Community Structures and Processes on Lives of Refugee Children - (Sociology) by Sofia Leitão & Yvonne Vissing (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Communities around the world face challenges in how to assist the influx of refugees and immigrants, who arrive with only the clothes on their backs. They may have health problems and have experienced violence and trauma before they arrived in their new communities. They require healthcare, housing, education, jobs, financial & material support, and childcare, to name a few. Some arrive with families, but often, children and youth arrive unaccompanied and are in need of special care. Even well-intentioned and resource-rich communities may find themselves taxed as they struggle to help everyone in need. This book is framed by a human rights approach and highlights how social structures and institutional processes impact the lives of refugee and asylum-seeking children. Social institutions around the world tend to experience a similar type of challenge in serving this population. These challenges are examined in this book as recommendations for actions provided. The authored contributions present different perspectives on processes, interactions, policies, practices, and laws embedded in a variety of institutions and community social interactions. It is a reference for researchers, practitioners, and students in its presentation of academic and practitioner approaches to challenges faced by refugee children in different geographic and social contexts. Topics in this book include work on the character of transnational migrant families and communities, uses of new information and communication technologies, international frameworks of humanitarian assistance, social inclusion best practices in the integration of migrant children and unaccompanied minors, and models to provide multidisciplinary services on prevention, integration and rehabilitation integration strategies. Concepts of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and HOPEs (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences) are explored, along with lifelong learning as a catalyst for the sustained promotion of safe communities in the context of migration; and individual refugee needs and their family's future wellbeing towards service to refugees that work for the individual.

Review Quotes

What is needed to provide a safe and prosperous future for refugee children? In this anthology, several highly regarded scholars come together to give their thoughts on this difficult yet important matter. The methodology differs throughout the book offering both qualitative research, legal reasoning, accounts of local projects and much more. We learn about the experiences of children on the move from both their and their caregivers' perspective, and we hear about the formal and informal barriers for successful healing and absorption into a new culture and place to call home. Though the title indicates that the scope of the anthology is only refugee children, some chapters also, or primarily, include immigrant children, and while this at first can be a bit confusing for the reader, it becomes clear that the lines between being an immigrant or a refugee are blurry at best and differ from country to country making it impossible to insist on a very strict categorization. The anthology is largely written in a language that makes it accessible not only for academics but for all parties interested in developing good practices for working with children who are no longer living in their country of origin.

Prof. Dr. Caroline Adolphsen

Aarhus University, Denmark