The Vulnerability of Young Refugees Living in Reception Centres in Luxembourg: An Overview of Conditions and Experiences across Subjective Temporal Imaginaries

Abstract

Vulnerability has become a key concept in discourses and policies on international protection and reception of refugees. In this context, the notion has been described as a tool to provide special provisions to groups at higher risk or one to perpetuate political agendas within increasingly hostile reception systems. However, vulnerability as an analytical concept has received less attention, with both policymakers and scholars often employing different conceptualisations of vulnerability or treating it as a self-explanatory condition. Building on a previous conceptual elaboration, this paper sets out to apply an understanding of vulnerability as multi-layered, dynamic and embedded in a study of the lived experiences of a group of potentially ‘vulnerable’ migrants, based on ‘fixed’ contextual criteria. Drawing from in-depth interviews with young adults who obtained refugee status in Luxembourg but still live in ‘temporary’ reception centres, this paper provides a wide analytical overview of the conditions of vulnerability encountered by this specific group of migrants, in the process of building their lives in a new country. Following the participants’ subjective temporal imaginaries of past, present and future, the analysis highlights and problematises conditions of structural, situational and experiential vulnerability emerging from their accounts and experiences, and discusses their possible implications.

Researching Playfully? Assessing the Applicability of LEGO® Serious Play® for Researching Vulnerable Groups

“…In the field of migration, Brown et al [49] even call it a "buzzword", which is self-explanatory. Vulnerabilities can be the "consequence of a particular situation or as the product of a structural system" [50][51][52]. Vulnerabilities have been seen in their embeddedness as well as in context (history, life circle, institutional, and geopolitical) and very often in combination with different, multi-layered, and dynamic factors [50].…”

“…Moreover, vulnerabilities are temporal. They can be perceived from the past, present, or also from the images of their future, which are influenced by the past and present and play an especially important role in the age of transition into adulthood [50,53]. The work of Gilodi et al [53] defines four types of vulnerabilities: innate vulnerability (natural condition of a person/group [43]), situational vulnerability (e.g., experiences, living situation, and exposed situation), experiential vulnerability (individual interpretation of situations and/or conditions of being vulnerable) [54], and structural vulnerability [55,56].…”

Double transition of young migrants in Luxembourg: vulnerable, resilient and empowering integration trajectories in the period of youth

“…Young migrants settling in a new country and navigating their liquid integration journeys are inevitably confronted with numerous challenges and difficulties that the literature on integration has been identifying. Identified stressors are manifold: Uncertainties associated with asylum procedures and legal status, experienced problems in accessing services, difficulties in job integration, economic difficulties and insufficient resources to support oneself and one's family, challenges associated with finding adequate housing, social isolation, differing levels of welcoming practises and attitudes from the receiving community that may entail discrimination, adapting to new cultural values, lifestyles, languages and policies, lack of social recognition, minority status, coping with disadvantage, stigma and emerging psychological disorders (e.g., Ward, 2001;Fazel et al, 2005;Sam and Berry, 2010;Bronstein and Montgomery, 2011;Salazar and Jayaram, 2016;Papadopoulos and Gionakis, 2018;Schwartz et al, 2018;Ciaramella et al, 2022;Gilodi et al, 2023).…”

“…Accordingly, and in order to tackle widespread integration difficulties faced by migrants, the concept of vulnerability has recently started to be used as a way to address the manifold difficulties inherent to the processes and trajectories of integration in a given host society (e.g., Bates-Eamer, 2019;Hoefinger et al, 2019;Gilodi et al, 2023). Yet, the task of defining a clear, comprehensive, and useful concept of vulnerability is not without its challenges (Gilodi et al, 2022).…”

Proculturation shaped by social representations of academic migrants from Italy to the United States

“…This connection between I-positions of a recipient of healthcare and an employee may not be as strong in Italy where the woman and her family were in the public healthcare system. Therefore, there is a new dynamic between the I-positions, where time becomes an important factor in how migrants negotiate, interpret, represent and experience their social realities ( Gilodi et al, 2023 ). Throughout these experiences, each person may react differently in terms of emotions that impact the overall sense of wellbeing.…”