervention group was assigned a case manager who assessed mental and physical health before and following release, made appropriate links to health, housing and financial services and supported the re-establishment of family/peer contact.OutcomeThe primary outcome measure was engagement with a CMHT 6 weeks post discharge. Secondary outcomes included contact with mental health services at 6 and 12 months. A health economic evaluation was undertaken using service contact at the follow-up time points. We were unable to assess the intervention’s effect on reoffending and longer-term health-care use because of study delays.ResultsOne hundred and fifty prisoners were recruited: 72 were randomised to the intervention and 78 were randomised to the control. Engagement with teams at 6 weeks was 53% for the intervention group compared with 27% for the control group [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.13% to 0.78%;p = 0.012]. At 6 months’ follow-up, intervention participants showed continued increase in engagement with teams compared with control participants (95% CI 0.12% to 0.89%;p = 0.029); there were no significant differences at 12 months. Increased engagement resulted in higher levels of service use and costs for the intervention than for the control. Qualitative data showed the intervention group reporting better continuity of care and improved access to services.ConclusionThe intervention significantly improved contact with services at 6 weeks, although at a higher cost than the control. This is important as, in the days and weeks following release, recently released individuals are at a particularly high risk of suicide and drug overdose. Further research is required to establish how teams can better maintain contact with clients when the intervention ends.Future workFurther studies are indicated for groups with different needs, for example women, young prisoners and those in police custody, and at other transition points, for example following arrest and short-term custody, and at points of transition between different mental health services.Trial registrationCurrent Controlled Trials ISRCTN98067793.FundingThis project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Services and Delivery Research programme and will be published in full inHealth Services and Delivery Research; Vol. 5, No. 8. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.

BackgroundThe impact of community resettlement on the quality of life of people with long-term psychiatric disorders, is evaluated in a longitudinal study.MethodA repeated measures design was used to examine the sensitivity of an adapted version of Lehman's Quality of Life Interview in evaluating change. Completed interviews were carried out with 29 of the original cohort at one year post-discharge. The relationship between quality of life and ratings of client functioning is explored.ResultsSignificant changes in the objective quality of life indices include improved living conditions (F = 40.00, P < 0.001), higher levels of social contact (F = 29.52, P < 0.01) and increased leisure activities (F = 4.57, P < 0.05). Apart from increased satisfaction with living situation (F = 6.94, P < 0.01), there were no significant changes in the subjective indices. Ratings of psychiatric state and social functioning did not significantly correlate with global quality of life at one year post-discharge.ConclusionsConcerns in relation to the sensitivity of life satisfaction ratings in evaluating programme interventions are raised.

Liveability assessments of informal urban settlements are scarce. In India, a number of slum upgrading schemes have been implemented over the last decades aiming at better living conditions. However, these schemes rarely consider improvement in liveability as an explicit criterion, assuming that better physical conditions and the provision of basic services inevitably lead to better liveability. We use Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) to analyse liveability in four different informal settlements in Pune (India). We compare the liveability by conducting semi-structured interviews with residents and by analysing them in individual and aggregated FCMs. Each settlement represents an archetypical form of the upgradation process: non-upgraded (base case), in-situ upgraded, relocated, and temporary resettlement. The FCMs show that the liveability indicators availability of community space, proximity to public transportation, feeling of belonging, and good relationship with neighbours and community are central elements of these neighbourhoods’ liveability. The results suggest that upgradation may lead to an improved overall liveability but can also reduce it if not designed properly. The fostering of community agency, an integration of the neighbourhood into the formal city fabric, and the maintaining of cohesion during the shift from horizontal to vertical living emerged as critical factors. To ensure sustainable integration of liveability considerations in slum upgrading schemes, we suggest using indicators well-adapted to the local context, co-created with local experts and stakeholders, as well as periodic post-occupancy liveability evaluations.

Currently, potentials of spatial planning in disaster risk mitigation have not yet been fully tapped, especially in the context of managed retreat regarding both inhabitants and infrastructure in hazard prone areas. Retreat as a development opportunity in adjusting spatial patterns, diverging urban growth, reducing risks in pre- and post-disasters, achieving urban resilience and “Build Back Better” is undervalued. Besides little success achieved so far, there is a lack of context-specific lessons learnt, particularly in how to prioritize planned retreat. In this paper we attempt to investigate potential barriers, challenges and opportunities of disaster risk-related retreat in both developing and developed countries. Using several country studies, we review and categorise retreat strategies in different development settings and disaster contexts and highlight comparative discussions of both reactive and proactive retreat strategies. We argue that managed retreat can be an effective spatial resilience strategy in disaster mitigation. We propose to examine success factors of retreat, its indicators and criteria, a balance with on-site upgrading and an application of retreat typologies. We emphasise critical aspects including the enhancement of institutional capacity in risk governance, the adoption of legally binding hazard maps and hazard-controlled land use, especially prior to disasters. We vote for embedding of affordable housing with planned retreat schemes and sustaining resettlement sites with viable livelihood strategies, and finally monitoring and evaluating impacts of retreat schemes along with urban development and livelihood performance. We also emphasise community-driven retreat strategies with participation mechanism to ensure inhabitants’ concerns in retreat planning processes to its local context.

Abstract Background In 2015, 162,877 persons sought asylum in Sweden, 35,369 of whom were unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs). Refugee children, especially URMs, have often experienced traumas and are at significant risk of developing mental health problems, such as symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety, which can continue years after resettlement. The Swedish UnaccomPanied yOuth Refugee Trial (SUPpORT) aims to evaluate a community-based intervention, called Teaching Recovery Techniques (TRT), for refugee youth experiencing PTSD symptoms. Methods/design A randomised controlled trial will be conducted in which participants will be randomly allocated to one of two possible arms: the intervention arm (n = 109) will be offered the TRT programme, and the waitlist-control arm (n = 109) will receive services as usual, followed by the TRT programme around 20 weeks later. Outcome data will be collected at three points: pre-intervention (T1), post-intervention (T2; about 8 weeks after randomisation) and follow-up (T3; about 20 weeks after randomisation). Discussion This study will provide knowledge about the effect and efficiency of a group intervention for URMs reporting symptoms of PTSD in Sweden. Trial registration ISRCTN, ISRCTN47820795. Prospectively registered on 20 December 2018.

Abstract Background The disruption of massive refugee evacuations in the fall of 2021 had subsequent downstream effects on the health care systems affected by such sudden human evacuations. Our 923-bed tertiary care facility in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area admitted several refugees with acute measles infection. Gaps in surveillance for identifying infectious pathogens in our emergency department were identified and mitigation strategies were implemented in order to more rapidly identify suspected subsequent cases. Partnership with our local and state health departments were imperative in successfully identifying exposed persons, evaluating risk factors and administering post-exposure prophylaxis for at risk exposed persons. Methods Infection Preventionists identified exposed patients and team members, based on shared air spaces and time to include two hours after the infectious patient had left the area or had been placed on proper precautions. Following CDC and local health department guidance, over 500 charts of exposed patients were reviewed by a multidisciplinary team of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and infection preventionists. Results Over 90 patients met criteria for and received post-exposure prophylaxis. 10 visitors, also refugees, were also given post-exposure prophylaxis. Standard operating procedures for hospital based measles exposure were further solidified through this exposure procedure. Written and verbal communications were updated for team members, patients and the community. No secondary cases of measles were seen in the hospitalized patients or in the community at large over the following 28 day observation period after last exposure. Numerous more cases of measles were noted in the refugee population evacuated over the following several weeks until MMR vaccination was widely distributed. Conclusion Consideration of infectious diseases in refugees with significant infectious exposure burden is imperative during times of massive refugee evacuations. Vaccination of refugees during evacuation and prior to resettlement is imperative. Evaluation for highly contagious diseases such as measles must be forefront in clinicians’ minds when encountering massive refugee evacuations. Disclosures All Authors: No reported disclosures.

Abstract Background Australia is an ethnically diverse nation with one of the largest refugee resettlement programs worldwide. Evidence suggests that although the risk of developing mental disorders in culturally linguistically diverse (CALD) adolescents may be elevated, professional help-seeking in CALD youth is low. This study sought to evaluate the face-to-face teen (tMHFA) and Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) training with a CALD focus, which aimed at improving mental health literacy (MHL) and skills in youth and adults assisting adolescents with mental health problems. Methods An uncontrolled pre-, post-, and follow-up design was used to measure improvement in MHL measures in year 10 students and adults. Results A total of 372 year 10 students from 2 high schools were trained. 308 responded to the pre-training questionnaire, 220 responded to the post-training questionnaire, and 256 completed the 3-month follow-up questionnaire. A total of 34 adults were trained, 32 responded to the pre-questionnaire and 31 responded to the post-training questionnaire and 20 completed the 3-month follow-up questionnaire. Following training, students were more likely to endorse ‘helpful’ adults as valid sources of help (p < 0.001) and these gains were maintained at follow-up (p < 0.01). Significantly higher levels of concordant (helpful) helping intentions were found after training (p < 0.01), and this was maintained at follow-up (p < 0.05). Significant lower levels of discordant (harmful) helping intentions were found after training (p < 0.001), and this was maintained at follow-up (p < 0.01). A significant improvement in adults’ knowledge of youth mental health problems and Youth Mental Health First Aid was noted from pre- to post-training (p < 0.01) and was maintained at follow-up (p < 0.01). Confidence when helping a young person with mental health problems increased significantly after training (p < 0.001) and this was maintained at follow-up (p < 0.05). Conclusion Our findings indicated the training led to an improvement in a number of measures of MHL and helpful intentions of both the adolescents and adults evaluated. These results indicate that CALD tMHFA and YMHFA are a recommended way of upskilling those trained and thereby leading to the improvement youth mental health in areas with high proportion of ethnically diverse groups.

This study identifies and analyzes the biophysical and environmental aspects of the environment, potentials and constraints, and then evaluates the post-mining reclamation land use that will be used for Other Use Areas (APL), the Residential Infrastructure Facility. Based on the Mining Closure Plan (RPT) on the utilization of former coal mine land at Air Laya Tanjung Enim, Klawas reclamation land use plan for Resettlement Facility and Zoning Infrastructures (Zone 2) while Suban reclamation land use plan for Productive Research area. Analysis in this research are scoring, SWOT and map overlay such as area function analysis and land suitability analysis based on physical condition of existing land. The result of this research is land suitability level for Residential Infrastructure Facility in Klawas, suitable land equal to 12% or 38 ha while 98% unfit or 258,7 ha from total area of 277,8 ha. Terms of land suitability in Klawas research area including Marginal (S3) with total scores of 80. where climate condition support with average temperature 24oC and rainfall 23,93 - 27,87 mm / day, slope of flat slope approaching water level river 0 - 3%, complex geological structure there are anticline in the form of fault and fracture, soil type Alluvial and Latosol, there are many aquifer with shallow depth to medium, there is vulnerability of geological disaster in the form of mass movement of soil / rock, flood, erosion and radiation exposure TENORM of moderate intensity. The results of land use evaluation for the Klawas reclamation area are more suitable for Freshwater Fishery Cultivation area than for Residential Infrastructure Facility area. Land tenure rate for Residential Infrastructure Facility in Suban, suitable land equal to 76 % or 237 ha while unsuitable 24% or 105 ha of total area of 342 ha. Conditions of land suitability in Suban's research area include Match (S2) with a total scores of 130. Climatic conditions support the average air temperature of 24°C and rainfall of 23.93 - 27.87 mm / day, the slope of flat slope is 3 - 8% there is no anticline structure in the form of fault, Andosol and Podsolic soil types, there is a shallow shallow depth of aquifer, no geological disaster vulnerability and low intensity TENORM radiation exposure. The results of the land-use evaluation for the Suban reclamation area are more suitable for the Residential Infrastructure area rather than for Productive Research area.

This study identifies and analyzes the biophysical and environmental aspects of the environment, potentials and constraints, and then evaluates the post-mining reclamation land use that will be used for Other Use Areas (APL), the Residential Infrastructure Facility. Based on the Mining Closure Plan (RPT) on the utilization of former coal mine land at Air Laya Tanjung Enim, Klawas reclamation land use plan for Resettlement Facility and Zoning Infrastructures (Zone 2) while Suban reclamation land use plan for Productive Research area. Analysis in this research are scoring, SWOT and map overlay such as area function analysis and land suitability analysis based on physical condition of existing land. The result of this research is land suitability level for Residential Infrastructure Facility in Klawas, suitable land equal to 12% or 38 ha while 98% unfit or 258,7 ha from total area of 277,8 ha. Terms of land suitability in Klawas research area including Marginal (S3) with total scores of 80. where climate condition support with average temperature 24oC and rainfall 23,93 - 27,87 mm / day, slope of flat slope approaching water level river 0 - 3%, complex geological structure there are anticline in the form of fault and fracture, soil type Alluvial and Latosol, there are many aquifer with shallow depth to medium, there is vulnerability of geological disaster in the form of mass movement of soil / rock, flood, erosion and radiation exposure TENORM of moderate intensity. The results of land use evaluation for the Klawas reclamation area are more suitable for Freshwater Fishery Cultivation area than for Residential Infrastructure Facility area. Land tenure rate for Residential Infrastructure Facility in Suban, suitable land equal to 76 % or 237 ha while unsuitable 24% or 105 ha of total area of 342 ha. Conditions of land suitability in Suban's research area include Match (S2) with a total scores of 130. Climatic conditions support the average air temperature of 24°C and rainfall of 23.93 - 27.87 mm / day, the slope of flat slope is 3 - 8% there is no anticline structure in the form of fault, Andosol and Podsolic soil types, there is a shallow shallow depth of aquifer, no geological disaster vulnerability and low intensity TENORM radiation exposure. The results of the land-use evaluation for the Suban reclamation area are more suitable for the Residential Infrastructure area rather than for Productive Research area.

Background: With reports of widespread failures in South Africa’s land reform programmes, the levels of policy uncertainty in the political rhetoric that influences land reform have been increasing. Since 1994 policy targets to transfer land to black farmers have not been met. Of the 2005 target to transfer about 25 million ha of commercial farmland to black farmers by 2014, less than 5 million ha. have been transferred for commercial use. Some studies report failure rates in resettlement projects of up to 90%. To account for the failures, revisions of policies and amendments to legislations have been proposed within a political environment that is becoming increasingly intolerant to slow progress in land transfers and to resettlement failures.Aim: Against this environment, this paper presents a typology for understanding and evaluating important elements of the land reform project in order to influence progress in the process.Setting: The study adopts a historical review of land reform processes in post-colonial Kenya and Zimbabwe in order to identify potential challenges and key lessons for South Africa.Methods: Hence, using institutional and historical analytical lenses in exploring different narratives, the paper reviews reported failures and successes in land reform policy cases from the selected countries. From an institutional framework, prevalent social institutions and key lessons from Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa, a typology for evaluating important elements of the land reform process in South Africa is developed and discussed. Additionally, a review of global data collected on average sizes of farms in different regions of the world is provided as evidence to support propositions of what would constitute efficient farmland size ranges for small to medium commercial farms in South Africa.Results and conclusion: A proposition is made on how to use the typology to guide policy and research interventions to reduce failures and promote successful cases in different areas of the land reform process in South Africa, and possibly other similar contexts.

Introduction Nun habe ich Euch genug geschrieben, diesen Brief wenn sei [sic] lesen würden, dann würde ich den Genickschuß bekommen.Now I have written you enough, this letter if they would read it, I would get the neck shot. (M., all translations from German sources and quotations by the author) When the German soldier Otto M. wrote these lines from Russia to his family on 3 September 1943 during the Second World War, he knew that his war letter would not be subject to the National Socialist censorship apparatus. The letter contains, inter alia, detailed information about the course of the war on the front, troop locations, and warnings about the Nazi regime. M., as he wrote in the letter, smuggled it past the censorship via a “comrade”. As a German soldier, M. was a member of the Volksgemeinschaft—a National Socialist concept that drew a “racist and anti-Semitic borderline” (Wildt 48)—and was thus not socially excluded due to his status. Nevertheless, in the sentence quoted above, M. anticipates possible future consequences of his deviant actions, which would be carried out by “them”—potentially leading to his violent death. This article investigates how social and societal exclusion is brought forth by everyday media practices such as writing letters. After an introduction to the thesis under discussion, I will briefly outline the linguistic research on National Socialism that underlies the approach presented. In the second section, the key concepts of agency and dispositif applied in this work are discussed. This is followed by two sections in which infrastructural and interactional practices of exclusion are analysed. The article closes with some concluding remarks. During the Second World War, Wehrmacht soldiers and their relatives could not write and receive letters that were not potentially subject to controls. Therefore, the blunt openness with which M. anticipated the brutal sanctions of behavioural deviations in the correspondence quoted above was an exception in the everyday practice of war letter communication. This article will thus pursue the following thesis: private communication in war letters was subject to specific discourse conditions under National Socialism, and this brought forth excluding agency, which has two intertwined readings. Firstly, “excluding” is to be understood as an attribute of “agency” in the sense of an acting entity that either is included and potentially excludes or is excluded due to its ascribed agency. For example, German soldiers who actively participated in patriotic service were included in the Volksgemeinschaft. By contrast, Jews or Communists, to name but a few groups that, from the perspective of racist Nazi ideology, did not contribute to the community, were excluded from it. Such excluding agencies are based on specific practices of dispositional arrangement, which I refer to as infrastructural exclusion of agency. Secondly, excluding agency describes a linguistic practice that developed under National Socialism and has an equally stabilising effect on it. Excluding agency means that agents, and hence protagonists, are excluded by means of linguistic mitigation and omission. This second reading emphasises practices of linguistic construction of agency in interaction, which is described as interactional exclusion of agency. In either sense, exclusion is inextricably tied to the notion of agency, which is illustrated in this article by using data from field post letters of the Second World War. Social exclusion, along with its most extreme manifestations under fascism, is both legitimised and carried out predominantly through discursive practices. This includes for the public domain, on the one hand, executive language use such as in laws, decrees, orders, court hearings, and verdicts, and on the other hand, texts such as ideological writings, speeches, radio addresses, folk literature, etc. Linguistic research on National Socialism and its mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion has long focussed on the power of a regulated public use of language that seemed to be shaped by a few protagonists, most notably Hitler and Goebbels (Schlosser; Scholl). More recent works, however, are increasingly devoted to the differentiation of heterogeneous communities of practice, which were primarily established through discursive practices and are manifested accordingly in texts of that time (Horan, Practice). Contrary to a justifiably criticised “exculpation of the speakers” (Sauer 975) by linguistic research, which focusses on language but not on situated, interactional language use, such a perspective is increasingly interested in “discourse in National Socialism, with a particular emphasis on language use in context as a shared, communicative phenomenon” (Horan, Letter 45). To understand the phenomenon of social and societal exclusion, which was constitutive for National Socialism, it is also necessary to analyse those discursive practices of inclusion and exclusion through which the speakers co-constitute everyday life. I will do this by relating the discourse conditions, based on Foucault’s concept of dispositif (Confessions 194), to the agency of the correspondents of war letters, i.e. field post letters. On Agency and Dispositif Agency and dispositif are key concepts for the analysis of social exclusion, because they can be applied to analyse the situated practices of exclusion both in terms of the different capacities for action of various agents, i.e. acting entities, and the inevitably asymmetrical arrangement within which actions are performed. Let me first, very briefly, outline some linguistic conceptions of agency. While Ahearn states that “agency refers to the socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (28) and thus conceives agency as a potential, Duranti understands agency “as the property of those entities (i) that have some degree of control over their own behavior, (ii) whose actions in the world affect other entities’ (and sometimes their own), and (iii) whose actions are the object of evaluation (e.g. in terms of their responsibility for a given outcome)” (453). Deppermann considers agency to be a means of social and situational positioning: “‘agency’ is to capture properties of the subject as agent, that is, its role with respect to the events in which it is involved” (429–30). This is done by linguistic attribution. Following Duranti, this analysis is based on the understanding that agency is established by the ascription of action to an entity which is thereby made or considered accountable for the action. This allows a practice-theoretical reference to Garfinkel’s concept of accountability and identifies agentive practices as “visibly-rational-and-reportable-for-all-practical purposes” (7). The writing of letters in wartime is one such reflexive discursive practice through which agents constitute social reality by means of ascribing agency. The concept of semantic roles (Fillmore; von Polenz), offers another, distinctly linguistic access to agency. By semantic roles, agency in situated interaction is established syntactically and semantically. Put simply, a distinction is made between an Agent, as someone who performs an action, and a Patient, as someone to whom an action occurs (von Polenz 170; semantic roles such as Agent, Patient, Experiencer, etc. are capitalised by convention). Using linguistic data from war letters, this concept is discussed in more detail below. In the following, “field post” is considered as dispositif, by which Foucault means a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions – in short, the said as much as the unsaid. Such are the elements of the apparatus [dispositif]. The apparatus [dispositif] itself is the system of relations that can be established between these elements. (Foucault, Confessions 194) The English translation of the French “dispositif” as “apparatus” encourages an understanding of dispositif as a rather rigid structure. In contrast, the field post service of the Second World War will be used here to show how such dispositifs enable practices of exclusion or restrict access to practices of inclusion, while these characteristics themselves are in turn established by practices or, as Foucault calls them, procedures (Foucault, Discourse). An important and potentially enlightening notion related to dispositif is that of agencement, which in turn is borrowed from Deleuze and Guattari and was further developed in particular in actor-network theory (Çalışkan and Callon; Gherardi). What Çalışkan and Callon state about markets serves as a general description of agencement, which can be defined as an “arrangement of heterogeneous constituents that deploys the following: rules and conventions; technical devices; metrological systems; logistical infrastructures; texts, discourses and narratives …; technical and scientific knowledge (including social scientific methods), as well as the competencies and skills embodied in living beings” (3). This resembles Foucault’s concept of dispositif (Foucault, Confessions; see above), which “denotes a heterogeneous ensemble of discursive and nondiscursive elements with neither an originary subject not [sic] a determinant causality” (Coté 384). Considered morphosemantically, agencement expresses an important interrelation: in that it is derived from both the French agencer (to construct; to arrange) and agence (agency; cf. Hardie and MacKenzie 58) and is concretised and nominalised by the suffix -ment, agencement elegantly integrates structure and action according to Giddens’s ‘duality of structure’. While this tying aspect certainly contributes to a better understanding of dispositional arrangements and should therefore be considered, agencement, as applied in actor-network theory, emphasises above all “the fact that agencies and arrangements are not separate” (Çalışkan and Callon) and is, moreover, often employed to ascribe agency to material objects, things, media, etc. This approach has proven to be very fruitful for analyses of socio-technical arrangements in actor-network theory and practice theory (Çalışkan and Callon; Gherardi). However, within the presented discourse-oriented study on letter writing and field post in National Socialism, a clear analytical differentiation between agency and arrangement, precisely in order to point out their interrelation, is essential to analyse practices of exclusion. This is why I prefer dispositif to agencement as the analytical concept here. Infrastructural Exclusion of Agency in Field Post Letters In the Second World War, writing letters between the “homeland” and the “frontline” was a fundamental everyday media practice with an estimated total of 30 to 40 billion letters in Germany (Kilian 97). War letters were known as field post (Feldpost), which was processed by the field post service. The dispositif “field post” was, in opposition to the traditional postal service, subject to specific conditions regarding charges, transport, and above all censorship. No transportation costs arose for field post letters up to a weight of 250 grams. Letters could only be sent by or to soldiers with a field post number that encoded the addresses of the field post offices. Only soldiers who were deployed outside the Reich’s borders received a field post number (Kilian 114). Thus, the soldiers were socially included as interactants due to their military status. The entire organisation of the field post was geared towards enabling members of the Volksgemeinschaft to communicatively shape, maintain, and continue their social relationships during the war (Bergerson et al.). Applying Foucault, the dispositif “field post” establishes selection and exclusion mechanisms in which “procedures of exclusion” (Discourse 52) become manifest, two of which are to be related to the field post: “exclusion from discourse” and “scarcity of speaking subjects” (Spitzmüller and Warnke 73). Firstly, “procedures of exclusion ensure that only certain statements can be made in discourse” (Spitzmüller and Warnke 73). This exclusion procedure ought to be implemented by controlling and, ultimately, censoring field post letters. Reviews were carried out by censorship offices (Feldpostprüfstellen), which were military units independent of the field post offices responsible for delivery. Censorship initially focussed on military information. However, “in the course of the war, censorship shifted from a control measure aimed at defence towards a political-ideological review” (Kilian 101). Critical remarks could be legally prosecuted and punished with prison, penitentiary, or death (Kilian 99). Hence, it is assumed that self-censorship played a role not only for public media, such as newspapers, but also for writing private letters (Dodd). As the introductory quotation from Otto M. shows, writers who spread undesirable information in their letters anticipated the harshest consequences. In this respect, randomised censorship—although only a very small proportion of the high volume of mail was actually opened by censors (Kilian)—established a permanent disposition of control that resulted in a potentially discourse-excluding social stratification of private communication. Secondly, the dispositif “field post” was inherently exclusive and excluding, as those who did not belong to the Volksgemeinschaft could not use the service and thus could not acquire agentive capacity. The “scarcity of speaking subjects” (Spitzmüller and Warnke 73) was achieved by restricting participation in the field post system to members of the Volksgemeinschaft. Since agency is based on the most basic prerequisite, namely the ability to act linguistically at all, the mere possibility of exercising agency was infrastructurally restricted by the field post system. Excluding people from “agency-through-language” means excluding them from an “agency of an existential sort” (Duranti 455), which is described here, regarding the field post system, as infrastructural exclusion of agency. Interactional Exclusion of Agency in Field Post Letters In this section, I will elaborate how agency is brought forth interactionally through linguistic means on the basis of data from a field post corpus that was compiled in the project “Linguistic Social History 1933 to 1945” (Kämper). The aim of the project is an actor-based description of discursive practices and patterns at the time of National Socialism, which takes into account the fact that society in the years 1933 to 1945 consisted of heterogeneous communities of practice (Horan, Practice). Letter communication is considered to be an interaction that is characterised by mediated indexicality, accountability, reflexivity, sequentiality, and reciprocity (Dang-Anh) and is performed as situated social practice (Barton and Hall). The corpus of field letters examined here provides access to the everyday communication of members of the ‘integrated society’, i.e. those who were neither high-ranking members of the Nazi apparatus nor exposed to the repressions of the fascist dictatorship. The corpus consists of about 3,500 letters and about 2.5 million tokens. The data were obtained by digitising letter editions using OCR scans and in cooperation with the field post archive of the Museum for Communication Berlin (cf. sources below). We combine qualitative and quantitative methods, the latter providing heuristic indicators for in-depth hermeneutical analysis (Felder; Teubert). We apply corpus linguistic methods such as keyword, collocation and concordance analysis to the digitised full texts in order to analyse the data intersubjectively by means of corpus-based hermeneutic discourse analysis (Dang-Anh and Scholl). However, the selected excerpts of the corpus do not comprise larger data sets or complete sequences, but isolated fragments. Nevertheless, they illustrate the linguistic (non-)constitution of agency and thus distinctively exemplify exclusionary practices in field post letter writing. From a linguistic point of view, the exclusion of actors from action is achieved syntactically and semantically by deagentivisation (Bernárdez; von Polenz 186), as will be shown below. The following lines were written by Albert N. to his sister Johanna S. and are dated 25 June 1941, shortly after the beginning of the German Wehrmacht’s military campaign in Russia (Russlandfeldzug) a few days earlier. Vor den russ. Gefangenen bekommt man einen Ekel, d.h. viele Gefangene werden nicht gemacht.One gets disgusted by the Russian prisoners, i.e. many prisoners are not made. (N.) In the first part of the utterance, “mitigation of agency” (Duranti 465) is carried out using the impersonal pronoun “man” (“one”) which does not specify its referent. Instead, by means of deagentivisation, the scope of the utterance is generalised to an indefinite in‑group of speakers, whereby the use of the impersonal pronoun implies that the proposition is valid or generally accepted. Moreover, the use of “one” generalises the emotional expression “disgust”, thus suggesting that the aversive emotion is a self-evident affect experienced by everyone who can be subsumed under “one”. In particular, this includes the author, who is implicitly displayed as primarily perceiving the emotion in question. This reveals a fundamental practice of inclusion and exclusion, the separating distinction between “us”/“we” and “them”/“the others” (Wodak). In terms of semantic roles, the inclusive and generalised formal Experiencer “one” is opposed to the Causative “Russian prisoner” in an exclusionary manner, implicitly indicating the prisoners as the cause of disgust. The subsequent utterance is introduced by “i.e.”, which marks the causal link between the two phrases. The wording “many prisoners are not made” strongly suggests that it refers to homicides, i.e. executions carried out at the beginning of the military campaign in Russia by German troops (Reddemann 222). The depiction of a quasi-universal disgust in the first part establishes a “negative characterization of the out-group” (Wodak 33) which, in the expressed causal relation with the second phrase, seems to morally legitimise or at least somehow justify the implied killings. The passive form entirely omits an acting entity. Here, deagentivisation obscures the agency of the perpetrators. However, this is not the only line between acting and non-acting entities the author draws. The omission of an agent, even the impersonal “one”, in the second part, and the fact that there is no talk of self-experienceable emotions, but war crimes are hinted at in a passive sentence, suggest the exclusion of oneself as a joint agent of the indicated actions. As further data from the corpus indicate, war crimes are usually not ascribed to the writer or his own unit as the agents but are usually attributed to “others” or not at all. Was Du von Juden schreibst, ist uns schon länger bekannt. Sie werden im Osten angesiedelt.What you write about Jews is already known to us for some time. They are being settled in the East. (G.) In this excerpt from a letter, which Ernst G. wrote to his wife on 22 February 1942, knowledge about the situation of the Jews in the war zone is discussed. The passage appears quite isolated with its cotext in the letter revolving around quite different, trivial, everyday topics. Apparently, G. refers in his utterance to an earlier letter from his wife, which has not been preserved and is therefore not part of the corpus. “Jews” are those about whom the two agents, the soldier and his wife, write, whereas “us” refers to the soldiers at the front. In the second part, agency is again obscured by deagentivisation. While “they” anaphorically refers to “Jews” as Patients, the agents of their alleged resettlement remain unnamed in this “agent-less passive construction” (Duranti 466). Jews are depicted here as objects being handled—without any agency of their own. The persecution of the Jews and the executions carried out on the Russian front (Reddemann 222), including those of Jews, are euphemistically played down here as “settlements”. “Trivialization” and “denial” are two common discursive practices of exclusion (Wodak 134) and emerge here, as interactional exclusion of agency, in one of their most severe manifestations. Conclusion Social and societal exclusion, as has been shown, are predominantly legitimised as well as constituted, maintained, and perpetuated by discursive practices. Field post letters can be analysed both in terms of the infrastructure—which is itself constituted by infrastructuring practices and is thus not rigid but dynamic—that underlies excluding letter-writing practices in times of war, and the extent to which linguistic excluding practices are performed in the letters. It has been shown that agency, which is established by the ascription of action to an entity, is a central concept for the analysis of practices of exclusion. While I propose the division into infrastructural and interactional exclusion of agency, it must be pointed out that this can only be an analytical distinction and both bundles of practices, that of infrastructuring and that of interacting, are intertwined and are to be thought of in relation to each other. Bringing together the two concepts of agency and dispositif, despite the fact that they are of quite different origins, allows an analysis of exclusionary practices, which I hope does justice to the relation of interaction and infrastructure. By definition, exclusion occurs against the background of an asymmetrical arrangement within which exclusionary practices are carried out. Thus, dispositif is understood as an arranged but flexible condition, wherein agency, as a discursively ascribed or infrastructurally arranged property, unfolds. Social and societal exclusion, which were constitutive for National Socialism, were accomplished not only in public media but also in field post letters. Writing letters was a fundamental everyday media practice and the field post was a central social medium during the National Socialist era. However, exclusion occurred on different infrastructural and interactional levels. As shown, it was possible to be excluded by agency, which means exclusion by societal status and role. People could linguistically perform an excluding agency by constituting a division between “us” and “them”. Also, specific discourses were excluded by the potential control and censorship of communication by the authorities, and those who did not suppress agency, for example by self-censoring, feared prosecution. Moreover, the purely linguistic practices of exclusion not only constituted or legitimised the occasionally fatal demarcations drawn under National Socialism, but also concealed and trivialised them. As discussed, it was the perpetrators whose agency was excluded in war letters, which led to a mitigation of their actions. In addition, social actors were depreciated and ostracised through deagentivisation, mitigation and omission of agency. In extreme cases of social exclusion, linguistic deagentivisation even prepared or resulted in the revocation of the right to exist of entire social groups. The German soldier Otto M. feared fatal punishment because he did not communicatively act according to the social stratification of the then regime towards a Volksgemeinschaft in a field post letter. This demonstrates how thin the line is between inclusion and exclusion in a fascist dictatorship. 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“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them [...] life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” (Garcia Marquez 165) Introduction The refugee experience is, at heart, one of rebirth. Just as becoming a new, distinctive being—biological birth—necessarily involves the physical separation of mother and infant, so becoming a refugee entails separation from a "mother country." This mother country may or may not be a recognised nation state; the point is that the refugee transitions from physical connectedness to separation, from insider to outsider, from endemic to alien. Like babies, refugees may have little control over the timing and conditions of their expulsion. Successful resettlement requires not one rebirth but multiple rebirths—resettlement is a lifelong process (Layton)—which in turn require hope, imagination, and energy. In rebirthing themselves over and over again, people who have fled or been forced from their homelands become both mother and child. They do not go through this rebirthing alone. A range of agencies and individuals may be there to assist, including immigration officials, settlement services, schools and teachers, employment agencies and employers, English as a Second Language (ESL) resources and instructors, health-care providers, counsellors, diasporic networks, neighbours, church groups, and other community organisations. The nature, intensity, and duration of these “midwives’” interventions—and when they occur and in what combinations—vary hugely from place to place and from person to person, but there is clear evidence that post-migration experiences have a significant impact on settlement outcomes (Fozdar and Hartley). This paper draws on qualitative research I did in 2012 in a regional town in New South Wales to illuminate some of the ways in which settlement aides ease, or impede, refugees’ rebirth as fully recognised and participating Australians. I begin by considering what it means to be resilient before tracing some of the dimensions of the resettlement process. In doing so, I draw on data from interviews and focus groups with former refugees, service providers, and other residents of the town I shall call Easthaven. First, though, a word about Easthaven. As is the case in many rural and regional parts of Australia, Easthaven’s population is strongly dominated by Anglo Celtic and Saxon ancestries: 2011 Census data show that more than 80 per cent of residents were born in Australia (compared with a national figure of 69.8 per cent) and about 90 per cent speak only English at home (76.8 per cent). Almost twice as many people identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander as the national figure of 2.5 per cent (Australian Bureau of Statistics). For several years Easthaven has been an official “Refugee Welcome Zone”, welcoming hundreds of refugees from diverse countries in Africa and the Middle East as well as from Myanmar. This reflects the Department of Immigration and Citizenship’s drive to settle a fifth of Australia’s 13,750 humanitarian entrants a year directly in regional areas. In Easthaven’s schools—which is where I focused my research—almost all of the ESL students are from refugee backgrounds. Defining Resilience Much of the research on human resilience is grounded in psychology, with a capacity to “bounce back” from adverse experiences cited in many definitions of resilience (e.g. American Psychological Association). Bouncing back implies a relatively quick process, and a return to a state or form similar to that which existed before the encounter with adversity. Yet resilience often requires sustained effort and significant changes in identity. As Jerome Rugaruza, a former UNHCR refugee, says of his journey from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Australia: All the steps begin in the burning village: you run with nothing to eat, no clothes. You just go. Then you get to the refugee camp […] You have a little bread and you thank god you are safe. Then after a few years in the camp, you think about a future for your children. You arrive in Australia and then you learn a new language, you learn to drive. There are so many steps and not everyone can do it. (Milsom) Not everyone can do it, but a large majority do. Research by Graeme Hugo, for example, shows that although humanitarian settlers in Australia face substantial barriers to employment and initially have much higher unemployment rates than other immigrants, for most nationality groups this difference has disappeared by the second generation: “This is consistent with the sacrifice (or investment) of the first generation and the efforts extended to attain higher levels of education and English proficiency, thereby reducing the barriers over time.” (Hugo 35). Ingrid Poulson writes that “resilience is not just about bouncing. Bouncing […] is only a reaction. Resilience is about rising—you rise above it, you rise to the occasion, you rise to the challenge. Rising is an active choice” (47; my emphasis) I see resilience as involving mental and physical grit, coupled with creativity, aspiration and, crucially, agency. Dimensions of Resettlement To return to the story of 41-year-old Jerome Rugaruza, as related in a recent newspaper article: He [Mr Rugaruza] describes the experience of being a newly arrived refugee as being like that of a newborn baby. “You need special care; you have to learn to speak [English], eat the different food, create relationships, connections”. (Milsom) This is a key dimension of resettlement: the adult becomes like an infant again, shifting from someone who knows how things work and how to get by to someone who is likely to be, for a while, dependent on others for even the most basic things—communication, food, shelter, clothing, and social contact. The “special care” that most refugee arrivals need initially (and sometimes for a long time) often results in their being seen as deficient—in knowledge, skills, dispositions, and capacities as well as material goods (Keddie; Uptin, Wright and Harwood). As Fozdar and Hartley note: “The tendency to use a deficit model in refugee resettlement devalues people and reinforces the view of the mainstream population that refugees are a liability” (27). Yet unlike newborns, humanitarian settlers come to their new countries with rich social networks and extensive histories of experience and learning—resources that are in fact vital to their rebirth. Sisay (all names are pseudonyms), a year 11 student of Ethiopian heritage who was born in Kenya, told me with feeling: I had a life back in Africa [her emphasis]. It was good. Well, I would go back there if there’s no problems, which—is a fact. And I came here for a better life—yeah, I have a better life, there’s good health care, free school, and good environment and all that. But what’s that without friends? A fellow student, Celine, who came to Australia five years ago from Burundi via Uganda, told me in a focus group: Some teachers are really good but I think some other teachers could be a little bit more encouraging and understanding of what we’ve gone through, because [they] just look at you like “You’re year 11 now, you should know this” […] It’s really discouraging when [the teachers say] in front of the class, “Oh, you shouldn’t do this subject because you haven’t done this this this this” […] It’s like they’re on purpose to tell you “you don’t have what it takes; just give up and do something else.” As Uptin, Wright and Harwood note, “schools not only have the power to position who is included in schooling (in culture and pedagogy) but also have the power to determine whether there is room and appreciation for diversity” (126). Both Sisay and Celine were disheartened by the fact they felt some of their teachers, and many of their peers, had little interest in or understanding of their lives before they came to Australia. The teachers’ low expectations of refugee-background students (Keddie, Uptin, Wright and Harwood) contrasted with the students’ and their families’ high expectations of themselves (Brown, Miller and Mitchell; Harris and Marlowe). When I asked Sisay about her post-school ambitions, she said: “I have a good idea of my future […] write a documentary. And I’m working on it.” Celine’s response was: “I know I’m gonna do medicine, be a doctor.” A third girl, Lily, who came to Australia from Myanmar three years ago, told me she wanted to be an accountant and had studied accounting at the local TAFE last year. Joseph, a father of three who resettled from South Sudan seven years ago, stressed how important getting a job was to successful settlement: [But] you have to get a certificate first to get a job. Even the job of cleaning—when I came here I was told that somebody has to go to have training in cleaning, to use the different chemicals to clean the ground and all that. But that is just sweeping and cleaning with water—you don’t need the [higher-level] skills. Simple jobs like this, we are not able to get them. In regional Australia, employment opportunities tend to be limited (Fozdar and Hartley); the unemployment rate in Easthaven is twice the national average. Opportunities to study are also more limited than in urban centres, and would-be students are not always eligible for financial assistance to gain or upgrade qualifications. Even when people do have appropriate qualifications, work experience, and language proficiency, the colour of their skin may still mean they miss out on a job. Tilbury and Colic-Peisker have documented the various ways in which employers deflect responsibility for racial discrimination, including the “common” strategy (658) of arguing that while the employer or organisation is not prejudiced, they have to discriminate because of their clients’ needs or expectations. I heard this strategy deployed in an interview with a local businesswoman, Catriona: We were advertising for a new technician. And one of the African refugees came to us and he’d had a lot of IT experience. And this is awful, but we felt we couldn't give him the job, because we send our technicians into people's houses, and we knew that if a black African guy rocked up at someone’s house to try and fix their computer, they would not always be welcomed in all—look, it would not be something that [Easthaven] was ready for yet. Colic-Peisker and Tilbury (Refugees and Employment) note that while Australia has strict anti-discrimination legislation, this legislation may be of little use to the people who, because of the way they look and sound (skin colour, dress, accent), are most likely to face prejudice and discrimination. The researchers found that perceived discrimination in the labour market affected humanitarian settlers’ sense of satisfaction with their new lives far more than, for example, racist remarks, which were generally shrugged off; the students I interviewed spoke of racism as “expected,” but “quite rare.” Most of the people Colic-Peisker and Tilbury surveyed reported finding Australians “friendly and accepting” (33). Even if there is no active discrimination on the basis of skin colour in employment, education, or housing, or overt racism in social situations, visible difference can still affect a person’s sense of belonging, as Joseph recounts: I think of myself as Australian, but my colour doesn’t [laughs] […] Unfortunately many, many Australians are expecting that Australia is a country of Europeans … There is no need for somebody to ask “Where do you come from?” and “Do you find Australia here safe?” and “Do you enjoy it?” Those kind of questions doesn’t encourage that we are together. This highlights another dimension of resettlement: the journey from feeling “at home” to feeling “foreign” to, eventually, feeling at home again in the host country (Colic-Peisker and Tilbury, Refugees and Employment). In the case of visibly different settlers, however, this last stage may never be completed. Whether the questions asked of Joseph are well intentioned or not, their effect may be the same: they position him as a “forever foreigner” (Park). A further dimension of resettlement—one already touched on—is the degree to which humanitarian settlers actively manage their “rebirth,” and are allowed and encouraged to do so. A key factor will be their mastery of English, and Easthaven’s ESL teachers are thus pivotal in the resettlement process. There is little doubt that many of these teachers have gone to great lengths to help this cohort of students, not only in terms of language acquisition but also social inclusion. However, in some cases what is initially supportive can, with time, begin to undermine refugees’ maturity into independent citizens. Sharon, an ESL teacher at one of the schools, told me how she and her colleagues would give their refugee-background students lifts to social events: But then maybe three years down the track they have a car and their dad can drive, but they still won’t take them […] We arrive to pick them up and they’re not ready, or there’s five fantastic cars in the driveway, and you pick up the student and they say “My dad’s car’s much bigger and better than yours” [laughs]. So there’s an expectation that we’ll do stuff for them, but we’ve created that [my emphasis]. Other support services may have more complex interests in keeping refugee settlers dependent. The more clients an agency has, the more services it provides, and the longer clients stay on its books, the more lucrative the contract for the agency. Thus financial and employment imperatives promote competition rather than collaboration between service providers (Fozdar and Hartley; Sidhu and Taylor) and may encourage assumptions about what sorts of services different individuals and groups want and need. Colic-Peisker and Tilbury (“‘Active’ and ‘Passive’ Resettlement”) have developed a typology of resettlement styles—“achievers,” “consumers,” “endurers,” and “victims”—but stress that a person’s style, while influenced by personality and pre-migration factors, is also shaped by the institutions and individuals they come into contact with: “The structure of settlement and welfare services may produce a victim mentality, leaving members of refugee communities inert and unable to see themselves as agents of change” (76). The prevailing narrative of “the traumatised refugee” is a key aspect of this dynamic (Colic-Peisker and Tilbury, “‘Active’ and ‘Passive’ Resettlement”; Fozdar and Hartley; Keddie). Service providers may make assumptions about what humanitarian settlers have gone through before arriving in Australia, how they have been affected by their experiences, and what must be done to “fix” them. Norah, a long-time caseworker, told me: I think you get some [providers] who go, “How could you have gone through something like that and not suffered? There must be—you must have to talk about this stuff” […] Where some [refugees] just come with the [attitude] “We’re all born into a situation; that was my situation, but I’m here now and now my focus is this.” She cited failure to consider cultural sensitivities around mental illness and to recognise that stress and anxiety during early resettlement are normal (Tilbury) as other problems in the sector: [Newly arrived refugees] go through the “happy to be here” [phase] and now “hang on, I’ve thumped to the bottom and I’m missing my own foods and smells and cultures and experiences”. I think sometimes we’re just too quick to try and slot people into a box. One factor that appears to be vital in fostering and sustaining resilience is social connection. Norah said her clients were “very good on the mobile phone” and had links “everywhere,” including to family and friends in their countries of birth, transition countries, and other parts of Australia. A 2011 report for DIAC, Settlement Outcomes of New Arrivals, found that humanitarian entrants to Australia were significantly more likely to be members of cultural and/or religious groups than other categories of immigrants (Australian Survey Research). I found many examples of efforts to build both bonding and bridging capital (Putnam) in Easthaven, and I offer two examples below. Several people told me about a dinner-dance that had been held a few weeks before one of my visits. The event was organised by an African women’s group, which had been formed—with funding assistance—several years before. The dinner-dance was advertised in the local newspaper and attracted strong interest from a broad cross-section of Easthaveners. To Debbie, a counsellor, the response signified a “real turnaround” in community relations and was a big boon to the women’s sense of belonging. Erica, a teacher, told me about a cultural exchange day she had organised between her bush school—where almost all of the children are Anglo Australian—and ESL students from one of the town schools: At the start of the day, my kids were looking at [the refugee-background students] and they were scared, they were saying to me, "I feel scared." And we shoved them all into this tiny little room […] and they had no choice but to sit practically on top of each other. And by the end of the day, they were hugging each other and braiding their hair and jumping and playing together. Like Uptin, Wright and Harwood, I found that the refugee-background students placed great importance on the social aspects of school. Sisay, the girl I introduced earlier in this paper, said: “It’s just all about friendship and someone to be there for you […] We try to be friends with them [the non-refugee students] sometimes but sometimes it just seems they don’t want it.” Conclusion A 2012 report on refugee settlement services in NSW concludes that the state “is not meeting its responsibility to humanitarian entrants as well as it could” (Audit Office of New South Wales 2); moreover, humanitarian settlers in NSW are doing less well on indicators such as housing and health than humanitarian settlers in other states (3). Evaluating the effectiveness of formal refugee-centred programs was not part of my research and is beyond the scope of this paper. Rather, I have sought to reveal some of the ways in which the attitudes, assumptions, and everyday practices of service providers and members of the broader community impact on refugees' settlement experience. What I heard repeatedly in the interviews I conducted was that it was emotional and practical support (Matthews; Tilbury), and being asked as well as told (about their hopes, needs, desires), that helped Easthaven’s refugee settlers bear themselves into fulfilling new lives. References Audit Office of New South Wales. Settling Humanitarian Entrants in New South Wales—Executive Summary. May 2012. 15 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.audit.nsw.gov.au/ArticleDocuments/245/02_Humanitarian_Entrants_2012_Executive_Summary.pdf.aspx?Embed=Y>. Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2011 Census QuickStats. Mar. 2013. 11 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2011/quickstat/0>. Australian Survey Research. Settlement Outcomes of New Arrivals—Report of Findings. Apr. 2011. 15 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/research/_pdf/settlement-outcomes-new-arrivals.pdf>. 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