Social Relationships and Trust in Asylum Seeking Families in Sweden

Abstract

Research has suggested that social networks are important resources for children as well as for adults to resist health problems. For asylum seeking children social networking might be hard to accomplish due to constraints linked to social and legal contexts in the host country. Constraints can also be linked to the family situation and the circumstances they have to cope with in everyday life. The situation of parents, in particular mothers, is important for the coping of children. The over arching research objective is to identify factors that are important for well being of children seeking asylum and to study how they cope with their experiences as asylum seekers. The tension between excluding experiences and expectations regarding how the situation of the child and it's family should improve or deteriorate after the flight is for a child a constitutive reference for how coping strategies are developed. In the analysis I draw on theoretical concepts of resilience, social capital, trust and social recognition. This paper draws on results from an interdisciplinary research project Asylum-seeking children's welfare, health and well-being. Gothenburg Research on Asylum seeking Children in Europe (GRACE), Goteborg University and Nordic School of Public Health, Gothenburg. The study was financed by the European Refugee Fund. The empirical data are based on qualitative interviews with parents and children who have waited for decisions regarding permanent residence for several months and sometimes more than a year.

Finding Keys: A Systematic Review of Barriers and Facilitators for Refugee Children’s Disclosure of Their Life Stories

“…Accompanied children may face difficulties in asylum hearings because they do not know the reasons the family had to leave the country; their parents had kept these reasons secret with the intention to protect their children (Montgomery, 2004). Children who are aware of the reasons the family had to flee their home country may feel they have to show loyalty by confirming the stories of their parents in contact with the migration authorities (Björnberg, 2011;Ottosson & Lundberg, 2013).…”

Trust Amongst Refugees in Resettlement Settings: a Systematic Scoping Review and Thematic Analysis of the Literature

“…The majority of studies included in this review were carried out in the UK ( 7) (Goodall, 2010;Griffiths, 2012;Hynes, 2009Hynes, , 2017Majumder et al, 2015;O'Donnell et al, 2008;Rainbird, 2012) and Australia (5) (Correa-Velez et al, 2014;Lenette, 2015;Nickerson et al, 2019;. Two studies were carried out in Norway (Eide et al, 2018;Vårheim, 2014aVårheim, , 2014b, Sweden (Björnberg, 2011;Linell & Keselman, 2011) and Uganda (Lyytinen, 2017a), while studies also explored trust in Canada (Kyriakides et al, 2019), Ireland (Níraghallaigh, 2014), the Netherlands (Feldmann et al, 2007) and South Korea (Kim & Kim, 2019). Two studies explored trust across a number of countries, including Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey (Melki & Kozman, 2019) and Bosnia and the Netherlands (Mooren & Kleber, 2001).…”

“…For others, however, mistrust was caused by the truth not being told, that is, if a participant was perceived to be lying or secretive about the truth, he or she was not trusted, and so, in return, he or she had difficulties trusting and becoming close to others. Björnberg (2011) similarly found that amongst asylum seekers resettled in Sweden, many felt themselves to be outsiders and had few opportunities for building social networks. Many kept a low profile and did not risk trusting people: what was called a 'wait and see' strategy.…”

“…O'Donnell et al (2008) draw comparisons between, on the one hand, refugees' construction of trust in GP services in the UK on the basis of their experiences prearrival and the level of medical resources in the UK and, on the other, trust in GP services in their countries of displacement. Throughout all studies, trust is contrasted and complemented by a range of other phenomena that are also critical in resettlement, for example, integration and agency (Eide et al, 2018), ontological security (Hynes, 2009) and a range of social processes, such as social recognition, social identity and social capital (Björnberg, 2011). Almost all of the papers conceptualised mistrust as a survival mechanism, that is, throughout the refugee journey, many had learnt not to trust as a means to avoid being persecuted or exploited, and this often continued into resettlement (Hynes, 2017).…”

Desperately Seeking Certainty? The Case of Asylum Applicants and People Planning an Assisted Suicide in Switzerland

“…Trust has been conceptualised as the confidence a person has that others will behave in a way that is not detrimental to them (Baier 1986; Gambetta 1988). Trust is necessary when there is a lack of full information (Giddens 1990: 33) and relies on an ability to ‘anticipate the actions of those with whom one interacts’ (Bjornberg 2011: 3.9). O'neill (2002: 13) disputes Baier's (1986) and Gambetta's (1988) view that in placing trust in others we rely on them having at least minimal good will towards us.…”